A kinetic model for the anaerobic fermentation of salt-accumulating plants including sulfate reduction

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25630225
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Civil and environmental engineering
• Research Institution: The University of Kitakyushu
• Principal Investigator: YASUI Hidenari 北九州市立大学, 国際環境工学部, 教授 (70515329)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): KATO Takaaki 北九州市立大学, 国際環境工学部, 准教授 (20293079) ; TERASHIMA Mitsuharu 北九州市立大学, 国際環境工学部, 講師 (60706969)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: メタン発酵 / 植物バイオマス / 塩害修復 / 数学モデル / シミュレーション / 硫酸塩還元細菌

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Semi-arid land in Central Asia has been facing an environmental problem in reducing crop productivity due to salinization, caused by climate change and poor irrigation control. The salts in the salinized soil are mainly Na2SO4 or NaCl in Uzbekistan (Na2SO4: 28 %, NaCl: 23 % accounted for the land). The option to improve the soil condition in FAO guideline was to cultivate salt-accumulating plants.In this study an anaerobic digestion system was performed to evaluate the degradation of such plants to obtain biogas whilst separating the saline supernatant from the solid fraction.
Salt-accumulating plant biomass at 70 g/L concentration could be degraded by two distinct AD reactors being fed NaCl and Na2SO4-NaHCO3. Kinetic parameters were estimated by simulating experimental data-sets using a developed model. For the NaCl system 65 % of the fed COD was converted to methane gas, whereas 54 % in the Na2SO4-NaHCO3 system was converted to methane and another 11 % was observed to be sulfide.

Free Research Field

環境保全工学