Proposal of a Laboratory-Scale Anaerobic Biodigester for Introducing the Monitoring and Sensing Techniques, as a Potential Learning Tool in the Fields of Carbon Foot-Print Reduction and Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

This article presents a proposal of an anaerobic biodigester on a laboratory scale for introducing the monitoring and sensing techniques of the growth of microorganisms according to different parameters, where the redox potential, pH, pressure, and temperature have been measured in quasi-continuous mode. For this task, a microcontroller system was used (Atmega328—Arduino). Importantly, the design is based on flexible and open-source software, hardware, and firmware (Scilab, Arduino, Processing), facilitating its modification for other related studies. This design was developed to help engineering students to learn and to understand the operation of an anaerobic biodigester, which allows us to know various properties of the system at any time, as well as its evolution over time. In this way, property curves can be drawn and related to each other to obtain a better understanding of the biodigester operation. In this context, the relationship between the oxide-reduction reaction and microbial activity was studied so that the redox potential can be a way of measuring the growth of microorganisms in an anaerobic environment. With all this, through these parameters, it is possible to introduce to engineering students the operation of this technology used normally like a very powerful tool for the control of the carbon footprint, for example in wastewater sector, and consequently for the mitigation of the climate change.