A spreadsheet calculator for estimating biogas production and economic measures for UK-based farm-fed anaerobic digesters

This paper presents a spreadsheet calculator to estimate biogas production and the operational revenue and costs for UK-based farm-fed anaerobic digesters. There exist sophisticated biogas production models in published literature, but the application of these in farm-fed anaerobic digesters is often impractical. This is due to the limited measuring devices, financial constraints, and the operators being non-experts in anaerobic digestion. The proposed biogas production model is designed to use the measured process variables typically available at farm-fed digesters, accounting for the effects of retention time, temperature and imperfect mixing. The estimation of the operational revenue and costs allow the owners to assess the most profitable approach to run the process. This would support the sustained use of the technology. The calculator is first compared with literature reported data, and then applied to the digester unit on a UK Farm to demonstrate its use in a practical setting. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.