Potential of Floriculture Residue For Biogas Production

Abstract

Production of methane reach biogas through anaerobic digestion of organic material provides versatile carrier of renewable energy, as methane can be used in replacement for fossil fuels. Thus contributing to cutting down the emission of green house gasses and slowing down the climate change. This calls for widening the scope of the technology by tapping organic material like plant waste, industrial waste, and floriculture residues. Floriculture farms produce huge amount of residues and this can be used as feedstock for biogas production. In this study floriculture residue were characterized for their physical properties such as total solid, volatile solid, heavy metal concentration and the biogas potential was assessed in six different treatments with a cow dung The heavy metal concentration in the floriculture residue is below the standard for biogas and it can be used as a feedstock for biogas production. On the batch experiments of eight week digestion, the combination of floriculture residue and cow dung in the ratio 2:1 produced the maximum biogas of 14,127±155 ml in 52 days, followed by floriculture residue and cow dung in the ratio 1:1 11,776 ±164 ml in 51 days, the combination floriculture residue and cow dung in the ratio 3:1 as 8,461 ± 129ml 53 days, and the least with cow dung as 4,428 ± 57 ml in 43 days. The floriculture residue (flower only) produced the least amount of biogas 345 ± 8.36 ml for 19 days.