Department of Informatics/ Automatic, Robotics and Mechatronics research group

Virtual and Remote Labs

Online Virtual Lab for an Anaerobic Digestion Process

This is a virtual lab for an anaerobic digestion process that can be used to teach concepts of design, operation, control and optimization of an anaerobic digester. The process is highly motivating to the students since it addresses two of the most pressing societal issues: waste biomass disposal and production of renewable energy. The anaerobic digester converts waste biomass into energetically useful biogas while producing organic manure. Closed-loop tests can be performed for the level and temperature of the process. The application can be run using any web brower and from any device: smarthphone, table or computer. Do not require any additional software. A downloaded version is also availabe in case the user wants to run the virtual lab offile in the computer. The simulation restuls can be stored in a ASCI-format data file that can be loaded in any other environment, like Matlab or spreadsheets for instance. An example of Matlab-based script to load this data file is also avaiable in the following links.