Research Article
Duygu Karaalp, Kubra Arslan
Abstract
Aim of this study is to investigate the effect of sonication as a pretreatment on the efficiency of anaerobic digestion of Laying Hen Manure (LHM) under mesophilic conditions. In this study,the pretreatment studies were carried out using two different sonotrode (BS2d22 and BS2d40) and two different types of booster (B2-1,4 and B2-1,8) at four different amplitudes (9, 31, 40, 81 μm) at two time settings (5 and 15 min duration). Biochemical Methane production Potential (BMP) test protocol was also employed in order to evaluate the effect of sonication under varying amplitudes on the biogas production for 50 days. The BMP results obtained in this work suggested that sonication significantly enhanced the biogas productivity of chicken manure which was much lower if it was digested alone. Between 12-70% increase in methane production depending on the sonolysis matrix used was obtained in comparison to control group which had no sonication as pretreatment. The best result was obtained at an amplitude of 81 μm and 5 min sonication duration which is a combination of BS2d22/B2-1,4. The results of experiment demonstrated that use of this pretreatment technology could significantly enhance the biogas production from chicken manure.