Biogas Flow Measurement System

[IanCullings]

Once we have our pilot scale system up and running at the Wastewater plant, it will be important to characterize the amount of biogas being produced to get a sense of the efficiency of our system.

Some ideas for this:

• Measure volume gain visually by looking at the increase in bag volume over time. This could be done through a camera or by having an operator take notes at specific times. While this would be by far the simplest form of measurement and is a good backup, this is the least accurate way to measure this and will be hard to get actual numbers on.

• Use a solenoid valve system attached to ProCoDa to measure gas production. This would be similar to the systems used in our benchtop reactors. This would offer better data and automatically log it, but would require a computer system and more fabrication. @zacchen15 do you know how these systems work? I had trouble finding documentation in old research reports

• Use a thermal mass flowmeter to measure gas flow. This would be the most expensive but probably most accurate system.

[ananya-gangadhar]

The best way to test the feasibility if a solenoid valve system with a pressure switch would be to quantify the pressure buildup within the reactor somehow, since this system will not work for very low pressures within the reactor.

@IanCullings, I propose that we work on that today, if possible. I spoke to my father and he said he would be happy to look over our parameters and offer suggestions.

[zacchen15]

The solonoid valves werent that accurate either. They relied on pressure buildup decreasing the water level in the headspace/lid/collection point before opening but this had a ton of issues.

Theres a more detailed explanation in the summer 2017 documentation. I believe its in the manual.

[zacchen15]

@ananya-gangadhar the solenoid valve system would still work at low pressures if we used an external pressure sensor like the one originally design by the sensor dev team in Fall 2016 (originally for use with the bench scale UASBs)