Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54 (2010) 359–363

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Resources, Conservation and Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Modeling and optimization of biogas production from a waste

digester using artificial neural network and genetic algorithm
H. Abu Qdais a,∗ , K. Bani Hani b,1 , N. Shatnawi a
a
Civil Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science & Technology, P.O. Box 3030, Irbid 221100, Jordan
b
Civil and Architecture Engineering Department, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Artificial neural networks (ANNs) and genetic algorithms (GA) are considered among the latest tools that
Received 10 March 2009 are used to solve complicated problems that cannot be solved by conventional solutions. The present
Accepted 30 August 2009 study utilizes the ANN and GA as tools for simulating and optimizing of biogas production process from
the digester of Russaifah biogas plant in Jordan. Operational data of the plant for a period of 177 days
Keywords: were collected and employed in the analysis. The study considered the effect of digester operational
Biogas
parameters, such as temperature (T), total solids (TS), total volatile solids (TVS), and pH on the biogas
Digester
yield. A multi-layer ANN model with two hidden layers was trained to simulate the digester operation
Waste
Artificial neural networks
and to predict the methane production. The performance of the ANN model is verified and demonstrated
Optimization the effectiveness of the model to predict the methane production accurately with correlation coefficient
Genetic algorithms of 0.87.
Jordan The developed ANN model was used with genetic algorithm to optimize the methane size. The optimal
amount of methane was converged to be 77%, which is greater than the maximum value obtained from
the plant records of 70.1%. The operational conditions that resulted in the optimal methane production
were determined as temperature at 36 ◦ C, TS 6.6%, TVS 52.8% and pH 6.4.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Anaerobic digestion is a process in which the biodegradation of
organic matter occurs in the absence of dissolved oxygen. It is a well
established and world-wide applied technology (DeBaere, 2000) to
stabilize municipal sewage sludge, treat organic wastes, products
and wastewaters from industries, households and farms. The main
product of this process is a group of gases (biogas), which con-
sists mainly of methane gas (50–60%) and carbon dioxide (30–40%)
with some other trace gases, such as hydrogen sulfide and ammo-
nia. The resulted methane gas is a highly energetic biogas which
is used in combined heat and power generators. The development
of biogas technology took place at the beginning of the 19th cen-
tury. However, owing to the energy crises of the 1970s, anaerobic
digestion technology underwent significant development (Alvarez,
2003; Strik et al., 2005).
Anaerobic digestion systems for fermentation of organic matters
used widely with commercial digesters of 70–5000 m3 , small units
are used mainly for heating, while large units for generation of elec-
tricity. Much of the technology is based in Europe, with Germany
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +962 795885235; fax: +962 27201076.
E-mail address: hqdais@just.edu.jo (H. Abu Qdais).
1
On leave from Jordan University of Science and Technology. P.O. Box 3030, Irbid
Jordan.
and Denmark leading the field (Nickolas et al., 2004). According to
Nacke et al. (2005), by the end of 2005, in Germany there were more
than 2000 biogas plants with different sizes.
The time during in which the mixture of wastewater stay in
the digester with microbial population to produce the biogas is
called the hydraulic retention time (HRT). This time is very impor-
tant in the design of biogas digesters (Jatinder and Sarbjit, 2004).
Anaerobic bacteria (the methanogens), are sensitive to the acid con-
centration where the optimum pH value found within a range of
6.5–8.5 (Nickolas et al., 2004) also according to Nickolas the con-
centration of ammonia increases at the end of the processes so the
pH level will be between 7.2 and 8.2.
Temperature is an important factor that determines the rate
of digestion. Most of the digesters are operated in the mesophilic
range (30–35 ◦ C), but it is possible to operate the digesters in the
thermophilic range (approximately 55 ◦ C) with higher operating
costs, lower process stability, and more structural requirements
(de la Rubia et al., 2002). The carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio for
optimal biogas production should be of the range 25–30. When a
batch of waste received with high C/N ratio, this implies a complex
organic matter which is not easily biodegradable; therefore, some
adjustment is required, like the addition of high content of nitroge-
nous waste. On the other hand, low C/N ratio needs straw or crop
residues to be added, so as to adjust the carbon content (El-Hinnawi
and Biswas, 1981).

