2001 Volume 63 Issue 3 Pages 43-50
Methane fermentation, originally developed as one of the methods of wastewater treatment, is recently regarded as an energy production technology for a local energy system. We constructed a complex methane fermentation system with photovoltaic solar cells for local energy production. The objectives of this study are to improve the fermentation rate of high fibrous biomass by a pretreatment of substrate and the rate of a whole year operation by the designed and fabricated complex system assisted by means of solar electric energy system. As the substrate for the fermenter, wheat bran, a typical agricultural biomass containing a lot of low-biodegradable fiber, was selected to investigate performances of this system. The running test was conducted through a whole year. As the result, it was revealed that the fermentation system showed good and steady performances that gas yield per wheat bran added and organic removal ratio were almost same as those of the conventional system, and almost all the necessary energy for operating the system could be supplied by solar energy from photovoltaic cells through a year.
