Biogas production in low-cost household digesters at the Peruvian Andes

Ferrer, Ivet; Garfí, Marianna; Uggetti, Enrica; Ferrer‐Martí, Laia; Calderon, Arcadio; Velo, Enrique

doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2010.12.036

Cited by 130 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Several countries in Asia and Africa, including China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, are launching massive campaigns to promote biogas technology [62]. Figure 2 shows three major types of domestic bio digesters commonly used in the developing countries [44,45,52,57,63,[69][70][71][72][73][74], i.e., the plug flow digester, sausage-bag or tubular/plastic digester, the fixed-dome digester or Chinese digester and the floating drum digester, also called telescopic digester or Hindu digester. Even if the gas collection method and design are different, the digestion process is the same.…”

Section: Anaerobic Digester Structure and Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

et al. 2018

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Organic waste (OW) management tackles the problem of sanitation and hygiene in developing countries and humanitarian camps where unmanaged waste often causes severe health problems and premature death. OW still has a usable energy content, allowing biogas production, potentially contributing to satisfy the local needs, e.g., cooking, lighting and heating. Digesters are the devices converting OW into biogas under anaerobic conditions. They are simple and effective solutions for the OW management in rural areas, humanitarian camps and remote developing regions, producing energy and fertilizers for local farming as residual. This paper describes the design and lab-test of a domestic OW management system integrating a waterless toilet with a small-scale digester producing safe biogas for local micro-consumption. Starting from people's needs and an extensive review of the current state-of-art technology, the proposed system's key innovation and strength is the combination of effectiveness and a very simple construction, set up and use, fitting with the rural conditions and raw materials available within the emerging countries. A small-scale prototype is assembled and lab-tested assessing the quantity-i.e., productivity-and quality-i.e., composition and methane content-of the produced biogas. The measured productivity in terms of specific biogas production (SBP) is of about 0.15 m 3 /kg SV and a methane content of about 74% in mass match the energy needs of domestic users, encouraging the spread of such systems in developing regions and rural areas.

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Section: Anaerobic Digester Structure and Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

et al. 2018

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“…0.2-0.3 Nm 3 cap À1 d À1 for households with six persons in Nepal [17] and between 0.1 and 0.3 Nm 3 cap À1 d À1 for households with three to five members in the Bolivian Andes above 3300 m a.s.l. [12], of which À based on Fig. 3 and assuming 0.2 Nm 3 cap À1 d À1 biogas requirement À on average about 60% (26-105% depending on season and household) could be generated from local accessible substrates.…”

Section: Potential Biogas Contribution To Energy Needs and Firewood Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only few studies on AD at elevations above 2500 m a.s.l. exist in developing countries with well documented examples from the Andes: In Peru at 3300 m a.s.l., tubular digesters have operated at psychrophilic conditions in households with 3-5 members produced 0.5 Nm 3 biogas (0.1-0.2 Nm 3 per capita and day) with a methane content of over 60% from 9 to 12 kg fresh cow dung per day, which covered 40-60% of cooking fuel needs [12,13]. Of 261,000 small-scale AD installed through BSP-Nepal until 2012, less than 1% was installed in remote hilly regions and the mountain ecological belt above 2500 m a.s.l.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential of biogas production to reduce firewood consumption in remote high-elevation Himalayan communities in Nepal

Groß

Zahnd²,

Adhikari

et al. 2017

Renew. Energy Environ. Sustain.

