Optimizing anaerobic co-digestion plants: MIR online instrumentation and dynamic real-time substrate feed optimization.

Closed-loop control of the substrate feed as well as the application of online instrumentation are important to achieve optimal biogas plant operation. Therefore, this paper presents two novel approaches for online instrumentation and control to achieve optimal AD plant operation based on middle-infrared spectroscopy on the one hand and nonlinear model predictive control on the other hand. At present, research into both techniques is being performed separately, with the intention that in the future the spectroscopic measurements will be integrated into the control loop.