Process imbalance in biogas plants and strategies for prevention and recovery of the biogas process

Biogas have been recognized as one of the areas with positive socioeconomic balance. Expansion of the biogas area requires however, continuous optimization for improving the economy in biogas plants. Unexpected process failures are often appearing in biogas plants, where the process is certainly inhibited and biogas production partly or totally ceases. Often there is not obvious explanation for the inhibition. These process accidents are often relatively long lasting and have serious economic consequences for the biogas plants. There is still lacking basic information in order to be able to identify the causes and mechanisms for imbalance, partly to be able to prevent imbalance and partly to be able to fast recover an inhibited process. The main goal with the project is to develop tools for understanding process failure, and achieve stable operation in biogas plants. This project has the following goals: 1) To identify waste products and components as potential inhibitors for the biogas process. 2) To identify mechanisms for inhibition. 3) To map specific microbial groups that are inhibited. 4) To investigate strategies for process recovery