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Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Continuously-stirred Anaerobic Digester to Convert Organic Wastes into Biogas: System Setup and Basic Operation
Published on: July 13, 2012
Control of an anaerobic reactor towards maximum biogas production
J Liu1, G Olsson, B Mattiasson
1Dept of Biotechnology, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden. jing.liu@biotek.lu.se
Abstract:
A new control strategy is introduced for operating anaerobic digestion processes efficiently at high load. The control system includes a cascade controller embedded into a rule-based supervisory system based on extremum-seeking control. The control system measures pH and biogas production rate and varies the organic load by manipulating the influent flow. Good control performances were achieved during the start-up and steady-state running operations and during rejection of disturbances. The control system can run the process under a high load condition and efficiently reject disturbances without explicit measurement of the influent characteristics.
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