1 Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal - 462 038 (MP), India. (E-mail: mshyam@ciae.res.in)
2 Department of Microbiology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar 125 004.
Family size biogas plants in rural India are fed with 1: 1 mixture of cattle dung and water as substrate. Regular feeding of many of those plants is of ten suspended due to scarcity of water during summer season, rendering the plants non-operational. Besides inconvenience in mixing water and cattle dung, the watery digested slurry discharged from the biogas plants normally requires lot of time and space for drying before transportation to fields for use as manure. The fixed dome type family size biogas plant design has been modified for feeding of cattle dung in solid-state (total solids contents 16–18%). The modified plant has been found working well throughout the country except hilly regions.
