[Digestion] The relatively high cost of digesters.

[Anand Karve]

Dear Paul and stovers,
I give here our experience in India about the rural dung based biogas
plants. India has about 140 million rural households and the government has
been making propaganda since 1950 for biogas plants. By the latest count, we
have today only about 3 million working biogas plants. That is just 2%
penetration of this technology. Due to increased mechanisation, the number
of draft animals is slowly dwindling, as a result of which the total number
of animals in the rural area is steadily going down. It is only the dairy
farmers and the owners of large poultries that have large quantities of
animal faeces to deal with. Due to lack of dung, many biogas plants have
stopped functioning. A dung based domestic biogas plant needs a daily input
of 40 kg dung mixed with 40 litres water (to make it into a pourable
slurry). In villages the women often have to fetch the water from a distant
source, carrying it on their heads. They have to bring about 25 to 30 litres
water every day as the drinking and cooking water for the household. This
quantity increases, if they have cattle. Bringing additional 40 litres for
the biogas plant is an added burden. So,although the housewife is told that
her life would be easier if the household gets a biogas plant, in actuality,
this technology increases her workload.
Yours
A.D.Karve

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Paul Harris <paul.harris at adelaide.edu.au>wrote:

> G'day All,
>
> One reason for the "high" cost of digesters is that "Westerners" seem to
> have a preoccupation with complexity and large, centralised facilities -
> which "we" expect to inflict on the rest of the world.
>
> The small, simple, decentralised systems used extensively in China, India
> and more recently Columbia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bolivia and reported by
> some members of this discussion group are making a big improvement to the
> environment by providing convenient, clean fuel without deforestation or
> fossil fuel depletion. They may not win on "biogas per unit digester
> volume"
> or "throughput per day" and will not make corporate profits but they do
> lift
> people from poverty, ease the grind of daily life and may well get more
> biogas per unit of VS/COD, compared to "our" large units.
>
> I agree you get what you pay for and there are bound to be improvements
> that
> may need to be done, but it's also "horses for courses".
>
> Happy digesting,
> HOOROO
>
> Mr. Paul Harris, Room S116b, Waite Main Building Faculty of Sciences, The
> University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, PMB 1, Glen Osmond SA 5064 Ph    :
> +61
> 8 8303 7880      Fax   : +61 8 8303 4386
> mailto:paul.harris at adelaide.edu.au
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/paul.harris
>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: digestion-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
> [mailto:digestion-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Edgar
> Blanco-Madrigal
> Sent: Tuesday, 7 December 2010 10:51 PM
> To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
> Cc: digestion
> Subject: Re: [Digestion] The relatively high cost of digesters.
>
> In AD the universal principle applies:
> "You get what you pay for"
>
> You can build a cheap digester, and produce gas, etc. But you should not
> pretend this in any way will be helping the environment, because to do that
> money has to be committed in the whole operation.
>
> SNIP
>
> Please, do not peddle technology on the basis of its low cost, do it on the
> basis of quality!
>
>
>
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> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
>


-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

*Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *
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