Thermodynamics, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
Biochemical Conversion Department, Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum gemeinnützige GmbH, Torgauer Straße 116, 04347 Leipzig, Germany.
Bioresour Technol. 2022 Oct;361:127664. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2022.127664. Epub 2022 Jul 22.
Flexible biogas production can enable demand-oriented energy supply without the need for expensive gas storage expansions, but poses challenges to the stability of the anaerobic digestion (AD) process. In this work, biogas production of laboratory-scale AD of maize silage and sugar beets was optimized to cover the residual load of an electricity self-sufficient community using a simple process model based on first-order kinetics. Experiments show a good agreement between biogas demand, predicted, and measured biogas production. By optimizing biogas conversion schedules based on the measured gas production, a gas storage capacity of 7-8 h was identified for maximum flexibility, which corresponds to typical gas storage sizes at industrial biogas plants in Germany. Various stability indicators were continuously monitored and proved resilient process conditions. These results demonstrate that demand-oriented biogas production using model predictive control is a promising approach to enable existing biogas plants to provide balancing energy.
灵活的沼气生产可以实现面向需求的能源供应，而无需昂贵的气体存储扩展，但这对厌氧消化（AD）过程的稳定性提出了挑战。在这项工作中，使用基于一级动力学的简单过程模型，优化了实验室规模的玉米青贮和甜菜 AD 的沼气生产，以覆盖用电自给社区的剩余负荷。实验表明，沼气需求、预测和测量的沼气生产之间具有良好的一致性。通过基于测量的气体产量优化沼气转化计划，确定了最大灵活性的 7-8 小时气体存储能力，这与德国工业沼气厂的典型气体存储大小相对应。各种稳定性指标被连续监测，并证明了具有弹性的过程条件。这些结果表明，使用模型预测控制的面向需求的沼气生产是一种很有前途的方法，可以使现有的沼气厂能够提供平衡能源。
