Enhanced biogas production from chicken manure via enzymatic pretreatment

Livestock production residues are commonly used as substrates in agricultural biogas plants for energy recovery. Cattle and poultry manure can be converted to biogas in farm-scale or centralized biogas plants to produce heat and power. This study investigated batch anaerobic digestion of chicken manure coupled with a biological pre-treatment step. The primary objective of this laboratory-scale work was to improve the biological degradability of the mono substrate to obtain higher biogas and methane yields through using an enzymatic pre-treatment. The experimental results showed that the enzymatic pre-treatment for the chicken manure significantly increased the biogas production by about 35% in comparison to the control without enzymatic pre-treatment. Therefore, it can be concluded that the enzymatic pre-treatment of chicken manure could provide improved biogas and methane yields when the chicken manure is used as mono substrate for anaerobic digestion in agricultural biogas plants.