0921-3449/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2009.08.012
360 H. Abu Qdais et al. / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54 (2010) 359–363
According to Koelsch et al. (2001) the total solids content range
is about 8–13% and 80% of the solids are volatile solids. One-half
of the volatile solids (the biodegradable ones) are converted to
methane and carbon dioxide. Typical solid separation of the efflu-
ent will remove 4% of the solids from the effluent. About one-third
of the solids are converted to gas, one-third can be separated out
mechanically, and one-third remains in the separated liquid efflu-
ent (Mattocks and Mark, 2000).
An important step in the operation of biogas digesters is the con-
trol of the digestion process to maximize the methane production
from the waste biodegradation process. Artificial neural networks
are massively parallel computational models for data represen-
tation and information processing. Neural network-based have
attributes that make them potentially successful in dealing with
most of simulation and prediction problems. They are capable of
learning complex highly nonlinear relations and associations from
a large body of data due to their intrinsic nonlinearity, adaptabil-
ity, noise immunity, generalization ability and robustness. ANNs
are powerful data modeling that are able to capture and repre-
sent complex input/output relationships like the case in anaerobic
digestion. Therefore, ANN lends itself as an efficient tool to control
and simulate the anaerobic digestion process to produce the biogas.
Neural networks have been used in anaerobic digestion systems
to describe trace gases (Strik et al., 2005), controlling the addition of
NaHCO3 buffer (Guwy et al., 1997), digester start up and recovery
(Holubar et al., 2003), advanced control and prediction of biogas
(Holubar et al., 2002)
Holubar et al. (2002) used different ANNs to model and con-
trol the production of methane from anaerobic continuously stirred
tank reactors that were operated under different organic loading
rates. It was concluded that the developed models could effectively
predict the gas production and composition from the reactors.
Strik et al. (2005) developed ANN model to predict trace gases in
biogas stream such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. The model
was capable to predict the trace gases successfully even under
dynamic conditions. In their study Ozkaya et al. (2007) presented
a neural network model for predicting the methane fraction in
landfill gas originating from field-scale landfill bioreactors with
and without leachate recirculation. The methane fraction in land-
fill gas from the bioreactors was modeled using a two layer ANN.
Parameters such as pH, alkalinity, chemical oxygen demand, sul-
fate, conductivity, chloride and waste temperature were used as
model input parameters. The study determined the optimal archi-
tecture of the ANN and recommended further development of ANN
to be applied in predicting the hourly methane production from
landfills and optimizing the leachate recirculation strategy. Zhou
Fig. 1. Layout of the digestion process at Russaifah biogas plant.
et al. (2001) introduced a way for optimizing low nitrogen oxides
(NOx ) combustion process for a pulverized coal utility boiler by
using ANN and GA. ANN was used to describe the NOx emissions,
while GA was used to optimize the solution of the ANN model.
The main objective of this study is to utilize the ANN as a tool for
simulating, monitoring and controlling the production of methane
biogas from the digester of Russeifah biogas plant in Jordan. In
addition, the trained ANN model is employed in optimizing the
production of methane from the reactor by using the GA tool is
another objective of the study.
Genetic algorithm (GA) is a biologically inspired computational
model that imitates the natural processes of evolution and adapta-
tion to exhibit a complex computational behavior (Holland, 1975
and Goldberg, 1989). This computational model does not require
prior knowledge of the problem domain or the solution space. This
feature limits the designer and makes problems more complex
and insufficiently understood. In engineering design, the compu-
tational model using the genetic algorithm differs fundamentally
from using the traditional approach. In the traditional approach
the design problem is modeled as mathematical problem and use
mathematical solution technique, but in the genetic algorithm no
need to separate the modeling and solution parts
2. Biogas plant description
Russeifah biogas plant belongs to Jordan Biogas Company (JBC).
It is located at a closed Russeifah landfill site, about 5 km east
to Amman City. The main objective of the plant is to reduce the
green house gas emissions form the landfill, as well as utilizing the
fresh organic waste in the production of methane gas for power
generation. The plant consists of two parts. The first part receives
the biogas from wells of the closed landfill, while the second part
receives the biogas from the digester, where fresh organic waste is
received and subjected to biomethanization process. The primary
objective of the present study is to optimize the digestion process
in the second part of the plant. The digester daily capacity is 60 tons
of organic waste. The main waste received by the plant is coming
from slaughterhouse, restaurants, fruits and vegetable markets, and
from dairy industry. Fig. 1 shows the layout of the digestion part of
the plant.
3. Development of ANN model
Operational parameters of Russaifah biogas plant were collected
and acquired from the plant records for the year 2003. The data
 H. Abu Qdais et al. / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54 (2010) 359–363 361

Table 1
Plant operating parameters that are used in the development of ANN model.

Unit Parameter No. of Data Mean Max Min SD Mode

Mixing tank % Total solids (TS) 177 4.24 6.240 1.094 0.84 4.304
% Volatile solids (VS) 177 45.302 67.576 22.376 7.767 40.00
pH value 177 5.645 6.222 5.292 0.174 5.598
Temperature (◦ C) 177 36.659 40.400 33.800 1.441 36.00
% Total solids (TS) 177 2.726 3.973 1.102 0.424 2.600

Reactor % Volatile solids (VS) 177 45.385 74.780 30.356 8.071 42.000
pH value 177 7.603 9.996 7.259 0.347 7.596
% Total solids (TS) 177 2.122 2.594 1.569 0.218 7.899

Buffering tank % Volatile solids (VS) 177 42.485 59.053 30.352 5.629 39.970

Fig. 2. Architicture of the ANN model.

