Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 416–420

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Biomethanation of herbaceous biomass residues using 3-zone plug flow like

digesters – A case study from India
H.N. Chanakya a, *, B.V.V. Reddy a, b, Jayant Modak c
a
Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST-ASTRA), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India
b
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560 012, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Biomethanation of herbaceous biomass feedstock has the potential to provide clean energy source for
Available online 15 July 2008 cooking and other activities in areas where such biomass availability predominates. A biomethanation
concept that involves fermentation of biomass residues in three steps, occurring in three zones of the
Keywords: fermentor is described. This approach while attempting take advantage of multistage reactors simplifies
Biomass biogas plant the reactor operation and obviates the need for a high degree of process control or complex reactor
Multi-feed digester design. Typical herbaceous biomass decompose with a rapid VFA flux initially (with a tendency to float)
Anaerobic digestion
followed by a slower decomposition showing balanced process of VFA generation and its utilization by
Coffee wastewater
3-Zone biomass fermentor
methanogens that colonize biomass slowly. The tendency to float at the initial stages is suppressed by
allowing previous days feed to hold it below digester liquid which permits VFA to disperse into the
digester liquid without causing process inhibition. This approach has been used to build and operate
simple biomass digesters to provide cooking gas in rural areas with weed and agro-residues. With ap-
propriate modifications, the same concept has been used for digesting municipal solid wastes in small
towns where large fermentors are not viable. With further modifications this concept has been used for
solid–liquid feed fermentors. Methanogen colonized leaf biomass has been used as biofilm support to
treat coffee processing wastewater as well as crop litter alternately in a year. During summer it functions
as a biomass based biogas plants operating in the three-zone mode while in winter, feeding biomass is
suspended and high strength coffee processing wastewater is let into the fermentor achieving over 90%
BOD reduction. The early field experience of these fermentors is presented.
Crown Copyright Ó 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
India has built about 4 million family sized biogas plants in the
past (out of the possible 12 million) that operate largely with ani-
mal excreta as the sole feedstock [2,19]. There are about 100 million
rural families in India. The goal of providing clean cooking energy
[9,18] to the large rural population through biogas technology can
only be met by using non-dung biomass feed stocks as alternative
feed stocks. Towards this quest a large number of laboratory and
pilot plant studies have been carried out at different places in India
to convert various biomass feed stocks to biogas, notably with water
weeds [22] such as water hyacinth (Eichhornia sp.) and Salvinia. The
approach had been simple – to pulverize these feed stocks into small
particles and render them into a water-based slurry [10] and finally
feed them to conventional animal-waste-type biogas plants. Similar
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ91 80 2293 3046; fax: þ91 80 2360 0683.
E-mail address: chanakya@astra.iisc.ernet.in (H.N. Chanakya).
efforts have been made with kitchen wastes [14], crop residues such
as rice straw [1], terrestrial weeds [8,15], aquatic weeds [21], green
algae, etc. Crushed water hyacinth when fed to a typical floating
drum-type biogas plant was found to segregate into three clear
zones [11,12,16,20]. Over 85% of the material fed to the 12 m3 plant
remained afloat as a scum. This floating matter (scum) occupied gas
storage space under the floating gas-holder. A clearly large liquid
zone remained as an intermediate layer occupying 80% of digester
space while a small layer of sludge settled down. No digested matter
came out of the outlet after 180 d operation. From this it was con-
cluded that
most biomass feed stocks tend to float at all stages of
fermentation;
much of the digester space would remain unoccupied or useless
to the fermentation process when using a typical slurry-based
digester for pulverized biomass. Considering that stirring was
difficult; alternative fermentation techniques were needed;
digested matter would not ‘‘flow’’ out of typical outlets (as in
animal dung-based biogas plants).

0960-1481/$ – see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.renene.2008.05.003
 H.N. Chanakya et al. / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 416–420 417

Cabbage-TS/VS loss 1.00 Bamboo-TS/VS loss

1.00

VS VS
0.75 TS TS
Expon. (VS)
Expon. (VS)

fraction
fraction
0.50 0.75

y = 0.1953e-0.1183x
0.25 R2 = 0.5468 y = 0.8999e-0.0174x
R2 = 0.7518
0.00 0.50
0 10 20 30 0 10 20 30
Days Days

Fig. 1. Decomposition pattern is easy to decompose leafy biomass feedstock (cabbage, left) and a more lignified leaf biomass (bamboo leaf, right) under a situation of forcibly
submerging them in the digester liquid of a biogas plant.

