INFLUENCE OF DIGESTION TEMPERATURE ON BIOGAS PRODUCTION FROM DISCARDED CASSAVA ( manihot esculenta) PEELS

Anaerobic digestion is an established technology for treating different kinds of wastes and to simultaneously produce biogas (mixture of methane and carbon dioxide), which is useful and renewable energy source. In this work, the influence of temperature on the biogas production from cassava peels was studied in batch type anaerobic digesters of volume 500 ml at digestion temperatures of 35±5 ⁰C, 45±5 ⁰C and 55±5 ⁰C for a retention period of 30 days. The quantity of the biogas produced daily were measured with a pressure gauge for the 30 days retention period and converted to volumetric gas yield. It was observed that the cumulative biogas yield increases by 25 % when the digestion temperature was raised from the mesophilic temperature range to thermophilic temperature range. The highest cumulative biogas yield of 289.33×10-5 ^{m 3/kg-TS was obtained with the highest digestion temperature of 55±5 0C. It is therefore concluded that biogas production increases with the increase in digestion temperature and it is recommended that anaerobic digestion should be carried out at the thermophilic temperature range for better gas yield.}