Enhanced anaerobic digestion of biomass waste for optimized production of renewable energy and solids for compost Maurice L. Albertson a, * , Amy Pruden a , R.T. Oliver b a Civil Engineering Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA b Sustainable Energy Applications, LLC, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA Abstract. Anaerobic digestion of animal manure produces methane that can be cleaned and used as natural gas. This process can be accomplished in a simple tank at minimum cost. Other organic materials can also be added to minimize the organic waste that normally goes into landfills. D 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V. Keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Manure; Organic waste; Methane production 1. Summary There are millions of tons of biomass waste being produced every year for which disposal is a problem. At the same time the world is rapidly depleting its supply of natural gas, which is known to be the cleanest of the fossil fuels. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a highly promising technology for converting biomass waste into vast quantities of methane, which may directly be used as an energy source, or converted to hydrogen. However, the full benefits of AD have not been realized because of the perceived costs involved. This paper describes: an alternative low cost approach to anaerobic digestion and energy production . This approach has been developed recently by Oswald [13,14] and others and initial work has indicated that high concentrations of methane may be produced without the presence of other polluting gases, such as CO 2 ,H 2 S and PH 3 . At the same time Owens and Chynoweth [15] and others have shown that nearly all biomass materials can 0531-5131/ D 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.ics.2006.01.007 * Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +1 970 491 7727. E-mail address: alberts@engr.colostate.edu (M.L. Albertson). International Congress Series 1293 (2006) 221 – 229 www.ics-elsevier.com