MISEIC 2018
Surabaya, July 21, 2018
Conducting a Real-Time Instrument System for Observing
Biogas Digester’s Temperature and Humidity
Meta Yantidewi*1, Nurita Apridiana Lestari 2, and Utama Alan Deta 2
1, 2
Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Negeri
Surabaya, INDONESIA.
(E-mail: metayantidewi@unesa.ac.id, nuritalestari@unesa.ac.id, utamadeta@unesa.ac.id)
ABSTRACT
Anaerobic digestion is a biochemical process that converts various organic materials into biogas
using oxygen-free microorganisms naturally (Botheju & Bakke, 2011). In addition to producing
biogas, anaerobic digestion process also produces a liquid effluent (called digestate) containing
all water, all minerals, and about half of the carbon deriving from the incoming material.
Anaerobic digestion process in biogas production generally takes place in the digestive tank or
better known as biogas digester. However, some parameters might affect the process. Gu et al, as
cited in Panjaitan et al (2016), stated that temperature and humidity play important role in the
anaerobic digestion process of biogas.
This research aims to present an instrument system for observing the temperature and humidity
percentage in a biogas digester. The instrument system will observe the temperature and
humidity inside the biogas digester in real-time to ensure that no interference occurs in the biogas
digester during the anaerobic digestion process. A real-time instrument system is defined as a system
that responds toward transactions by immediately updating and/or generating a response in a time
frame fast enough to keep an operation moving at its required speed.
The instrument system, as described in Figure 1, was mainly constructed of the biogas digester
acquisition system and its observing by the user through the application.
1
.
BIOGAS DIGESTER
Temperature and humidity
inside the biogás digester
Data Acquisition
Devices
COMPUTER
Figure 1. The block diagram of the real-time instrument system.
The temperature and humidity inside the biogas digester were detected by a single chip multi-sensor
SHT11. The sensor information was then acquired by the data acquisition devices. All processing of
temperature and humidity data inside the biogas digester became the data acquisition devices’
responsibility. The data acquisition devices subsequently passed the processed data to the computer.
The computer acted as information viewer system regarding the temperature and humidity inside the
biogas digester.
The information viewer system showed the information of temperature and humidity in the biogas
digester during anaerobic digestion process. The viewer system used Delphi as its application. The
information of temperature and humidity in biogas digester which gathered by SHT11 in this research
are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The viewer system displays the information of temperature and humidity in biogas
digester.
The temperature and humidity information were displayed in the forms of line graphs and table.
Because the built system is a real-time system, it follows that the system is also capable of
displaying temperature and humidity percentage in accordance with the search date.
In general, we can say that the instrument system built in this research has ability to observe and
measure the temperature and humidity in biogas digester. Thus, the real-time instrument system
can be utilized as a viable and easy alternative for the monitoring/observation of anaerobic
digestion in biogas production.
Keywords: Anaerobic digestion, biogas digester, real-time instrument system, observing,
temperature, humidity.
2