Abstract

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The pressure upon many nations of the world especially in the developing economies is the attainment of the Sustainable Development goals, one of which is Environmental Sustainability. A shift from fossil fuel to renewable alternative energy such as biogas has been identified as a key strategy for attaining this. The production of biogas from various substrates via anaerobic digestion has been extensively explored. The influence of variability in ambient and digester temperatures on biogas production from cow dung and chicken droppings was explored in this study. Anaerobic digestion of Cow dung and Chicken droppings for the production of high quality biogas was carried out at average ambient temperatures of 20.45±4 oC and 37.00±3 oC. The total biogas production for Cow dung and Chicken droppings were respectively 0.035444 m3 and 0.210984 m3 for the first temperature range and 0.183471 m3 and 0.321066 m3 for the second temperature range. The results of the daily and cumulative biogas production where subjected to the Modified Gompertz model. The total biogas yield for Cow dung and Chicken droppings based on the Modified Gompertz equation were respectively 0.0374 m3 and 0.217 m3 for the first temperature range and 0.181 m3 and 0.322 m3 for the second temperature range. This study demonstrated that there is a clear variation in the volume of biogas produced at lower and higher temperatures within the mesophilic range.

Keywords: Biogas, Chicken droppings, Cow dung, Gompertz equation, Mesophilic, Temperature