Two phase anaerobic digester system
AssigneeInstitute of Gas Technology
InventorsSambhunath Ghosh, Donald L. Klass
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A two phase anaerobic digestion process in which an initial phase continually receives an organic feed for short detention times of less than two days under conditions which efficiently liquefy and breakdown the feed to lower molecular weight acids and other intermediates for conversion to methane. A succeeding phase is operated to treat the lower molecular weight acids and intermediates for detention times of about two to about seven days under conditions which efficiently lead to production to methane. The feed is loaded in the first phase at rates from about one to about ten pounds of total organics per cubic foot per day; and the products from the initial phase are loaded in the succeeding phase at rates of about 0.1 to about 0.5 pounds total organics per cubic foot per day.
Claims4
In a two phase anaerobic digester system including an acid phase digester and a separate methane phase digester for the digestion of solid organic waste and biomass containing insoluble materials to produce methane gas for pipeline use, the improvement which includes
- means to prehydrolyze the feed mixture delivered to said acid phase digester,
- means to neutralize the prehydrolysed feed mixture, and
- means to recycle effluent from said methane phase digester to said prehydrolysis means.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.