Experimental and kinetic studies for improvement of biogas production from KOH pretreated wheat straw
Punam Rani, Megha Bansal, Vinayak V. Pathak
Abstract
The objective of the present work was to investigate the influence of potassium hydroxide (KOH) based pretreatment of wheat straw for biogas production. For this purpose, different concentrations (0.5%,1.0%,2.0% and 4.0%) of potassium hydroxide was used to pre-treat wheat straw at ambient temperature (about 30 °C) to improve its biodegradability prior to its application for biogas production. Biogas efficiency of wheat straw with and without pretreatment was estimated. The highest cumulative biogas production (558 ml) was obtained with wheat straw pretreated with 2.0% KOH. Further kinetic study of biogas production confirm the shorter lag phase (λ = 0.15) and maximum biogas production (718.32 ml) with 2.0% KOH pretreated whet straw. Therefore 2.0% KOH can be used as an effective method of pretreatment to improve the biogas production of wheat straw.