Dynamics of methane fermentation process and retention time for different agricultural substrates

A hydraulic retention time (retention) also known as HRT is one of the most important parameter in biogas plant exploitation. In practice, there are many substrates with different HRT used in agricultural biogas plant which makes difficulties in fermentation process optimization. The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the efficiency of biomethane production and to determine the dynamics of the fermentation process expressed by reaching 60, 80, 90 and 100% of HRT. The results showed very big differences in efficiency of methane production as well as HRT duration between analyzed substrates. The total fermentation period (100% of HRT) for investigated substrates amounted average 31,5 day (range: 21-41 days). However production of last 10% of methane average out 28%. It proves very low dynamics of fermentation process in the last phase.