Application Note for Enhanced Biogas Yield from POME (Palm Oil Mill Effluent)

SUMWIN’s VoCaB (Vortex Based Cavitation for Boosting Biogas) is a Patented Technology that can boost Biogas production from POME Solutions by 10-20%.

Cavitation is a phenomenon of formation, growth and collapse of micro bubbles within a liquid. Tremendous amount of energy is dissipated when the micro bubbles collapse. VoCaB harnesses this energy for breaking up the organic material making it more amenable for digestion in the digester. Unlike the conventional devices used to realize cavitation, VoCaB (vortex diode) uses rotational flow to generate cavitation. This novel design offers several advantages over conventional cavitation devices (lower power consumption, much higher durability, no maintenance and so on).

Extensive field trials have established that the use of VoCaB leads to enhanced biogas production (~ 15%) in the anaerobic digested based on distillery spent wash (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: improvement in biogas yield using VoCab (vortex diode)

Hydrodynamic cavitation has additional benefit of increase in soluble COD, increased hydrolysis, increased energy production, increased plant capacity, improved dewatering, reduction in sludge viscosity (lower pumping costs), reduction in solids handling & disposal, and lower operating cost. Besides, several lab scale trials have shown that vortex diode is effective in reducing COD, ammoniacal nitrogen and color of industrial effluents.