The use of oilseed meal for the production of biogas

Abstract

The article presents the results of the studies of using oilseed meal for biogas production. In laboratory conditions, biogas was produced from oil extracted from turnip rape, oil flax, fodder rape, white mustard, brown mustard, oilseed rape, winter tifon, sunflower, and chufa sedge. The results have shown that the greatest amount of biogas (0.81 m3 kg-1 DM) and the highest concentration of methane (68.64%) are obtained from oil flax meal. The meal of all the studied seeds, except for mustard, can be used for biogas production, and rapeseed meal and chufa sedge meal are most promising of them and allow obtain the biggest amount of biogas. It amounts to 0.64 m3 kg-1 DM and 0.59 m3 kg-1 DM, respectively, and exceeds the amount of biogas obtained from sewage sludge. It is not reasonable to use white mustard meal and brown mustard meal for biogas production because sulphur compounds present in them result in a low yield of biogas, while the content of methane is only 49–54%.