Thermodynamic analysis of the cracking of hexane has been conducted by the Gibbs free energy minimization method and second law analysis of overall reactions. By-products have been divided into three groups of methane, alkynes and aromatics and their possible production paths have been discussed. Effect of operating conditions such as temperature and steam-to-hexane ratio on the cracking perfor...

Accumulation of ammonia, measured as total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), a product of protein decomposition in slaughterhouse wastes, inhibits the anaerobic digestion process, reducing digester productivity and leading to failure. Struvite precipitation (SP) is an effective means to remove TAN and enhance the buffering of substrates. Different Mg and P sources were evaluated as reactants in SP in aci...

Dairy manure management is increasingly becoming an environmental challenge. In this regard, manure anaerobic digestion (AD) can be applied to address environmental concerns; however, dairy manure AD remains economically uncompetitive. Ongoing research is focused on enhanced resource recovery from manure, including maximizing AD methane yield through a novel multi-stage AD configuration. Resear...

The existence of methane in the martian atmosphere may be an indicator of subsurface life. Biological processes are known to fractionate the common isotopologues of methane, and hence measuring these isotopic ratios may yield constraints on the nature of the methane source. Any measurement of the isotopic ratios of atmospheric methane must consider the additional fractionation due to photochemi...

Sugar beet tailings were anaerobically digested at non-agitated and agitated conditions in identical thermophilic batch reactors. The average methane yield in the agitated digester was only 74% of that in the non-agitated digester. Ninety percent of the ultimate methane yield was produced in approximately 5 days in the non-agitated digester whereas it took 12 days in agitated digester. Even upo...

Wheat straw (WS) was pretreated with four concentrations of H2O2 (1%, 2%, 3%, and 4%) and was anaerobically codigested with dairy cattle manure (CM) at various ratios from 100:0 to 0:100. Wet-state H2O2 pretreatment effectively enhanced the biodegradability and methane yield of the WS. The optimal concentration of H2O2 for treating WS was 3%. The methane yield was higher with the codigestion of...

A design of experiments was applied to evaluate different strategies to enhance the methane yield of macroalgae Gracilaria vermiculophylla. Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) of G. vermiculophylla after physical pre-treatment (washing and maceration) reached 481±9 L CH4 kg(-1) VS, corresponding to a methane yield of 79±2%. No significant effects were achieved in the BMP after thermochemical pr...

The Chinese traditional medicine industry is developing quickly in China, and there is a growing demand for the reasonable treatment of Chinese herb-extraction residues (CHER) that are generated during the process of preparing such medicines. Different from other biomass materials, the nutrient composition of CHER discharged from different producers may vary widely, which makes the study of CHE...

Background Biogas production from lignocellulosic biomass is generally considered to be challenging due to the recalcitrant nature of this biomass. In this study, the recalcitrance of birch was reduced by applying steam-explosion (SE) pretreatment (210 °C and 10 min). Moreover, bioaugmentation with the cellulolytic bacterium Caldicellulosiruptor bescii was applied to possibly enhance the methan...