Title: Decision support for biogas production from the utilisation of agricultural and livestock wastes

Authors: Grigorios Rekleitis; Katherine-Joanne Haralambous

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece ' Department of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Abstract: The rapid growth of the global and national agriculture and livestock sector, has led to the development of large quantities of agricultural and animal wastes, resulting in massive problems associated with treatment and disposal into the atmosphere. Biogas installation technology from waste biomass is an effective solution with several significant advantages, providing environmentally sustainable energy while promoting the use of biogas energy and leading to a systematic and integrated treatment of agricultural and livestock wastes, reducing the pollution discharge to the environment by more than 55%. In this work, an analysis of production of biogas through the process of anaerobic digestion is shown, which is commonly used for the processing of agricultural and livestock residues and energy crops for use (energy production and compost). Some critical parameters of this process are summarised, as a tool for comparative evaluation of this route with some other alternatives, which contribute to the decision making in the selection of power systems.

Keywords: biogas; agriculture; livestock; wastes; Greece; energy; renewable energy sources; RES; biomass; anaerobic; digestion.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDSS.2021.113769

International Journal of Decision Support Systems, 2021 Vol.4 No.3, pp.235 - 256

Received: 26 May 2020
Accepted: 06 Jul 2020
Published online: 22 Mar 2021 *