Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

Recovery of methane-rich gas from solid-feed anaerobic

digestion of ipomoea (Ipomoea carnea)
P. Sankar Ganesh a, R. Sanjeevi a, S. Gajalakshmi
a

a,*

, E.V. Ramasamy b, S.A. Abbasi

Centre for Pollution Control and Energy Technology, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry 605 014, India
b
School of Environmental Sciences, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam 686 008, India
Received 21 December 2006; received in revised form 20 January 2007; accepted 21 January 2007
Available online 26 March 2007

Abstract
Studies are presented on new types of anaerobic digesters in which chopped or dry crushed Ipomoea carnea was fed without any other
pretreatment, in an attempt to develop commercially viable means of utilizing the otherwise very harmful plant.
Two types of solid-feed anaerobic digesters (SFADs) were studied. The rst type had a single vessel in which the bottom 35% portion
was separated from the top portion by a perforated PVC disk. The weed was charged from the top and inoculated with anaerobically
digested cowdungwater slurry. The fermentation of the weed in the reactor led to the formation of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) plus some
biogas. The leachate, rich in the VFAs, was passed through the perforated PVC sheet and collected in the lower portion of the vessel. The
other type of reactors had two vessels, the rst one was fully charged with the weed and the second received the VFA leachate. With both
types were attached upow anaerobic lters (UAFs) which converted the leachate into combustible biogas consisting of 70% methane.
All SFADs developed very consistent performance in terms of biogas yield within 17 weeks of start. The two-compartment reactors
yielded signicantly more biogas than the single-compartment reactors of corresponding total volume, and the reactors with which
anaerobic lters (AF) were attached yielded more biogas than the ones without AF. The best performing units generated 2.41 m3 of biogas per m3 of digester volume, as compared to 0.10.2 m3 of biogas, m 3 d 1, obtainable with conventional digesters. This indicates the
viability of this technology.
The spent weed can be vermicomposted directly to obtain good soil-conditioner cum fertilizer; earthworm Eudrilus eugeniae produced
540 mg vermicast per animal every day, achieving near total conversion of feed to vermicast in 20 days. The proposed systems, thus,
makes it possible to accomplish total utilization of ipomoea.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Ipomoea carnea; Anaerobic digesters; Upow anaerobic lters; Biogas; Vermicompost

1. Introduction
The amphibious weed Ipomoea (Ipomoea carnea) is one
of the most productive of macrophytes. It grows profusely
on water bodies and adjoining marshy lands, often jostling
out most other plant species. Throughout the modern and
post-modern era as indeed in the premodern times as well
scientists have striven hard to nd ways to destroy, control, or utilize this and other weeds. But the weeds continue

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Prof.S.A.Abbasi@gmail.com (S. Gajalakshmi).

0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2007.01.024

to defy destruction and control (Chari and Abbasi, 2003;

Schwarz et al., 2003; Ghosh and Singh, 2005; Chari and
Abbasi, 2005). Attempts to utilize the weeds have met with
more or less equally feeble success. Such attempts have
encompassed a gamut: possible use as livestock feed, building material, paper pulp, source of drugs, fuel etc. (Abbasi
and Ramasamy, 1999) but only very small quantities of
major weeds are utilizable in one or the other manner.
Even such utilization options are region-specic and serve
a limited purpose in situations when better options are
not available.
One of the potential products which has a high demand
and good market value in most parts of the world is clean

