Animal manure is a prime candidate for thermochemical conversion (co-firing, gasification, and pyrolysis) except for its high moisture content. Biodrying is a promising solution to reduce manure moisture with minimum energy input. This study investigated the effects of different aeration rates; low (0.05 L/min/kg VM), medium (0.80 L/min/kgVM), and high (1.50 L/min/kgVM), on the biodrying of dairy manure mixed with wheat straw. The moisture content dropped in 21 days from 56% to 28%, 34%, and 35% wb under high, medium, and low aeration rates, respectively. The heating value of the mixture decreased from 16.19 MJ/kgdry to 14.31, 13.79, and 13.83 MJ/kgdry under high, medium, and low aeration, respectively. Evaluation of energy consumption to remove a unit mass of moisture showed that high aeration levels required the least energy input, 7.84 MJ/kgH2O, followed by low aeration at 7.93 MJ/ kgH2O, while the medium aeration had a relatively high energy cost for water removal, 9.09 MJ/ kgH2O. The high aeration level was superior in terms of both drying energy and time requirements to the other rates considered. Comparison showed that high aeration level biodrying (1.50 L/min/kgVM) exceeded the range of conventional drying energy demand. However, the ratio of external fossil fuel demand was much lower in biodrying (due to the auto-thermal effect) than in conventional drying.
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Sharara et al. (2012) studied this question.
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