Fig. 2. Plug flow like horizontal flow digesters evolved at the CST for biomass feedstock (left). The floating biomass near the inlet serves to hold down the freshly fed biomass and
functions as a pretreatment zone during which VFA flux diffuses into the digester liquid to be converted to biogas. As the retention time progresses leaf biomass is often colonized
heavily by methanogens. The colonization reaches levels of a biofilm if constant VFA intermediates flow through this material. A leaf of Acacia colonized after a 30 d retention period
and constant VFA flow is seen on the right.

30
Biogas from pre-soaked biomass 40
Total acid production in biomass
0d
at different pre-soak durations
gas mL/g fr wt

3d 30
20 Acet Eqlt
5d
VFA g/L

7d Total
20

10
10

0 0
0 25 50 75 100 0 3 5 5 7 7
Ttime,d soak time,d

90
Cooking time-2, b/w
Time (min)

60

30

0
90 92 94 96 98 100
Day
BGowda Fam2 Chandra
B2gowda TRaju RNgowda

Fig. 3. Mixed leaf biomass of Withania and Synedrella species when kept submerge for various periods under digester liquid for various duration was removed, drained free of excess
liquid and fermented as a solid mass in laboratory fermenters. A 5 d soaking time resulted in recovering 60% of the biogas potential in fermentation that did not required digester
liquid (top right). The VFA content of the liquid collected in such fermentors shows that the potential for methanogen inhibition disappears between 3 and 7 d. A 8 m3 plug flow like
reactor for operation with Parthenium weed was built in a village for a cluster of six houses. Above left shows the reactor connected to a gas measuring balloon. The specific gas
consumption of these families fell from large values along with reduction in cooking time (above right) and makes a significant change in life styles. In the above case, however, the
weed resources of the village rapidly disappeared and operations were suspended until community forestry would be taken up to augment the biomass feed supply.
418 H.N. Chanakya et al. / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 416–420