P. Sankar Ganesh et al. / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

energy. Such energy can be obtained in the form of methane-rich biogas by anaerobic digestion of the weeds. But
even though this is one of the most attractive of the weed
utilization options, its large-scale exploitation thus far
has been limited for the following reasons (Gajalakshmi
et al., 2006):
(a) The weeds cannot be fed to the conventional xeddome and oating-dome biogas digesters, which are
extensively used in most of the third world countries
to generate biogas from animal dung-water slurry.
This is because the weeds do not ow out of the digester exit along with water, as the animal dung-water
slurry does, but, instead, accumulates in the digester
to eventually clog it. Even when fed as partial feed
supplement along with animal dung slurry, the weeds
eventually clog the digesters (Bouallagni et al., 2004;
Santosh et al., 2004). As a result the digesters become
non-functional a few weeks after the start-up with
weed-feed. In a like manner weeds also clog the continuously stirred tank reactors (CSTRs) used in most
developed countries for anaerobically digesting piggery and dairy wastes.
(b) The volatile solids content of aquatic weeds is rarely
above 5%, and 9395% of the weed phytomass is
generally comprised of water (Abbasi and Nipaney,
1993; Abbasi and Ramasamy, 1999; Sankar Ganesh
et al., 2005). Thus, even the whole plants represent
a rather lean source of VS and if a weed-water slurry
is made as digester feed it is even leaner in VS than
the whole plants. The eective space VS loading in
digester of such a feed would give a very poor energy
yield per unit digester volume. But 7585% of the cost
of any anaerobic digestion process is consumed by
the reactor (Selvaganesan, 1999; Abbasi and Khan,
2000) and enhancing the methane yield per unit reactor volume is essential to make the process viable.
I. carnea (also named I. stulosa) is fast emerging as the
most problematic of the weeds in India and other regions
of the tropical world (Schwarz et al., 2003; Ghosh and
Singh, 2005; Selvaganesan, 1999; Tamijarassy, 2001). We
have, therefore launched a programme to nd ways and
means of gainful utilization of I. carnea so that the cost
of mechanically removing it from land/water can be partially or fully recovered from the gains. As a part of these
initiatives we have studied solid-feed anaerobic fermentation of I. carnea.
Apart from overcoming the problems of reactor
operation and reactor economics mentioned above, the
advantage of solid-feed process, as compared to the conventional anaerobic digestion process, is that the feed does
not have to be liqueed. This has the potential of not only
saving on expenses but also making the process simpler,
hence more easily utilizable, even by semi-skilled persons.
This advantage is particularly signicant in the rural situations where I. carnea is available in large quantities but

813

where it is too expensive to provide sophisticated technical

help in digester operation.
1.1. Solid-feed anaerobic digesters
The earliest report on solid-feed anaerobic digestion,
wherein organic waste was subjected to anaerobic decomposition without rst mincing or conversion to slurry is
in the form of a US Patent (Rijkens, 1983). The fatty acids
generated during the digestion, together with other water
soluble substances, were washed o the solids mass, and
fed to an auxiliary anaerobic reactor leading to recovery
of energy as methane gas.
A variant of this basic approach, called sequential batch
anaerobic composting (SEBAC) process, was trademarked
by Chynoweth and others (Chynoweth and Legrand, 1993;
Chynoweth et al., 1992); another variant was used by
Anand et al. (1991) in the dry digestion of leafy biomass.
But in spite of its obvious potential, research on solid-feed
anaerobic fermentation has not proceeded with the impetus
it ought to have. The possible reason is that the initial success of this technological option coincided with the trend of
rapid fall in oil prices and a general depression in the eld
of renewable energy R&D that ensued.
But even as energy production is still not the prime
reason for the interest in research on solid-feed anaerobic digestion, the challenge to nd remunerative ways of
solid waste treatment is (Chynoweth, 2002). We had
explored the possibility of disposing vegetable market
waste with this option (Ramasamy and Abbasi, 2000)
and had found that good consistency and reproducibility
of performance is achieved in these digesters which is pleasantly surprising when it is considered that the feed is inhomogeneous and no provision of mixing is provided within
the reactors.
The digesters used in the present study are signicantly
dierent in terms of design as well as operation, from all
the systems mentioned above. This aspect has been elaborated later in the paper.
2. Experimental
2.1. Solid-feed anaerobic digesters (SFADs)
Two kinds of SFADs were used: digesters with solid and
liquid phase chambers within the single digester unit
(SFAD I) and digesters with separate but interconnected
solid and liquid phase units (SFAD II). The former type
of reactors were 42.8 cm high at 5.1 cm inner diameter,
yielding a working volume of 876 ml. In the second type,
reactors with working volume identical to SFAD I were
used, as also larger reactors with inner diameter 7.2 cm
and working volume 1752 ml. All the SFADs were used
with and without an anaerobic lter (AF), attached to
them.
The sequence of the reactors used in the study is as
follows:

814

SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD
SFAD

P. Sankar Ganesh et al. / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

I volume 876 ml, feed dry crushed Ipomoea

I AF as above, with AF attached
II A volume 876 ml, feed fresh chopped Ipomoea
II A AF as above with AF attached
II B volume 876 ml, feed dry crushed Ipomoea
II B AF as above, with AF attached
II C volume 1752 ml, feed dry crushed Ipomoea
II C AF as above, with AF attached

