Modeling of the Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Waste for Biogas Production

Abstract Anaerobic digestion is a biological process in which the organic material is converted by microorganisms to methane and carbon dioxide (biogas) in the absence of oxygen. This process is interesting but the control on industrial scale spontaneous biological reactions requires good knowledge of the phenomena involved. The search for appropriate models to be use in control theory is now a high priority to optimize fermentation processes and solve important problems, such as the development of renewable energy from biodegradable organic waste. The aim of this study is modeling of biokinetics of anaerobic digestion on several aspects such as microbial activity, substrate degradation and methane production. For this, we developed a mathematical model based on mass balances on biomass, the organic substrate and biogas. This model is then simulate on Matlab using the experimental data from the literature and comparison between other models and our experimental results. The sensitivity of the model to the process parameters was study by varying the initial concentration of the biomass and the dose of the organic substrate.