PRELIMINARY STUDY FOR METHANE GENERATION OF FELCRA NASARUDDIN USING ANAEROBIC DIGESTION

• Main Author: Abd Razak, Nurul Fatimah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI PETRONAS 2012
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6201/1/%5Bfull%5D%20dissertation.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/6201/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Utilization of abundant waste by converting them into a useful renewable energy by adopting the third generation of green technology development has attracted much attention from the world as a source of the depleting fossil fuels. Other than awareness towards Carbon Credit and Clean Development Mechanism promoted in Kyoto Protocol to developing countries, development in biochemical transformation of biomass by means of anaerobic digestion to generate methane gas was also one of the enthralling fields. This project is conducted as a preliminary study with aims to generate methane gas from anaerobic digestion of palm oil mill effluent taken from palm oil mill activity in FELCRA Nasaruddin, situated in Bota, Perak. The purpose of the project is to develop a working prototype of a digester, which will be used to generate methane gas by applying the conceptual of biochemical transformation of anaerobic digestion. A lot of literature studies had been done to support the proposed project. Numerous related equations were used as to support the theory and to proceed with the prototype fabrication and sample testing. The digester was designed using an engineering drawing tool, AutoCAD before it is fabricated. Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is taken from selected pond in FELCRA Nasaruddin, Perak and testing is done under controlled condition. After that, the prototype is fabricated and experiments were carried out to observe the performance of the digester. Eighteen Litres POME samples taken were digested inside the digester for ten days of retention time and volume of gas captured are taken into record. The result of the experiments were summarized in the graphical representation. Discussions were made to comment and to analyze the results and suggestions to improve the efficiencies of the digester were made.