Two phase continuous digestion of solid manure on-farm: design, mass and nutrient balance

Summary

During the last decade some so called ‘dry fermentation’ prototype plants were developed for anaerobic digestion of organic material containing 15-50 % total solids. These plants show added advantages com-pared to slurry digestion plants: Less reactor volume, less process energy, less transport capacity, less odour emissions. However on-farm dry fermentation plants are not common and rarely commercially available. This paper reports about an innovative two phase prototype biogas plant designed for continuous digestion of solid dairy cattle manure.