Digital Monitor for Optimised Anaerobic Digestion

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Bio-Energy, Production of other biomass-derived fuels (incl. Production from wastes))

Applied Research and Development

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Project Contact
Perceptive Engineering Limited

Smart - Proof of Market

Innovate UK

01 April 2015

31 July 2015

4 months

£23,338

North West

Competition Call: 1411_SmartRd5 POM - Not Available. Activity SMART / Smart / Proof of Market Rnd 5

Project Contact, Perceptive Engineering Limited

Anaerobic Digesters (AD s) aid the process by which organic matter is degraded to produce a gas mixture of methane and carbon dioxide by microorganisms. The performance of these digesters can be controlled by monitoring the variation in the parameters (e.g. pH, temperature, organic loading rate (OLR), and volatile fatty acids), which drive the process metabolic pathways, kinetics and microbial diversity. Any drastic changes in these can make it difficult to control the feedrate of the digester and adversely affect the biogas production. However there is a lack of robust statistical control strategies; the majority of existing automation systems, which provide a base layer of simple regulatory control, are based on standards from the 1970 s. Perceptive Engineering (PE) wants to address this by presenting real time information of the parameters in a simple intuitive format, using a process model that can provide optimal control of a small-scale AD.

07/08/15