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The design, development and assessment of a novel de-centralised IoT-based remote monitoring of a small-scale anaerobic digester network

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posted on 2022-12-06, 12:57 authored by Tanja RaduTanja Radu, Vincent Smedley, Dipti Yadav, Richard BlanchardRichard Blanchard, Sheik Aminur Rahaman, Abdul Salam, Chettiyappan Visvanathan

The implementation of community-level de-centralised anaerobic digestion (AD) systems offers a sustainable solution for organic waste management and energy provision, but there is currently a need for low-cost methods of system control and management at this scale. The problem becomes accentuated with increasing deployment, as greater complexities are created by the need to both monitor and control a wider network of smaller, community-scale plants. This paper describes research to design, deploy and test such a system by creating a network of two independent biogas generation AD reactor sites situated in the United Kingdom and Thailand. Internet of things (IoT) aspects such as inexpensive and widely available open-source control electronics was used in combination with small commercial gas analysers to log, transfer and share data with a central station, achieving real-time monitoring of performance for both networked digesters. The design proved beneficial for collaboration and knowledge exchange purposes along with providing off-site observations on reactor status. This information was used for early intervention to maintain biogas yields and enable the dynamic assessment of process economics. The concept showed potential for upscaling to larger multi-site networks of AD reactors that could maintain process optimisation without the need for skilled staff on site. 

Funding

Newton Fund (UK)

British Council (UK) grant award reference 216423359

National Science Technology and Innovation Policy Office (STI), Thailand

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Journal of Energy and Power Technology

Volume

4

Issue

4

Publisher

Lisden Publishing Inc

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The author

Publisher statement

This is an open access article distributed under the conditions of the Creative Commons by Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is correctly cited.

Acceptance date

2022-11-21

Publication date

2022-11-28

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

2690-1692

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Richard Blanchard. Deposit date: 29 November 2022

Article number

039

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