Assessment of a mechanical pretreatment to enhance biogas production from the noxious weed eichhornia crassipes on industrial scale
The effects of a mechanical pretreatment were determined on the methane yield of water hyacinth. The feedstock was pretreated using a two stages dry milling process and the experiments were performed at a mass flow rate of about 750 kg h -1 . Untreated and pretreated materials were both anaerobically digested in batch reactors under mesophilic conditions for 28 days. The cumulative biogas production from pretreated hyacinth exceeded 141.8 Nm 3 tr -1 of volatile solids, showing a +44.5% gain compared to the raw material.