Production of Biogas From Biowaste and Its Potential as a Future Alternative Energy for Power Generation

Abstract

Due to reducing petroleum reserves' scarcity, the engineer has to consider alternative fuel sources for IC engines. Vegetable oils of the non-edible category can be used as a substitute fuel to diesel fuel and use gaseous fuel as a partial supplement to petrol fuel. Biogas technology offers a desirable direction to utilize certain categories of biomass for meeting partial energy needs. This study is to describe the production of biogas from cow dung in the fabricated floating drum type digester and was stored in the tube. Stored biogas was used as supplement fuel to run the single cylinder 305 cc variable speed engine under no load. The performance and emission characteristics of engines running on biogas and petrol blend were compared to petrol fuel operation. Results revealed that the performance of the engine was improved with the increases in the amount of gas substitution. Brake-specific fuel consumption was found to improve. However, emissions of HC and CO were increased with the increases in gas substitution, and reduced NOx emission was observed.