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Abstract. Remote communities in the Nepalese mountains above 2500 m a.s.l. belong to the most precarious in the world. Inhabitants struggle for the minimum in terms of safe drinking water, food and sanitation. Reliable, affordable and clean energy for cooking, room heating and warm water for personal hygiene is often lacking and dependency on firewood very high. The remoteness and unlikeliness of electric grid connection in the coming decades make a diversified energy supply from renewable local resources crucial. Small-scale anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic substrates has been used for long in rural areas of developing countries to produce biogas as energy source and recover residue as organic fertilizer. AD is challenging at high elevations due to year around lower ambient temperatures and lower annual biomass production per area compared to lowlands. Nevertheless, examples of operational household AD exist even above 3000 m a.s.l. in the Andes. Here we compare firewood consumption with biogas potential from organic substrates in a community with 39 households at 3150 m a.s.l. in Jumla District, Nepal. In five households with varying numbers of members and animals kept, mean firewood use and its energy content per capita (cap) and day (d) were 2.1 kg or ca. 25 MJ in spring and 2.3 kg or ca. 28 MJ in winter. Easily available substrates include cow, sheep and horse dung from overnight shelters and human excrements from pit latrines, amounting on average to 1.7 kg wet weight (kg ww ) cap À1 d À1 in spring and 2.2 kg ww cap À1 d À1 in winter. Adjusted to normal conditions (Nm 3 at 0°C, 1013.15 hPa), these substrates yielded on average 0.08 Nm 3 cap À1 d À1 biogas in spring and 0.12 Nm 3 cap À1 d À1 in winter (35-60% methane content) in biochemical methane potential (BMPs) tests at 36°C. This could provide up to 60% of basic cooking needs on average and up to 75% in a "typical" household in terms of members and animals kept. Of the overall thermal energy needs including also room heating ca. 10-20% could be covered, substituting 0.1-0.4 (mean: 0.2) kg firewood cap À1 d À1 . If only animal dung and human excrements are considered, no competition for resources arises as residues can still be used as organic fertilizer. This study supports the design and introduction of planned pilot digesters integrated into on-going community development including pit latrines for substrate availability, greenhouses as possible way of thermal insulation, and planned pico-hydropower plants to use excess electricity during the night for digester heating.

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“…Approximately 40%-50% of the volatile solids (VS) in dairy manure is biodegradable lignocellulosic biomass which can be converted to CH4 [4]. The total solids content of fresh manure of cow (12%-16%) makes it unsuitable for conventional wet anaerobic digestion (WAD) because of the large amount of water (manure:water mass ratio between 1:1 and 1:4) required to dilute and decrease the solids content to less than 9% to allow liquid handling and processing [5][6][7]. Avoiding dilution of cow manure fed to anaerobic digestion (AD) is an important engineering design objective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of Organic Loading Rate on Psychrophilic Anaerobic Digestion of Solid Dairy Manure

Saady

Massé

2015

Energies

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Abstract:Increasing the feed total solids to anaerobic digester improves the process economics and decreases the volume of liquid effluent from current wet anaerobic digestion. The objective of this study was to develop a novel psychrophilic (20 °C) anaerobic digestion technology of undiluted cow feces (total solids of 11%-16%). Two sets of duplicate laboratory-scale sequence batch bioreactors have been operated at organic loading rates (OLR) of 6.0 to 8.0 g total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD) kg) during 210 days. The results demonstrated that the process is feasible at treatment cycle length (TCL) of 21 days; however, the quality of cow feces rather than the OLR had a direct influence on the specific methane yield (SMY). The SMY ranged between 124.5 ± 1.4 and 227.9 ± 4.8 normalized liter (NL) CH4 kg . Substrate-to-inoculum mass ratio (SIR) was 0.63 ± 0.05, 0.90 ± 0.09, and 1.06 ± 0.07 at OLR of 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0 g TCOD kg, respectively. No volatile fatty acids (VFAs) accumulation has been observed which indicated that hydrolysis was the rate limiting step and VFAs have been consumed immediately. Bioreactors performance consistency in terms of the level of SMYs, VFAs concentrations at end of the TCL, pH stability and volatile solids reduction indicates a stable and reproducible process during the entire operation.

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Biogas production in low-cost household digesters at the Peruvian Andes

Cited by 130 publications

References 19 publications

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

Biogas Micro-Production from Human Organic Waste—A Research Proposal

Potential of biogas production to reduce firewood consumption in remote high-elevation Himalayan communities in Nepal

Impact of Organic Loading Rate on Psychrophilic Anaerobic Digestion of Solid Dairy Manure

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