All reactors were operated in duplicate. They were

housed in a thermostated room maintained at 33 1 C.
2.2. Feed
I. carnea was collected from in and around the university campus. It was washed liberally with water to remove
attached coarse sediment, and then with 50 g/l of EDTA
solution and deionized water to remove dust particles
adsorbed on the plant surface. After draining o the water,
the plants were carefully wiped with lter paper. A portion
was dried at 105 C in hot air oven to constant weight and
crushed; it is henceforth referred as dry crushed Ipomoea.
The other portion was chopped to small (23 cm) pieces
(referred henceforth as fresh chopped Ipomoea). The total
solids (TS), volatile solids (VS), carbon and nitrogen contents of the feed were determined by Standard methods
(APHA, 1997; Rao, 1993).
2.3. Inocula
Fresh cowdung was mixed with water in 1:4 (w/v) ratio,
stirred well, and allowed to settle for about 4 h. The supernatant was decanted, ltered through glass wool, and used
as inoculum. It had pH 6.9, total solids 11,700 mg l 1 and
volatile solids 9720 mg l 1. If euent slurry from a biogas
plant is available, it can also be used instead of cowdung to
prepare the inoculum. The slurry when mixed with water in
1:2 (w/v) ratio, has pH, TS and VS of the order that are
yielded by fresh cowdungwater mixture at 1:4 (w/v) ratio.
2.4. Reactor operation
The SFADs were fed with freshly chopped or dry
crushed Ipomoea and 115 ml inoculum per litre of reactor
volume. The leachate coming in the liquid phase compartment was recirculated once daily and biogas generated in
the various compartments (including UAFs) was collected
and measured. After 4 weeks of start-up the void created in
the reactors due to compaction of the feed was measured
and was lled with new ipomoea once a week for a month.
At the end of the month the void created by compaction
was again measured and again of this void was lled once
a week by new feed over the next month. This process was
continued till the termination of the experiment.
The biogas yield was normalized by converting all values to standard temperature (25 C) and pressure (1 atm).
The yield is expressed in terms of litres per reactor volume,

per day, to make comparison easy as this value is independent of reactor size and incorporates the eect of feed loading rate, volatile solids content of the feed, etc.
2.5. Vermicomposting of spent weed
The spent weed was subjected to vermicomposting by
earthworms Eudrilus eugeniae in vermireactors described
earlier (Gajalakshmi et al., 2001a,b,c,d). The reactors were
fed at the rate of 25 g spent weed (dry weight basis) per litre
of vermireactor volume and had the initial population of
seven adult worms per litre of reactor volume. The C:N
ratio of ipomoea and of the vermicast was determined as
per APHA (1997) and Rao (1993).
3. Results and discussion
Six samples randomly taken from freshly harvested and
minced whole ipomoea plants had TS, VS and C:N ratios
14%, 8.4% and 21, respectively. The corresponding values
of samples from the homogenized dry weed were 100%,
59% and 21.
The pattern of biogas yield obtained from dierent variants of SFADs is presented in Fig. 1. The scatter in the biogas yield from replicates (as shown in the gure) was
generally within 35 15 ml. The scatter remained the same
even as the biogas production increased (Fig. 1b, d, f and
h) leading to progressively lesser relative error. In highyielding reactors such as SFAD II A AF, SFAD II B
AF, and SFAD II C AF, the relative error dropped to
less than 2% on most occassions. This indicates a high
degree of reproducibility considering the fact that SFADs
are heterogeneous-feed and unstirred reactors.
Fig. 1b, d, f and h also reveals that biogas production
rises substantially as the digesters age up till 1112 weeks
of the start. In subsequent weeks the biogas production
becomes more or less steady with only a gentle rise.
The observations on the extent of compaction of the
feed with time in the various reactors is summarized in
Table 1. Of the two forms of ipomoea used, the dry crushed
form gets compacted faster than the fresh chopped form.
This enables better augmentation of the digesters operated
with dry crushed ipomoea than the ones operated with the
fresh chopped form. The signicant extent of compaction
even after four months of reactor operation, which enables
replenishment of as much as 25% of the digester space with
new feed, and the gently rising trend in biogas production
(Fig. 1) indicate that the digesters would give as much, or
better, output for several months to come.
The other salient points that emerge from Fig. 1 and
Table 1 are:
(i) Reactors with separate compartments for leachate
collection are more ecient than the ones with single-compartment.
(ii) Dry crushed plants expectedly yield more biogas per
unit reactor volume than the fresh chopped plants

P. Sankar Ganesh et al. / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

3000

2500

SFAD I

SFAD I - AF

3000

2500

SFAD II A

SFAD II A - AF

3000

2500

SFAD II B

SFAD II B - AF

3000

2500

SFAD II C

815

2000
1500
1000
500
0

2000

Biogas yield l m-3 d-1

1500
1000
500
0

2000
1500
1000
500
0

SFAD II C - AF

2000
1500
1000
500
0
1

11

13

15

17

19

11

13

15

17 19

Weeks
Fig. 1. Biogas yield from dierent types of SFADs. The lines present average values, the standard deviation is shown at each data point.

