IMPROVING POWER OUTPUT GENERATION FROM BIOGAS PLANT USING SIMPLEX OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUE

Subject Area: Engineering

This paper presents improving power output generation from biogas using simplex optimization technique. This aim is to address the issues of poor power supply at Amapa community, Benue state due to low power generation capacity in Nigeria. To solve this problem, raw materials of pig dung, compost dung and poultry dungs were collected, hydrolyzed with water in a ratio of 50:50 and then feed to a biogas digester system which produced the desired biogas and converted to electricity by the internal combustion engine and synchronous generator. The problem of power optimization due to nonlinear behavior of the biogas was addressed using Simplex Optimization Model (SOM) and then implemented with Simulink. The result showed that at an average of 1.504cm3 of biogas with SOM was able to generate average energy of 11.26MW and power equivalent of 3.13Kw/h. The result was also comparatively evaluated with a biogas generated with only cow dung (characterized), and new system without SOM respectively for ten operating hours. The average power generated by the respective biogas generators in Kw/h are 2.75 for the characterized, 2.85 for the new system without SOM and 3.13 for the new system with SOM. The percentage improvement achieved with the new system as against the characterized is 10% and 12.14% for the new system with SOM as against the characterized.