Biogas production from beach casted brown seaweeds of red sea coast of Massawa, Eritrea

Abstract

The beach casted brown seaweed Sargassum spp., from Eritrean Red Sea has been used as a feedstock for biogas production at laboratory batch scale. The extensively parameters of water/solid ratio (concentration), temperature, and pretreatment in batch scale were investigated. Several pretreatment measures were investigated and it was found that drying and size reduction (maceration) was effective for the production of biogas. The mesophillic temperature of 30-40⁰C was found to be optimal for enhanced production of biogas. In addition an optimal production was achieved in the specific retention time of 48h with a concentration of 0.11g/ml. The present study has thus shown that beach casted brown seaweeds are quite promising feedstock for biogas production.