The methane yield of digestate: effect of organic loading rate, hydraulic retention time, and plant feeding

In biogas plants, huge volumes of digestate are produced daily and stored in uncovered tanks, which leak methane into the atmosphere and cause negative environmental impacts. To better understand the effect that different operating parameters of anaerobic digestion plants have on digestate residual methane yield, four digestate samples collected from plants with very different operations were analysed in batch reactors. Their methane yields were very heterogeneous and varied between 2.88 and 37.63 NL/kgVS. The methane yield was shown to be highly influenced by the A.D. plant Organic Loading Rate and by feedstock quality; hydraulic retention time had only limited effects.