Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology – Miscellaneous
Patent
1982-03-10
1984-03-13
Lander, Ferris H.
Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology
Miscellaneous
210DIG9, 220 85B, 48197A, C12M 102
Patent
active
044368186
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to an apparatus for carrying out the anaerobic fermentation of organic solids for the purpose of extracting a combustible gas.
The increasing scarcity of crude oil on the world market and the massive price increases for light heating oil that were connected therewith in the recent past, as well as the warnings of the petroleum organizations that an end to the price increases is not to be expected within a foreseeable time and that restrictions in the supply cannot be ruled out in the future, urgently necessitate, alongside incisive economy measures, the development of alternative energy sources.
An essential contribution to energy conservation can be afforded by installations that release a combustible gas, which in the main comprises about 65% CH.sub.4 and 35% CO.sub.2, by means of anaerobic fermentation of organic solids.
Installations for producing gas by anaerobic fermentation of organic solids have been generally known world-wide since 1920 under the designation BIOGAS plants and have since that time been exhaustively dealt with and described in numerous publications.
In contemplating the world-wide scarcity and the accompanying incessant cost increase in fluid fossil fuel that is in progress, the production of combustible gas through anaerobic fermentation, mainly of animal excrement, as a substitute for prevailing heating oil, is again given the greatest attention.
The reason that BIOGAS apparatus is being installed almost exclusively in agricultural or animal keeping areas lies in the fact that these produce a cost-free waste product in animal excrement, rich in decomposable organic dry substance, the removal of which is today often attended by substantial difficulties.
The industrial economic necessity for rationalizing the production of useful animals in the past twenty years, and the new stall construction methods connected therewith, with its full or partially slotted floors as well as fully mechanized droppings-space devices, have the consequence that the excrement from intensive keeping of useful animals is produced in large quantities in the most thick flowing form, free from foreign matter such as longbladed straw or hay. As a result, substantial droppings storage capacity is necessary for the animal keeping operation, since the excrement for fertilizer use can only be brought out onto the area under cultivation during the precultivation period. The anaerobically fermentable organic dry substance needed for operation of a BIOGAS plant is thus available year around in sufficient quantities in agricultural operations that keep useful animals.
Depending upon the animals owned or the available amount of organic dry substance, by building a BIOGAS installation useful animal keeping operations can easily become self-sufficient for heat energy and also for electrical energy with a generator driven by an Otto cycle gas engine.
As a desired side effect, the almost complete odorlessness of the precipitate coming out of the BIOGAS plant signifies that its fertilizer value has been slightly increased through the anaerobic treatment.
In common usage, BIOGAS plant basically designates only an installation which performs the anaerobic fermentation process for the purpose of extracting a combustible gas. In contrast to apparatus for anaerobic fermentation of waste water residues from community or industrial purification plants, in which fermentation serves as a cleaning step for the purification plant, in BIOGAS plants the anaerobic decomposition process or the fermentation of the organic dry mass is shortened to the time period needed for an optimum yield of combustible gas.
The process and structure technology employed in fermentation towers of community or industrial purification installations for anaerobic fermentation of waste water residues, which as a rule contain about 2-3% decomposable dry substance, has long been known and need not here be further dealt with.
These conventional anaerobic fermentation systems, because of holding times for the water residue of between
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patent: 3981803 (1976-09-01), Coulthard
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patent: 4060175 (1977-11-01), Rysgaard, Sr.
patent: 4100023 (1978-07-01), McDonald
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Lander Ferris H.
Nilles James E.
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