IMPROVING OF BIOGAS PRODUCTION USING DIFFERENT PRETREATMENT OF RICE HUSK INOCULATED WITH OSTRICH DUNG

Abstract

The present study examined the possibility of using rice husk (RH) inoculated with ostrich dung (OD) in the anaerobic co-digestion to produce biogas. Four digesters were conducted to observe the performance of the co-digestion process in batch scale for 25 days. Grounded RH were pretreated with five pretreatments, which were ultrasound, hydrothermal, combined hydrothermal-ultrasonic, NaOH (3% w/v) and combined 3% NaOH-ultrasound pretreatment, and these pretreatments caused an increase in biogas production by 50.72%, 34.72%, 57.9%, 60.85%, and 78.65%, respectively, compared to control. On the other hand, the same arrangement of above pretreatments led to improve the cumulative productions of methane by, 66.11%, 44.76%, 74.27%, 77.89%, 101.62%, respectively, as compared to un treated RH. Thus, combined pretreatments including 3% NaOH-ultrasound and hydrothermal-ultrasonic pretreatment is make to enhance production more of biogas and methane yields than sole pretreatments. It was stated there was well compatibility between estimated and predicted values for methane (> 0.95).