(because the former have more volatile solids per unit

mass) but the dierence is only of the order of 15%.
The ndings, therefore, suggest that the digesters
can be gainfully charged with fresh as well as dry ipomoea but the latter has an edge as it has higher VFA
as well as better rate of compaction.
(iii) Attachment of UAFs has dramatically improved the
energy yield; the single-compartment SFADs without
UAF generated only 255 l m 3 d 1 (Fig. 1a). The
output went up six times with the attachment of the
UAF. In SFAD-II the impact was not as dramatic
yet highly signicant (>99% condence level); indeed
there was more than a 3-fold increase in biogas yield
(Fig. 1h). In digesters without UAFs all the steps
associated with the digestion of the weed, viz (a)
breakdown of cellulose into less complex sugars by
cellulolytic bacteria, (b) conversion of sugars to fatty

acids (acidogenesis), (c) conversion of fatty acids to

simpler acids, mainly acetic acid (acetogenesis), and
(d) conversion of acetic acid to methane, take place
in a single-compartment. But whereas the rst three
steps involve aerobic and facultative bacteria, the
fourth step is purely anaerobic. In SFADs which have
UAFs attached, the fourth step is performed in
purely anaerobic conditions which help in the optimum conversion of acetic acid into methane. For this
reason SFADs with which UAFs were attached have
yielded biogas three times or more than the SFADs
without UAFs.
(vi) Considering that the most ecient of the SFADs produced over 2 m3 of biogas per m3 of reactor volume,
per day, the systems can be deemed highly ecient
because the conventional biogas digesters (plug-ow,
semi-continuous, oating dome or xed dome, of

4.0
2.6
14.4
18.0
58.8
46.2
52.6
53.4
18.3
12.3
24.5
30.6
231.2
211.1
495.0
504.5
SFAD II C

SFAD II B

SFAD II A

SFAD I

15.0
17.4
16.2
17.3
49.8
54.1
52.4
53.0

131.4
152.4
141.9
151.5
436.2
473.9
918.0
928.5

28.9
33.4
83.2
88.8
95.9
104.0
97.4
98.5

12.9
10.0
14.8
16.0
37.5
39.8
41.7
41.0

113.0
87.6
129.6
140.1
328.5
348.6
730.5
718.3

23.9
18.6
76.0
82.1
69.7
74.0
77.5
76.3

7.8
7.9
8.8
8.5
29.7
30.9
32.8
39.6

68.3
69.2
77.0
74.4
260.1
270.6
574.6
693.7

14.5
14.6
45.1
43.6
55.2
57.4
61.0
73.6

2.1
1.4
2.8
3.5
26.4
24.1
26.2
28.8

Feed
relled
(g)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)
Feed
relled
(g)
Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)
Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)

Month I
Reactor

Table 1
Rate of compaction of the feed material attained in SFADs

Month II

Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)

Feed
relled
(g)

Month III

Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)

Feed
relled
(g)

Feed
compaction
(% of the
reactor
volume)

Void caused in
the reactor
compartment
due to feed
compaction (ml)