From these a few important guidelines to design biomass based The leaf biomass and source segregated MSW fed digesters were
biogas plants have emerged. reported to function with these three steps in the process (at three
zones in the reactor). The manner in which the feed was let into the
Do not fight the existing floating property of biomass feed digester and its forced submergence under previous day’s feed
stocks. enabled the rapid acidogenesis stage within a span of 4–5 d where
Minimize feed preparation so that the overall energy obtained is between 20 and 50% of fed VS was converted to organic acids that
close to the potential. diffused out into the digester liquid. After this 4–5 d period, forced
Design and operate digesters to accept floating and other by the daily feeding of process, this partially digested material rose
fermentation properties of biomass. up and moved towards the outlet. This floating mass, without VFA
induced inhibition, continues to decompose to biogas until a stage
From such lessons many fermentation concepts and digester when it nears the outlet and is manually extracted out the digester
designs were developed and tested at CST-ASTRA. These continu- (zone 2). The VFA diffusing into the digester liquid and being
ous design modifications helped arriving at the three-zone plug converted to biogas forms the third zone. In this way a quasi-
flow concept. A description of the process, plant design and con- continuous process was developed for rural herbaceous biomass
struction, developmental efforts, etc., has been presented earlier residues with a SRT of about 35 d.
[6,7,13] (Figs. 1–3). Three variants of the basic design have been developed, tested
Pretreatment of biomass feedstock by anaerobic composting and disseminated – leaf biomass digester, the multi-feed coffee
was shown to enhance the density and digestion of water hyacinth bioreactor and the MSW bioreactor [4] (Fig. 4 and 5). To reduce
and thereby it reduced the incidence of extreme floating [3]. costs of the installation the gas collection has been done using
Decomposing herbaceous biomass releases large quantities of in- plastic balloons covered with a protective layer of canvas. Field
termediate volatile fatty acids (VFA) which tend to accumulate and
inhibit methanogenesis. It was envisaged that an anaerobic pre-
treatment step could be built into the digester inlet design itself. In
this way the VFA released during the pretreatment would not go
outside the digester while the pretreatment itself would improve
the fermentation properties of the feedstock (Fig. 2).
There are significant variations between various types of bio-
mass feedstock with respect to the duration to which the initial
rapid VFA generation stage persists. Soft portions of the herbaceous
biomass are generally rich in pectin bound cells and these de-
compose rapidly, e.g. cabbage of MSW (Fig. 1). On the other hand
hardy and tough leaf biomass feedstock with higher lignin content
decomposes slowly. The decomposition tends to follow an expo-
nential decay pattern in general. This is very clear with soft biomass
but tends to become less clear with lignified herbaceous biomass.
With further decomposition, there is a gradual increase in the levels
of methanogenic bacteria that colonize this biomass. There is thus
a much higher potential for converting methanogenic substrates
than that is possibly generated during decomposition of leaf bio-
mass feedstock.
The ability to convert methanogenic substrates by methano-
genic bacteria colonized on decomposing biomass has been re-
ferred to as methanogenic activity and is reported as ml of CH4/g
biomass/h separately for acetate or H2 þ CO2 as feed stocks. This
latter observation suggests that during the normal decomposition
of typical leaf biomass feedstock there occur two clear stages in-
volving a VFA surplus (methanogen inhibited) and VFA deficient
stages. In most simple biomass feed stocks such as kitchen wastes,
etc., the VFA overproduction stage is dominant. This enables the use
of two-stage fermentation techniques even for rural use [14].
However, when agro-residues predominate in the feedstock, the
VFA flux stage is short and accounts only for about 30% of the
overall feedstock. The two-stage fermentation does not help sig-
nificantly. The potential for combining an anaerobic pretreatment
(to collect the VFA flux) within the digester as well as a second stage Fig. 4. The urban solid wastes in S. India consists largely of fermentable organic matter
of VFA deficient fermentation appears ideal. If the pretreatment with a high moisture content that makes it conducive for anaerobic fermentation.
stage is a part of the inlet design, VFA flux is captured within the However, the high content of kitchen and vegetable wastes makes it amenable to VFA
digester. This allows operation in a single digester format without accumulation even at the early stages of fermentation. This requires that the inlet is
modified for biomass to spend a longer period under submerged conditions and fa-
need for material moving machinery (external energy) or process
cility for dispersing VFA accumulating near the inlet. The plants are built in masonry to
control. This potential is discussed below (Fig. 3). a 0.5 tpd capacity (top). These being in public access biogas plants are built in masonry
During the early stages of fermentation, leaf biomass undergoes and stone so as to prevent accidental breakages. The inlets and outlets are covered
rapid decomposition releasing VFA and CO2. This gas production except during operation to ensure prevention of flies and other insect vectors. Al-
and therefore bubbles adhering to leaf material causes it to float. though a 60 m3 gas production occurs per ton of USW, valorization under existing
conditions is proving difficult. Attempt is being made to sell energy services for ex-
When there is a ‘‘notional barrier’’ that does not allow it to float for ample gas for cooking, running engines e.g. for winnowing (left), etc. Gas is stored in
a few days, the rapid VFA release and gas production continues till it polythene balloons covered in canvas which gives it about 2 years of operating life
reaches the second stage of VFA deficient fermentation very soon. when not physically damaged.
 H.N. Chanakya et al. / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 416–420 419

40
CRSS-2004
8
30 BOD-in
BOD-out
pH-in

g/L

pH
20 pH-out
6

10

0 4
0 20 40 60 80
Days

Fig. 5. Methanogens colonized on leaf biomass has the capability to function as a biofilm on media used in high rate reactors. Biogas plants are fed leafy biomass for 6–8 months
a year just as in the case of leaf biogas plants indicated earlier. During coffee pulping season, biomass feed is stopped and high strength coffee processing wastewater is passed
through it. A six module coffee bioreactor is seen at the top left. The dark effluent in the tank is seen in the foreground. Top right shows the gradual increase in the concentration of
effluent towards the end of the pulping season largely brought about by the shortage of water. Influent at a concentration up to 40 kg/m3 undergoes over 90% BOD reduction to
reach 1–3 kg BOD/m3 which is subject to aerobic decomposition to finally achieve 0.1 kg BOD/m3 and finally used as water for surface irrigation. Storing large quantities was solved
by storing in plastic balloons up to 120 m3 (above left). Incoming influent is distributed to each of the six modules (above right).

