Production of an alternative fuel from digestate using bio-drying method

Biogas represents one of the renewable sources of energy, which has been growing on use rapidly over the past decades. Biogas is produced during anaerobic digestion of organic material in biogas plants and it is most frequently used for heat and electricity production purposes. There are still plenty of unresolved questions as it is with the other renewable sources of energy. One of the most actual topics is the question of the subsequent usage of a digestate - side product of the biogas production process. Digestate is generally applied as an organic fertilizer for farmlands, but there are tendencies to use its solid phase for another energy producing processes or eventually as farm animal bedding, which is unfortunately connected with few problematic aspects such as transportation and storing of the biologically unstable material with high amount of water in it. Answer to those challenges could be provided by the bio-drying of the digestate's solid phaze - substrate is dried up by heat produced during the microbial decomposition of organic matter and artificial aeration. The main objective of the experimental part of this thesis was to comprehensively test the process of bio-drying of unmodified solid phase of digestate from different biogas plants with agricultural origin for the purpose of..