الفهرس 
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Abstract
Biogas is a combustible gas derived from the microbial anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic substances, in which temperature is the key factor that ensures a normal AD process. To overcome the problem of reduced biogas production; due to low ambient temperatures during the winter months of northern Egypt, this study proposed to construct and evaluate an integrated system of an insulated shallow solar pond (SSP) water heater (area of 2m2) with a developed low cost cylindrical floating gas-holder digester with a total volume of 4.41m3 at Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Sharkia Governorate, Egypt (Latitude 30o 35/ N, Longitude 31o 31/ E) during winter 2015/2016 to ensure fast fermentation and enhance biogas production. So, this study consists of two main experiments: Experiment (A) aims to study the optimum of some design and operational parameters affecting the thermal performance of SSP to enhance the heat extracted from it; thereby can use, after that, to maintain higher temperatures for keeping AD during cold climate. Experiment (B) aims to construct, operate and evaluate a developed SSP-heated biogas digester system to enhance biogas production from dairy cattle dung, so could help to reduce the environmental pollution; thereby promoting the sustainable socio-economic development of the Egyptian rural communities. Hence, the main objectives of this study are to:
1. Estimate the best parameters of design and operating SSPs affecting the extracted heat from it.
2. Use solar energy to improve the performance of the AD process for biogas production during cold climate.
3. Estimate the biogas production and net gained energy of the developed digester compared to the conventional digesters.
For Experiment (A) the results revealed that, to gain high temperature in order to enhance the extracted heat from the SSP, it should be operated with 3cm of depth, 5cm of insulator thickness, and 90o of tilt angle of booster mirror. For Experiment (B) the results showed that the biogas developed system helps in enhancing the average slurry temperature to 30.2°C (about of 12°C increase than the conventional slurry temperature) corresponding to increase biogas and methane yield about of 129 and 146%, respectively. Also, the net added value of gained energy resulted from the developed digester was about 140.2% for one month. Therefore, and due to the high productivity of the developed biogas digester, so it was recommended further more attention and study required to apply this technology.