Digester insulation

Submitted by Nick Chase on
Last changed on 20 Oct, 2018 - 18:30

Straw bale iinsulated IBC biogas digester

In temper or cold climate the digester needs to be insulated because the Archea need to stay at the temperature optimum of about 37°C. There are several types of insulation arround.

Insulation types

the following insulation types mostly or only applies for fixed body digesters.

Jean Pain method

The Jean Pain method insulates the digester by placing the fermenter within a compost heap. Read more about the Jean method at a seperate wiki article

Spray Foam

Spray foamed IBC biogas digester

Spray foam is a simple type of insulation. All the digester is covered in it. The insulation value depends on the material used. There are natural materials around made from Soy. In addition to the spray foam SolarCities1 proved that adding a south facing window into the spray foam results in a better heat keeping.

Straw Bale

Straw bales are a very good natural insulation material. When sourced from within a 50 kilometers radius around your home / digester there is nearly no carbon footprint on it. With an R-Value of about 30 this natural material is perfect for a sustainable digester.

Lime stabilised Soil

This technique is used in conjunction with an IBC digester. The IBC digester can be housed with Euro-Pallets. The upper side of the pallets becomes the outer side of the IBC. The space between the pallet and the IBC is filled with Lime Stabilised Soil.

Light straw

no info yet

Styrofoam

Styrofoam is a pretty well known insulation type.

Stretch foil

Wrapping an IBC with two layers of stretch foil with an airspace in between to increase internal temperatures of the tank.2

References


  1. http://www.solarcities.eu/projects/solar-cities-3-ibc-refugee-camp-passive-solar-biogas-system ↩︎

  2. http://www.solarcities.eu/projects/stretcho-biodigester-tamera-solar-village ↩︎

Comments

Hello Nick Chase. You might want to double check the K value for straw bale... Assuming you're using W/mK units, 30 is a very off-value. Maybe you meant R value?

Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I meant R.

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