Anaerobic digestion of straw and corn stover: The effect of biological process optimization and pre-treatment on total bio-methane yield and energy performance.
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a useful method for producing renewable energy/biofuel. Today, biogas production uses a large amount of energy crops (EC), with the effect of increasing AD costs and creating conflict between food/feed vs. energy use. A partial solution to this might be the substitution of EC with agricultural wastes, e.g. straw. Straw and corn stover are widely available in the world and approximately 1600millionMgyear-1of these substrates are available. Straw can be useful used for biogas production but its characteristics limit its performance so that sometimes the energetic balance can be negative. In this review, the limits for the conversion of this substrate into biogas were investigated and solutions/proposals for getting higher straw biogas production performance are reported. In addition, energetic balances for untreated and pre-treated substrates are reported, giving indicative evaluations of the sustainability of straw and corn stover use for biogas production.
Biomass Engineering Center, College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China; Gruppo Ricicla Lab. - DiSAA, University of Milan, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milano, Italy.
Serena
S
Croce
Biomass Engineering Center, College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China. Electronic address: qiaowei@cau.edu.cn.
Qiao
Q
Wei
Gruppo Ricicla Lab. - DiSAA, University of Milan, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milano, Italy.
Giuliana
G
D'Imporzano
Biomass Engineering Center, College of Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China.
Renjie
R
Dong
Gruppo Ricicla Lab. - DiSAA, University of Milan, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milano, Italy. Electronic address: fabrizio.adani@unimi.it.
Fabrizio
F
Adani
D000693:Anaerobiosis; D056804:Biofuels; D019149:Bioreactors; D008697:Methane / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism; D003313:Zea mays / Q000737:chemistry*
D056804:Biofuels; D008697:Methane
Anaerobic digestion; Biomethane; Chemical pre-treatment; Corn stover; Energy balance; Physical pre-treatment; Process parameters; Straw