Socio-economic constraints to adoption and sustainability of biogas technology by farmers in Nakuru Districts, Kenya

Mwirigi, Jecinta; Makenzi, P. M.; Ochola, Washington O.

doi:10.1016/j.esd.2009.05.002

Cited by 100 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A total of US$3.8 billion is invested by the government for biogas deployment from 2003 to 2010 (Feng et al, 2012). In Kenya, it was difficult for farmers to afford biogas systems without subsides and respectively 46 and 57% of biogas plant owners received subsidies covering over 25% of the construction costs (Mwirigi et al, 2009). Therefore, what scales are optimal economically on farm type and size?…”

Section: Feedstock Resources In Farm Ecosystem Economic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralized Biogas Technology of Anaerobic Digestion and Farm Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges

Wang

2014

Front. Energy Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Long-term economic and environmental concerns have resulted in a great amount of research on renewable sources of biomass and bioenergy to replace fossil fuels in the past decades. Decentralized biogas technology is one of the most potential technologies of biomass and bioenergy by using agricultural waste materials (e.g., animal manure, crop straw, and by-products from food industries) as feedstocks. By-products from biogas production, called digestate, are nutrient rich, which could potentially be reused as green fertilizers in agriculture, thereby providing a sustainable substitute for synthetic fertilizers for farm ecosystem. Thus, the biogas production of anaerobic digestion is win-win option for livestock and crop producers to address issues of waste management and energy supply, and to avoid contamination of surface and ground waters and emissions of odors and greenhouse gases. In this paper, we review biogas production technology and then evaluate environmental effects of digestate used as fertilizer. Finally, we discuss issues of deployment of decentralized biogas technology for farm ecosystem. Economic and technological barriers still exist for large scale deployment of biogas technology in rural region. Two national scale deployments in China and Nepal showed that the operational status of biogas digesters is not optimal and up to 50% of plants are non-functional after a short operation period regardless of the social and economic factors. Main barriers are a wide variation of feedstocks and environmental conditions (e.g., temperature) over space and time. It becomes clear that the experimental conditions of the pilot plants need to be adjusted and calibrated to the local feedstocks and climate. Also, more research needs to be done in cold fermentation technology. Thus, collaboration of all relevant designers, farmers, stakeholders, and regulators is proposed as the way forward, particularly as their complexity has been identified as the major hurdle to the implementation of decentralized biogas production, which can deliver beneficial synergies for the decentralized biogas production in rural region responsible for food production and waste management.

show abstract

Section: Feedstock Resources In Farm Ecosystem Economic Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralized Biogas Technology of Anaerobic Digestion and Farm Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges

Wang

2014

Front. Energy Res.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Biogas is considered to be one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable fuels (Bhat et al, 2001). Limmeechokchai and Chawana (2007) indicated that biogas has the potential to replace utilisation of non-environmentally friendly fuels, while replacing firewood with biogas makes cooking easier, cleaner and safer (Mwirigi et al, 2009). Planning and implementing a successful anaerobic digestion project is driven by the setup of the selected area and also by the approach of the project initiator to the government and community leaders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term temperature measurement: Biogas digesters fermenting slurry

Nekhubvi¹,

Tinarwo²

2017

J. energy South. Afr.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the latter, biogas production, especially agricultural biogas, may exceed its consumption. Therefore, it is possible to sell it, thereby generating additional profits, so important and needed for those often-underinvested areas [6,7]. In Poland, development of biogas power plants is at an early stage [4], but due to the relatively high possibility of obtaining substrate (landfill waste, waste water, and agricultural waste), there are opportunities for the further development of this fuel and energy sector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The exogenous factors include political and legal conditions [24,25] and external financial support for the development of the RES sector [26][27][28][29]. The second group of factors include, the availability of substrates and appropriate technologies [3,[30][31][32], as well as the support and openness of the local government and community and their openness to this type of investment [7,[33][34][35].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Biogas Power Plants in Poland—Structure, Capacity, and Spatial Distribution

Szymańska

Lewandowska

2015

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents the analysis and evaluation of biogas power plant capacity in Poland based on the generic structure and energy production. These issues are also presented from the point of view of the obtained energy and biogas energy production in Poland against selected European Union countries. The paper also indicates a significant diversity in the spatial distribution of biogas plants in Poland. It also discusses the importance of biogas plants as one of the elements of bottom-up development of the second tier administrative units. There are 231 biogas power plants in Poland (as of 2013), which are based on biogas from landfill sites, biogas from wastewater treatment plants, and agricultural biogas. The generic structure of biogas power plants in Poland is dominated by power plants based on biogas from landfill. Despite the fact that Poland has large resources of agricultural substrate, there are very few biogas power plants based on agricultural biogas. There are no biogas power plants in almost 60% of poviats in Poland, despite the fact that every poviat in Poland has enough of this substrate at its disposal. This article contributes innovative elements to existing knowledge on biogas power plants in Poland, thanks to its comprehensive treatment of the problem of biogas power plants in Poland and because it urges local authorities and local communities to behave more ecologically, as well as promoting endogenous factors of the economic development of a given region.

show abstract

Socio-economic constraints to adoption and sustainability of biogas technology by farmers in Nakuru Districts, Kenya

Cited by 100 publications

References 4 publications

Decentralized Biogas Technology of Anaerobic Digestion and Farm Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges

Decentralized Biogas Technology of Anaerobic Digestion and Farm Ecosystem: Opportunities and Challenges

Long-term temperature measurement: Biogas digesters fermenting slurry

Biogas Power Plants in Poland—Structure, Capacity, and Spatial Distribution

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About