Folks, I am sure that there are many ways to size up a feedstock for its potential to produce biogas. However, most of them take more time than we are willing to give to arrive at such a go or nogo ball park figure, and furthermore most of them need equipment which we most often do not have. One method that I learnt from an old Classical Waste Treatments Engineer, looks to check out the VOC or Volatile Organic Carbon level.. No matter whether it is liquid or solid, you weigh it, and dry it in a domestic oven during the evening at 100oC, and weigh it again to get the moisture content. Then you screw up the oven to what ever, 150oC, and cook it overnight, without actually charring it but enough to volatilise as much organic matter as possible, without smoking out the kitchen. Then, next morning, you find the weight loss and apply your favourite rule of thumb to the amount of VOC that is most likely to end up as biogas. If you do it by the kilo, then you can weigh it on the kitchen scales. Ken Calvert. Digestion List Archives: http://www.crest.org/discussion/digestion/200202/ Digestion List Moderator: Paul Harris, paul.harris@adelaide.edu.au http://www.roseworthy.adelaide.edu.au/~pharris List-Post: <mailto:digestion@crest.org> List-Help: <mailto:digestion-help@crest.org> List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:digestion-unsubscribe@crest.org> List-Subscribe: <mailto:digestion-subscribe@crest.org> Other Digestion Events and Information: http://www.bioenergy2002.org http://crest.org/discussiongroups/resources/biomass/biogas/BIOGASMK.pdf http://www.crest.org/articles/static/1/1010424940_7.html Beginners Tour of Biogas http://WWW.roseworthy.adelaide.edu.au/~pharris/biogas/beginners