experience with leaf biomass reactors installed in villages sug-
gested that while the reactors functioned satisfactorily, herbaceous
biomass feedstock resources quickly dwindled in rural areas
(Fig. 3). There was a need to examine year-round availability before
deploying such digesters in rural areas. Secondly, in rural India the
use of a balloon for gas storage makes it vulnerable to animal and
man-made damage and alternatives need to be developed [5]. The
early field experience of such digesters is presented (Fig. 4).
Indian rules governing MSW treatment permit only biological
methods such as composting or biomethanation for the ferment-
able fraction. While large cities in India have access to sophisti-
cated fermentation technologies, small towns in the range of
50,000–500,000 population resulting in USW collection in the
range of 10–100 tons per day (available component 5–50 tons) do
not have access to a viable technology. Usually these urban local
bodies are cash starved and find it difficult to find finances for
collection and processing. Conversion to biogas (for sale), compost
or vermicompost provides good revenues that can match the col-
lection and operating costs. Pilot plants of 1–2 tons per day have
been built in three towns and preliminary trials were encouraging
[23].
It was mentioned earlier that biomass within was found to be
strongly colonized by methanogens like biofilms on plastic media.
By providing another inlet for liquid wastes, the same digester
could be used alternately with herbaceous biomass wastes and
liquid effluents or both. Biomass feedstock as indicated above, is
colonized intensely by methanogenic flora and can be used as
biofilms for high rate conversion of liquid organic effluents. For half
the year on coffee estates these bioreactors are fed with leaf litter
and harvested weeds. Between September and March when coffee
fruits are processed, the feeding of herbaceous biomass is stopped
and coffee processing wastewater is let in. Wastewater flowing
through a bed of biomass is capable of operating up to an OLR of
10 kg BOD/m3/d [5]. The experience of field dissemination and their
field performance is presented (Fig. 5).
The coffee bioreactors built in the field have replaced large an-
aerobic–aerobic lagoons that occupy over 25 times the size of the
bioreactors built. The temperature of the effluent ranges from 12 to
18  C and therefore makes ideal methanogenesis difficult. The peak
coffee processing occurs during peak winter and corresponding low
temperatures. Attempts were made to heat the influent using waste
heat from engines with heat exchangers. It was found that heat
available could only heat the influent by about 3–5  C and therefore
was found to be inadequate. The loading was reduced to
2.5 kg BOD/m3/d reaching a peak of 5 kg/m3/d once a week. This
provided required performance [17]. This performance is at least 25
times better than lagoons that too without malodours and loss of
valuable land. About 70 such modules have been installed at about
25 locations. While the masonry structures have withstood over six
seasons, some of them have not weathered satisfactorily. Protection
of these vaults from the high rainfall will be required in the future.
These efforts have shown that there is now potential to tap
biomass resources for conversion to biogas and energy services,
there is a great need for small modules of biomass based biogas
plants that operate with simple processes and few moving parts.
This is especially important considering the rising costs of fossil
fuels and meeting the potential for fossil fuel free agriculture in the
future. There is now a need to evolve a culture and mechanism for
collecting non-grain residues of field crops so that they can be
converted to biogas fuel at leisure. Currently, there is no practice of
collecting and storing crop residues. Crop residues such as sugar-
cane trash, paddy straw, maize husk, cobs, banana plants, areca
husk, etc are burnt often without using the energy within or its
compost potential. The three-zone biomass plug flow reactors have
to potential to harness both the fuel and fertilizer potential of