Fig. 3. Training and performance curve for the reactor model.

collected included total solids (TS), total volatile solids (TVS) and
pH of the feed materials to the digester. In addition, data on the
operating temperature of the reactor were obtained. The collected
solids and pH, while the output was the fraction of methane (%CH4 )
data were subjected to a screening process to decide which are the
in the produced biogas stream from the digester. The model train-
most consistent and relevant operational parameters that should
ing process at 100 epochs and 177 data point for each of the input
be used in the development of the ANN model. Statistical analysis
parameters revealed a performance MSE of 6 × 10−5 (Fig. 3). To
for the selected data was conducted to identify the data gap and to
enhance the ANN and to decrease the value of error during the sim-
interpolate the missed data. A group of operational parameters with
ulation process, the simulation was conducted by using time-series
each having 177 daily data points were selected as shown in Table 1.
data learning in which the model output is set as a time dependent
In order to introduce the data into the neural network model to
for the previous three days in concern. The produced model was
simulate the plant operations, scaling of the data was performed.
The scaling level depends on the maximum value of each category
of data. Doing that, all of the screened data were converted into
ranges of [0–1], so as to be suitable for treatment by the sigmoid
activation function in the ANN.
Collected data were fed to initial ANN model and connection
weights were adjusted using back-propagation (BP). The training
method (BP) was conducted using the ANN toolbox embedded in
MATLAB (2004). In order to obtain the best model that simulates
the digester operations with minimal errors, several ANN models
were generated and tested. A sigmoid activation function was used
as it is the most popular function that describes nonlinear rela-
tionships such as the case in biogas production (Kanat and Saral,
in press). An ANN model with two hidden layers (each includes 25
neurons) and sigmoid activation functions were able to simulate
the digester operation with a good accuracy. The model topology
and architecture are depicted in Fig. 2.

4. Results and discussion

The inputs to the ANN model were selected to be four opera-

tional parameters, namely temperature, total solids, total volatile Fig. 4. Simulation and validation of methane production from the digester.
362 H. Abu Qdais et al. / Resources, Conservation and Recycling 54 (2010) 359–363
Fig. 5. Actual versus predicted methane fraction from the digester.
validated using a set data for another 50 operating days that were
not used in the training of the original model.
Fig. 4 illustrates the simulation and the validation processes for
the methane production from the digester. It can be seen that the
ANN was capable of prediction the methane fraction very accu-
rately, which implies that the ANN learned the relation between
the input to the digester and the methane fraction in the biogas
stream very well. The correlation between the data used in the
validation process and the predicted values of methane fraction
is presented in Figs. 4 and 5. The relatively high determination
coefficient (R2 ) value of 0.87 suggests that the modeled values of
the methane fit well with the measured values used for valida-
tion.
GA is a class of parallel iterative and global search algorithm
with certain learning ability by using crossover and mutation oper-
ators to solve optimization problems (Gen, 1997). In an attempt to
obtain the optimal combination of the digester operational param-
eters for maximum methane production, the ANN digester model
was integrated with a GA model. To achieve that, the output of
the developed ANN was utilized in calculating the values of the
fitness function for the GA routine available in MATLAB Genetic
Algorithm toolbox. First, the GA model was run without constraints
with a default value of 0.8 for crossover fraction, and default popu-
lation size of 20. This returned a best fitness value of about 74%.
Another run was carried out with a population size of 200 and
crossover fraction equals to 0.85. This has resulted in an increase
of the fitness value to 75.2%. It was concluded that changing the
constraints of the GA problem has a direct and important effect on
the enhancement of the optimization. Upper and lower boundaries
were changed iteratively and the values of fitness function were
studied according to the corresponding changes. Values of the best
combination of biogas parameters are also summarized in Table 2.
These values were selected according to the maximum value of
CH4 %.
The maximum value of methane fraction was found to be 77%
as obtained by GA optimization process. Comparing this value of
the methane, with the maximum value of 70.1% of the methane
produced in the real digester, implies that controlling the digester
Table 2
Optimal values of digester operational parameters for maximum
methane production as determined by GA optimization process.
Parameter Optimal value
◦
Temperature ( C) 36.23
Total solids (mg/1) 6.59
Volatile solids (mg/1) 52.85
pH 6.4
operational parameters to optimal level as given in Table 2, will lead
to increase of methane products by 6.9%. Almost similar increase
value was obtained by Misi and Foster (2001) by digesting of a
mixture of agricultural wastes.
5. Conclusion and recommendations
In this study a diagnostic model based on neural logic was
developed to simulate the production of biogas from the digester
of biogas plant in Jordan. The back-propagation ANN model with
two hidden layers and sigmoid activation functions was found
to capture most of the important patterns in methane genera-
tion from the biogas digester as it fitted well with the measured
methane fraction. The validation of ANN model was also found
highly correlating to the real data with determination coeffi-
cient (R2 = 0.87), which suggests that the ANN is a useful tool
in predicting biogas production from digesters. The study also
illustrated the importance of model learning with history in accu-
rate description of the methane production process. Integration
of the ANN model with GA model resulted in identification of
the optimal operational digester parameters that lead to increase
of methane yield by 6.9%. The study demonstrated that ANN
and GA are useful tools for simulating and optimizing the bio-
gas production from biogas digester under various operational
conditions.
It is recommended that future studies should be directed to
study the impact of the feed waste composition on the operational
parameters, as well as, on the amount of the biogas generated from
the digester. The results obtained from this study should be tested
and verified on the full scale operation of the plant in order to
optimize the methane generation.
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