Managing Biogas Plants ─ A Practical Guide

This practical book provides basic theoretical knowledge about fermentative processes, biochemical laboratory techniques, and an arsenal of practical tricks, recipes, do’s, and don’ts for the biogas plant manager. It explains why some popular tests and techniques are unreliable, how to optimize the feedstock’s cost and the energy self-consumption of the digester, and how to analyze experimental error propagation and judge whether a marketing claim or a test result from the literature is correct. All examples are taken from the author’s experience as consultant in managing biogas plants in Italy and Spain. It features a glossary of technical jargon and useful reference tables and formulae.

Mario A. Rosato is an electric, electronic, and environmental engineer with a strong background in renewable energies, organic waste, wastewater treatment, and metrology. After several jobs in Italian and Spanish engineering and industrial companies, in 2005 he became partner and technical manager of Bioenergia Aragonesa, a Spanish company active in the agricultural energy market. In 2009 he founded Sustainable Technologies SL in Barcelona. In 2010 the same became the exclusive distributor in Spain and Italy of Bioprocess Control, a Swedish company specialized in instruments for measuring BMP and microbial activity. Since then, he has participated in a research project on biogas from algae and developed the rational method for biogas plant management presented in this book. The latter is based on his personal experience as professor of biogas technology in private and public institutes, consultant to biogas plant owners, and researcher in his own biogas laboratory. He has a patent on a low cost multitrophic wastewater treatment system and has developed a novel type of digester for offshore operation during a research project funded by the 7th Framework Program of the EU, patent pending. In 2012 he won an international award from The Economist on tackling climate change with a technology that can also be a sustainable business, based on the production of biohydrogen from organic waste. In 2015 he published in Italy the first edition of the present volume, as well as a book on small wind turbine design. He is in charge of the column on bioenergy of the Italian e-zine Agronotizie since 2014. He is member of the American Chemical Society, Spanish Association of Scientific Journalists, and Italian Thermotechnical Committee, being one of the experts in the commission in charge of redacting the Italian norm on the BMP assay for industrial purposes. He is consultant and head of the circular economy and ecoinnovation laboratory
of Europlan UK Ltd., a company specialized in managing research projects, since 2015.