EFFECT OF BULKING ADDITIVES ON BIOCHEMICAL CONVERSION OF BIOMASS IN HIGH-SOLIDS FERMENTORS Jennifer Sinclair Curtis and Pratap Pullammanappallil, University of Florida We aim to increase the production of methane through the use of bulking additives in high-solids fermentors. Our hypothesis is that bulking additives increase the porosity of the biomass particle bed. We are exploring this hypothesis via a combination of reactor experiments and discrete element method (DEM) simulations. Experiments have shown that increasing the concentration of the bulking additives increases conversion.
We have also successfully predicted the packing fraction of cylindrical rigid particles with the approximate dimensions of the biomass particles.
BIOMASS CONVERSION 350
METHANE YIELD (L/kg)
300 250 3 Layers of Lava Rocks
200
6 Layers of Lava Rocks No Bulking Particles
150 100 50 0 0
5
10 TIME (DAYS)
15
20
