Modeling web tool
Methanogenic potential or BMP tests are widely used in the field of anaerobic digestion, where more than 150 scientific publications per year use them in their methodologies and are recommended in the EPA guidelines (Agstar 2020), IEA Bioebenergy (Drosg 2013) and the DBZF technical report on modeling (Weinrich and Nelles 2021). It is also important to be able to extract as much information as possible from the data generated, for which modeling plays a fundamental role.
The BMP Module is aimed at students, researchers and engineers working in anaerobic digestion, with the objective of supporting them in the process of analyzing methane potential test data. The tool allows to fit the data to three mathematical models widely used in the area: the first order equation, the modified Gompertz model and the logistic function. In the case of the latter two models, two variants are also available, with and without delay, to provide the flexibility to fit data with different biogas production dynamics.
The BMP Module is aimed at students, researchers and engineers working in anaerobic digestion, with the objective of supporting them in the process of analyzing methane potential test data. The tool allows to fit the data to three mathematical models widely used in the area: the first order equation, the modified Gompertz model and the logistic function. In the case of the latter two models, two variants are also available, with and without delay, to provide the flexibility to fit data with different biogas production dynamics.
The BMP Module provides a detailed description of the available models and their applications.
As part of the data analysis support, statistical indicators associated with the parameters and goodness of fit are provided. The parameters and their confidence intervals can be used to compare anaerobic digestion performance with different substrates, estimate productivities, compare design criteria and sizing.
The only requirement for using the BMP Module is to import data in the format specified below:
- The BMP Module only supports files with .xls extension.
- The Excel workbook can have more than one sheet, but the BMP Module will only import data from the first one.
- The data sheet must have at least two columns: the first one with the time data of the measurements and the second one with the accumulated biogas values (Time column | Biogas column).
- Multiple data sets: these can be imported in the same spreadsheet only if they share the time data (Time column | Biogas 1 column | Biogas 2 column | …). | Biogas N column). In this case, the BMP Module will deliver the parameter settings for each data set separately.
- The data sheet must have a header for each column.
- The data sheet cannot have empty cells. The first row and first column cannot be empty.
- Some of the models may not be suitable to fit certain data. The user can conclude which model best fits the data based on the analysis of the quality indicators and the residuals chart, among other criteria.
- For ease of use, users can download a template file: Excel_type_downloadable.xls.
