Micro-combined heat and power using dual fuel engine and biogas from discontinuous anaerobic digestion

The modeling of the Micro-CHP unit operating in dual-fuel mode is performed based on experimental results carried out at the laboratory scale. The engine tests were performed on an AVL engine, with a maximum power of 3.5 kW, using conventional diesel as pilot fuel and synthetic biogas as primary fuel. The biogas flow rate is evaluated using the experimental results from the literature, based on the anaerobic digestion in batch reactor of a mixture of 26% of Oat Straw and 74% of Cow Manure, diluted to contain only 4% of volatile solid. The engine operation was modeled using the Artificial Neuron Network (ANN) method. Experimental engine tests were used as a database for training and validation phases of ANN models. Three different ANN models are developed to model respectively the pilot fuel flow rate, the airflow rate and the exhaust gas temperature. Engine power output, biogas flow rate and biogas methane content were used as the same input layer. Given that the evolution of the biogas flow evolves along the entire digestion duration (50 days), the simulation work is performed by varying the number of digesters to be used in parallel mode. It is obtained that the optimal operation condition, minimizing the number of digesters and using less than 10% of the energy from diesel fuel, is to use 5 digesters and run the engine under load of 70%. It is concluded that a micro-CHP unit of 1 kWe, requires a dual fuel generator with a nominal power of 1 kWe, five digesters and a daily availability of effluents of 171 kg/day, consisting of 45 kg/day of oat straw and 126 kg/day of cow manure. It can also produce up to 2.45 kW of thermal power from the exhaust.