ABSTRACT
The two-stage autogenerative high-pressure digestion technique is a novel and promising approach for the production of gaseous fuels or upgraded biogas. This new technique is described in the patent DE 10 2011 015415 A1 and integrates biogas production, its upgrading and pressure boosting in one process. Anaerobic digestion under elevated pressure conditions leads to decreasing pH-values in the digestate due to the augmented formation of carboxylic acid. Model calculations carried out to evaluate the two-stage design showed that the pH-value in the pressurized anaerobic filter has a major influence on the methane content of the biogas produced. Within this study, the influence of the nitrogen content as one of the most important buffering substances on the performance of the system has been tested. The results show that higher NH4 contents lead to higher pH-values in the digester and as a consequence to higher methane contents.
Subject(s)
Pressure , Refuse Disposal/methods , Anaerobiosis , Biofuels , Biological Oxygen Demand Analysis , Fermentation , Hydrogen-Ion Concentration , Methane/biosynthesis , Waste Disposal, FluidABSTRACT
When a sample is locally excited with a highly focused raster-scanned beam of keV electrons, the variations DeltaPhi of the work function across the surface can be monitored from the shift of the onset energy for secondary electron emission along a fixed energy scale. The performance of that "onset" technique of work function microscopy and its incorporation into scanning Auger microprobes is described. The potentialities of this extremely surface sensitive technique for structural and chemical microanalysis are demonstrated by different experimental examples comprising work function analysis of surface reactions, and sputter depth profiling with in-situ Auger and work function spectroscopy. Scanning work function microscopy for surface microanalysis is shown to supply a lateral resolution down to the 10 nm range with a detection limit below 10(-2) of a monolayer.
ABSTRACT
The detection sensitivity and the lateral resolution in electron-gas SNMS have been improved in a newly developed secondary-neutral microprobe. This instrument combines the high post-ionization efficiency provided by the electron component of an rf-plasma (post-ionization probability alpha(0) of some 10(-2)) with a high-transmission magnetic mass spectrometer. Using the plasma as an effective primary ion source, secondary-neutral intensities of up to 10(9) cps can be realized for 1 keV Ar(+) ion bombardment and a primary current density of 1 mA/cm(2). To obtain laterally resolved secondary-neutral micrographs, a 20 keV-Ga(+)-ion beam produced in a liquid-metal ion source (LMIS) is utilized for sputter excitation. At Ga(+)-ion-beam currents of about 6 nA a spot size on the target of 1 microm is possible. The detection sensitivity in this operation mode is on the order of = 10(-2). Mass spectra and laterally resolved images recorded with this microprobe instrument highlight its capacity as a surface analytical tool.