P. Sankar Ganesh et al. / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

Month IV

816

Chinese or Indian designs) generate only about

0.10.2 m3 biogas per m3 of digester volume per day
(Henderson, 2001). It has been established (Abbasi
and Khan, 2000; Abbasi and Nipaney, 1993) that size
of the biogas digesters constitutes about 85% of the
total cost of the digester manufacture and operation.
Systems which can provide higher biogas yield per
unit digester volume than conventional systems,
therefore, hold the key to the improving of the economics of biogas technology.
SFAD reactors are signicantly dierent from the trademarked SEBAC process of Chynoweth and coworkers
(1992, 1993) in terms of design and operation as well as
performance:
(a) Reactor design: Whereas in SFADs the solid and the
liquid phases are in physically separated compartments,
there is no such phase separation in the SEBAC reactors.
Of the two types of SFADs used by us, the lower 35%
portion of the rst type of reactor is separated from the
upper portion by a perforated PVC disk. The feed is
charged from the top and inoculated with anaerobically
digested cow dung-water slurry. The leachate rich in VFAs
passes through the PVC disk and is collected in the lower
portion of the vessel. The second type of SFADs consists
of two vessels; the rst one is fully charged with the feed
and the second receives the VFA leachate. Both types can
be operated with or without an UAF (upow anaerobic lter) attached to them but the methane yield is greater by
three orders of magnitude or higher in SFADs with UAF
in comparison to SFADs without UAF. In contrast the
SEBAC process is based on a series of three reactors of
which the rst is started by mixing equal volumes of the
feedstock and euent from a mesophilic slurry anaerobic
digester. The second reactor is started by recycling the
leachate from the rst reactor and the third one by recycling leachate from the second reactor.
(b) Feed: In SFADs after a month of start up, the void
created in the reactors due to the compaction of the feed is
measured; one-fourth of this volume is lled with fresh feed
once a week for a month. But in the SEBAC process no
allowance is made for the compaction. The feed is
loaded/unloaded every other week or every week depending on the retention time. After 30 days, the reactor is
used for start-up of a new load.
(c) Leachate recycling: In the SFADs, the leachate from
the liquid phase is recirculated once daily. In the SEBAC
reactors, the leachate is recycled within the reactor for
1 h. After one week of the start up, the leachate from
newly loaded digester is recycled to mature bioreactor in
order to remove VFA (for further digestion to methane
and CO2).
(d) Methanogenic phase: There is an option to use a separate UAF for ecient methanogenesis of the leachate in
the SFADs. The SEBAC system does not have this option.
(e) Spent feedstock: In the SFAD system reported here,
the spent feedstock is compostedvermicomposted and

P. Sankar Ganesh et al. / Bioresource Technology 99 (2008) 812818

utilized. In the SEBAC system, at the end of the cycle, the

feedstock is stabilized and unloaded from the bioreactor
and loaded again for another cycle; nally it is used as soil
amendment.
(f) VS loading rate and biogas yield: At the VS loading
rate of 2 kg m 3 d 1 (dry ipomoea), the most ecient of
SFADs yielded 2.41 m3 of biogas per m3 of digester volume
per day. The SEBAC reactors yielded a maximum of
0.6 m3 of the gas per m3 of digester volume per day at
VS loading rate of 3.2 kg m 3 d 1.
It must, however, be emphasized that whereas SFADs
have been as yet used for a specic substrate (ipomoea),
the SEBAC reactors have contended with municipal solid
waste which is more heterogeneous and hence more challenging to process. Nevertheless, the eciency of SFADs
in processing ipomoea, as also possibly other weeds,
appears to hold great promise. SFADs also have greater
functionality compared to the patented system of Rijkens
(1983) which had only a single-compartment batch reactor
with no provision of intermittent feeding, recycling etc.
Anaerobic digestion entails loss of carbon from the feed
mass in the form of biogas which is about two-third methane, about one-third carbon dioxide, with traces of hydrogen sulde and other gases (Abbasi and Nipaney, 1993).
The macronutrients, principally nitrogen, potassium, and
phosphorous; and the micronutrients, are all retained in
the spent feed. As detailed in Section 1 there is no option
reported, or available, to dispose the spent weed. Indeed
the problems associated with the disposal of the spent ipomoea are more or less similar to the ones associated with
the handling of fresh ipomoea, as noted in Section 1. We
have, therefore, explored the possibility of converting the
spent weed into vermicast.
When vermicomposted, 540 mg vermicast was obtained
per earthworm E. eugeniae, per day, achieving near total
conversion of the feed to vermicast in 20 days. The C:N
ratio of vermicompost was in the range 17.819.7, a little
lower than the C:N ratio of the substrate (21 1.1). The
loss of carbon (as biogas) during anaerobic digestion,
and some more due to earthworm respiration is presumed
to have contributed to the slight improvement in the C:N
ratio.
We would be starting a programme soon to assess the
impact of ipomoea vermicast on plant growth, but judging
from the earlier ndings on the water hyacinth vermicompost, the ipomoea vermicompost is likely to be a good soilconditioner. Indeed, it may even boost plant growth (Gajalakshmi and Abbasi, 2002, 2004).
The overall system reported here, of generating biogas
from ipomoea and then converting the spent weed to vermicompost, has the potential to achieve total utilization
and nal disposal of the otherwise very harmful weed.
Acknowledgements
S.A.A. thanks Department of Biotechnology, Ministry
of Science and Technology, Government of India, for sup-

817

port under the Project BT/PR 4741/AGR/21/182/2004.

P.S.G. and S.G.L. thank the Council for Scientic and
Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, for Senior
Research Fellowship and Research Associateship,
respectively.
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