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In temper or cold climate the digester needs to be insulated because the Archea need to stay at the temperature optimum of about 37°C. There are several types of insulation arround.
Insulation types
the following insulation types mostly or only applies for fixed body digesters.
Jean Pain method
The Jean Pain method insulates the digester by placing the fermenter within a compost heap. Read more about the Jean method at a seperate wiki article
Spray Foam
Spray foam is a simple type of insulation. All the digester is covered in it. The insulation value depends on the material used. There are natural materials around made from Soy. In addition to the spray foam SolarCities1 proved that adding a south facing window into the spray foam results in a better heat keeping.
Straw Bale
Straw bales are a very good natural insulation material. When sourced from within a 50 kilometers radius around your home / digester there is nearly no carbon footprint on it. With an R-Value of about 30 this natural material is perfect for a sustainable digester.
Lime stabilised Soil
This technique is used in conjunction with an IBC digester. The IBC digester can be housed with Euro-Pallets. The upper side of the pallets becomes the outer side of the IBC. The space between the pallet and the IBC is filled with Lime Stabilised Soil.
Light straw
no info yet
Styrofoam
Styrofoam is a pretty well known insulation type.
Stretch foil
Wrapping an IBC with two layers of stretch foil with an airspace in between to increase internal temperatures of the tank.2
Comments
Hello Nick Chase. You might
Hello Nick Chase. You might want to double check the K value for straw bale... Assuming you're using W/mK units, 30 is a very off-value. Maybe you meant R value?
Hey, thanks for pointing that
Hey, thanks for pointing that out. I meant R.
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