Water and Energy International

As the conventional sources of energy dying out sharply, the trends to find out alternative as well as ecofriendly sources of energy getting much more importance. Among the renewable energy sources, biogas is the distinct one that is produced from different wastes and at the same time generates energy with divergent applications. In this study, cow dung is used to produce biogas through anaerobic digestion considering their relative low cost, easy availability and heating values. In this study, 1:1 ratio of cow dung to water was used to generate biogas through anaerobic digestion. The fixed dome digester produced 562 liters of bio gas after 15 successive days of charging. In order to enhance the biogas generation rate, an inorganic additive, namely (Cu (NO3)2) was used. After adding the additives at a rate of 1gm/kg of cow dung, the generation rate get increased and produced 794 liters of biogas for the same period of time while examined without additives. It has been found that 67.04% methane, 25.22% carbon dioxide, 5.7% nitrogen and 2.04% other components present in without additive assisted biogas sample. In additive assisted biogas sample 72.06% methane, 10.86% carbon dioxide, 14% nitrogen and 3.08% other components are present. Later on, a comprehensive study has been carried out in terms of chemical composition of the generated biogas, which demonstrates that the use of additive increasing the degradation rate of the charge and increasing the biogas generation.