Key factors influencing the potential of catch crops for methane production

Abstract

Catch crops are grown in crop rotation primarily for soil stabilization. The excess biomass of catch crops was investigated for its potential as feedstock for biogas production. Ten variables affecting catch crop growth and methane potential were evaluated. Field trials and methane potential were studied for 14 different catch crops species, with 19 samples harvested in 2010 and 36 harvested in 2011. Principal component analysis was applied to the data to identify the variables characterizing the potential for the different catch crops species for methane production. Two principal components explained up to 84.6% and 71.6% of the total variation for 2010 and 2011 samples, respectively. Specific methane yield, climate conditions (rainfall and temperature) and total nitrogen in the biomass were the variables classifying the different catch crops. Catch crops in the Brassicaceae and Graminaceae botanical families showed the highest methane yield. This study demonstrates the importance of the crop species when choosing a suitable catch crop for biogas production.

Keywords:

• specific methane yield
• catch crops
• biomass yield
• principal component analysis (PCA)
• biogas

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support by Energinet.dk through the project no. 10683 named Catchcrop2biogas. R. Fernández-Varela acknowledges the support of the European Commission under the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship Programme [FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IEF, 273643].

Funding

The authors thank AgroTech A/S for providing the catch crop samples.