a large variety of such feedstock.
420 H.N. Chanakya et al. / Renewable Energy 34 (2009) 416–420
Acknowledgements
Much of the research funding was received from MNRE, New
Delhi. Early dissemination was done by TIDE, Bangalore. Travel
funds during the preparation of this manuscript came from Aus-
AID. We gratefully acknowledge all these.
References
[1] Andersson J, Bjornsson L. Evaluation of straw as a biofilm carrier in the
methanogenic stage of two-stage anaerobic digestion of crop residues. Bio-
resour Technol 2002;85:51–6.
[2] Bhat PR, Chanakya HN, Ravindranath NH. Biogas plant dissemination: success
story of Sirsi, India. Energy Sustain Dev March 2001;V(1):39–41.
[3] Chanakya HN. Biological treatment of water hyacinth. In: Proceedings of the II
ASTRA seminar. Bangalore: ASTRA, Indian Institute of Science; 1985. p. 52–4.
[4] Chanakya HN, Jagadish KS. Small scale biogasification of sorted municipal
solid wastes. Bioenergy News 1997;1(3):11–5.
[5] Chanakya HN, Srivastav GP, Abraham AA. High rate biomethanation using
spent biomass as bacterial support. Curr Sci 1998;74:1054–9.
[6] Chanakya HN, Ramamurthy P, Shanmukhappa P. Treatment of coffee processing
waste water using decomposing biogas as bacterial support. In: Proceedings of
the international IIWT. Chennai: Anna University; 2005. p. 65–72.
[7] Chanakya HN, Moletta R. In: Ahring BK, Hartmann H, editors. Proceedings of
the fourth international symposium on anaerobic digestion of solid wastes,
DTU, Copenhagen Aug 31–Sep 02, 2004, vol 1. International Water Associa-
tion; 2005. p. 277–84.
[8] Das CR, Ghatnekar P. Replacement of cowdung by fermentation of aquatic and
terrestrial plants for use as fuel, fertilizer and biogas plant feed. TERI Technical
Report. TERI; December 1979.
[9] Goldemberg J, Johansson TB, Reddy AKN, Williams RH. A global clean cooking
fuel initiative. Energy Sustain Dev 2004;VIII(3):5–12.
[10] Hobson PN, Bousefield R, Summers R. Methane production from agricultural
and domestic wastes. London: Applied Science Publishers Ltd.; 1981. p. 121.
[11] Jagadish KS, Chanakya HN. Further studies in biogas technology. ASTRA
Technical Report. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Science; 1987.
[12] Jagadish KS, Chanakya HN. Final report on project biogas production from
leaf biomass. ASTRA Technical Report. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Science;
1999.
[13] Jagadish KS, Chanakya HN, Rajabapaiah P, Anand V. Plug flow digestors for
biogas generation from leaf biomass. Biomass Bioenergy 1998;14(5–6):
415–23.
[14] Kale SP. Nisarghruna plant for urban and rural waste management, energy
conservation, better environment and restoration of soil fertility. Bioenergy
News 2004;8(1):1–5.
[15] Kalia AK, Kanwar SS. Biogas generation from Ageratum in a semi-continuous
plant. SESI J 1995;5(2):61–8.
[16] Rajabapaiah P. Personal communication; 2005..
[17] Ramamurthy K, Chanakya HN, Shanmukhappa P. Proceedings of the III
international workshop on coffee processing. Hotel Ashok (ASIC); October 30–
31, 2004.
[18] Reddy AKN. Rural energy consumption pattern – a field study – analysis of
results. Biomass Bioenergy 1982;2(4):255–80.
[19] Reddy AKN. The blessing of the commons. Energy Sustain Dev 1995;II(1):
48–50.
[20] Reddy AKN, Krishnaswamy KN. Innovation chain under the impact of tech-
nology imports. Lecture 3(a), R&D Management Course of Department of
Management Studies. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Science; February 22,
1988.
[21] Sharma A, Unni BG, Singh HD. A novel fed batch system for biomethanation of
plant biomasses. J Biosci Bioeng 1999;87(5):678–82.
[22] Srivastava RC, Pillai KR, Singh HD, Raghavan KV. Studies in design of anaerobic
digester for water hyacinth. In: Proceedings of III international conference on
water hyacinth. Hyderabad, India: Regional Research Laboratory; February 2–
3, 1985. p. 566–92.
[23] Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE). Bioreactor for treatment of
organic fraction of urban municipal waste at Siraguppa. TIDE Technical Report.
Bangalore: Technology Informatics Design Endeavour; 2005.