Open AccessPerformance enhancement of biological methanation with trickle bed reactors by liquid flow modulation
Author(s) -
Ullrich Timo,
Lemmer Andreas
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
gcb bioenergy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.378
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1757-1707
pISSN - 1757-1693
DOI - 10.1111/gcbb.12547
Subject(s) - methanation , trickle , trickle bed reactor , flow (mathematics) , modulation (music) , methane , chemistry , materials science , mechanics , physics , catalysis , computer science , biochemistry , organic chemistry , world wide web , acoustics
Experiments were carried out to investigate the influence of liquid flow modulation of trickle bed reactors ( TBR ) on biological hydrogen methanation ( BHM ). The modulation promises to improve the gas‐liquid mass transfer and has already been demonstrated in trickle bed reactors of other fields of application. Therefore, the influence of four different circulation intervals with pauses from two to 1,440 min was investigated in TBR for BHM . The results showed that as pause intervals without sprinkling became longer, the methane content increased from 88.61 ± 1.58 vol‐% at a circulation interval of 2 min to up to 97.19 ± 0.46 vol‐% at a circulation interval of 1,440 min. The analysis of the process liquid indicated a stable biological process at any trial phase. This study demonstrated that the performance of TBR on BHM can be significantly improved by liquid flow modulation, thus significantly reducing operating costs.