[Digestion] Digester for Algae waste

[Zietsman, Rex]

Hi Frank,

Sorry for the slow response: it has been hectic around here. I have an
article that describes the digestion of hyacinth and its gas production.
It is a good feed to a digester - the water content is not an issue in
this case. Unfortunately, I am trying to make liquid fuel. Algae,
especially wild algae, grows at very high speed - the faster ones more
than double their weight every day! I intend to ferment the algae to
produce ethanol. I do not think that hyacinth would be as good a source
of carbohydrate...

I am also building a duck pond. I see no reason why not to grow water
plants in there for feeding to the digester...

Kind regards
Rex

-----Original Message-----
From: frank [mailto:frank at compostlab.com] 
Sent: 04 March 2008 08:02 PM
To: Zietsman, Rex
Cc: digestion at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Digester for Algae waste

Hi Rex and all,

Perhaps Water Hyacinth is different than what you plan to do but it sure

grows fast. I battled a canoe to the center of a lake to collect a 
square meter of the stuff to calculate how much was there and try to 
find something to do with it. incase it helps......
A square yard of material was ~58 lbs wet wt. Back at the lab it dried 
to nothing (93.9 % moisture) so you will have a lot of moisture to 
remove. Ash is 10.8 % on a dry basis so the organic matter is 89.2 % dry

weight. Nitrogen was 1.0 % dry wt.
On a feed analysis (dry wt) the Crude protein is 6.8%
Crude fat  0.4%
Crude fiber 19%

Should be a fun experiment to do.

Frank




Zietsman, Rex wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>I am building a small algae raceway to see what kind of production I
can
>get. I intend fermenting the algae and distilling off the ethanol prior
>adding the residue to an AD. The biogas will be used for heating the
>still to get off the ethanol. The digestate will be added back to the
>algae pond as nutrient. I also intend adding cow manure to the AD as an
>additional source of nutrients.
>
>I have my own design of this digester and would appreciate it if anyone
>on the list would be willing to give me feedback on the design. We are
>about to start clearing the site to build the digester and I want a
last
>review before committing. 
>
>Kind regards
>Rex
>
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>Beginner's Guide to Biogas
>http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
>http://info.bioenergylists.org
>
>
>  
>

-- 
Frank Shields
Soil Control Lab
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Watsonville, CA  95076
(831) 724-5422 tel
(831) 724-3188 fax
frank at compostlab.com
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