Biogas Production Modelling: A Control System Engineering Approach

Due to the Renewable Energy Act, in Germany it is planned to increase the amount of renewable energy carriers up to 60%. One of the main problems is the fluctuating supply of wind and solar energy. Here biogas plants provide a solution, because a demand-driven supply is possible. Before running such a plant, it is necessary to simulate and optimize the process feeding strategy. Current simulation models are either very detailed like the ADM 1, which leads to very long optimization runtimes or not accurate enough to handle the biogas production kinetics. Therefore this paper provides a new model of a biogas plant, which is easy to parametrize but also has the needed accuracy for the output prediction. It is based on the control system approach of system identification and validated with laboratory results of a real biogas production testing facility.