<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Cut in greenhouse gas emissions, increment of energy from renewables and improvement in energy efficiency represent the three key targets for future energy systems. Among the available bioenergy technologies, biogas production via biodegradation and anaerobic digestion is a widely applied approach, not only to produce biofuels but also to manage industrial and domestic organic waste. Within the biogas production, a sufficient mixing of the organic mass is a crucial step to ensure high biogas yields by bacteria and enzymes. Measurements of the electric power consumption of biogas plants revealed that the electrical energy demand of the stirrer system has a high share of the total electricity consumption of a biogas plant. Investigations on real biogas digesters to optimize the mixing process are cost and time intensive. Therefore, laboratory prototypes and computational simulations represent promising alternatives to analyse and improve the efficiency of mixing systems. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is presented, which is applied to commercial stirring systems. The case of two propeller stirrers, located in diametrically opposite positions in a tank filled with ca. 1400 m<sup>3</sup> of substrate is described in detail. For the simulation, the rheology of the fluid is adapted to a biomass with 12 wt % dry matter content and obeying the non-Newtonian generalized Ostwald-de Waele power law. The developed simulation procedure considers the rotation angle of each propeller and its height. A total of 441 mixing configurations are calculated and evaluated in terms of the technical benefit. The investigation reveals that locations of the rotors far away from the bottom and high rotational angles cause advantageous fluid dynamics.</p></abstract>

Cut in greenhouse gas emissions, increment of energy from renewables and improvement in energy efficiency represent the three key targets for future energy systems. Among the available bioenergy technologies, biogas production via biodegradation and anaerobic digestion is a widely applied approach, not only to produce biofuels but also to manage industrial and domestic organic waste. Within the biogas production, a sufficient mixing of the organic mass is a crucial step to ensure high biogas yields by bacteria and enzymes. Measurements of the electric power consumption of biogas plants revealed that the electrical energy demand of the stirrer system has a high share of the total electricity consumption of a biogas plant. Investigations on real biogas digesters to optimize the mixing process are cost and time intensive. Therefore, laboratory prototypes and computational simulations represent promising alternatives to analyse and improve the efficiency of mixing systems. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is presented, which is applied to commercial stirring systems. The case of two propeller stirrers, located in diametrically opposite positions in a tank filled with ca. 1400 m3 of substrate is described in detail. For the simulation, the rheology of the fluid is adapted to a biomass with 12 wt % dry matter content and obeying the non-Newtonian generalized Ostwald-de Waele power law. The developed simulation procedure considers the rotation angle of each propeller and its height. A total of 441 mixing configurations are calculated and evaluated in terms of the technical benefit. The investigation reveals that locations of the rotors far away from the bottom and high rotational angles cause advantageous fluid dynamics.

CFD Modelling of Biomass Mixing in Anaerobic Digesters of Biogas Plants

Institute of new Energy Systems, Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt

Environmental and Climate Technologies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"CFD Modelling of Biomass Mixing in Anaerobic Digesters of Biogas Plants"}

Cut in greenhouse gas emissions, increment of energy from renewables and improvement in energy efficiency represent the three key targets for future energy...

CFD Modelling of Biomass Mixing in Anaerobic Digesters of Biogas Plants

Published Online: Dec 13, 2019

Page range: 57 - 69

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rtuect-2019-0079

Keywords
Anaerobic digester, biomass, cellulose, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), full scale biogas digester, laboratory digester, mixing, rheology, viscosity

© 2019 Fosca Conti et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

CFD Modelling of Biomass Mixing in Anaerobic Digesters of Biogas Plants

Published Online: Dec 13, 2019

Page range: 57 - 69

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rtuect-2019-0079

KeywordsAnaerobic digester, biomass, cellulose, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), full scale biogas digester, laboratory digester, mixing, rheology, viscosity

© 2019 Fosca Conti et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
Anaerobic digester, biomass, cellulose, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), full scale biogas digester, laboratory digester, mixing, rheology, viscosity