[Digestion] Information about subscriber

[Anand Karve]

Dear Mr. Ellingsen,
one puts organic substances into the soil primarily as food for the soil
microbes, so that they increase their numbers. All agronomists agree that
there exists a direct positive correlation between the population density
of microbes in the soil and soil fertility. Therefore, one must feed them
with high calorie organic matter and not with compost that has very low
calorific value. As far as biogas slurry is concerned, its value as
nutrition to the soil microbes would depend on the feedstock that originally
went into the biogas plant. If it was human food, it would get completely
converted into methane and carbon dioxide, and the residue would hardly
contain any organic matter that would serve the soil micro-organisms as
food. If the feedstock were dung of cattle, which had received leafy biomass
as feed, the slurry would mainly consist of lignin arising from the midribs
and veins. Application of such a slury to a field would cause the lignin
digesting fungi to multiply in the soil. One can of course look at biogas
slurry as a source of inorganic nutrients, but in that case, one would have
to apply fairly large quantities of slurry to match the quantities of NPK
that a crop needs. A back-of-the-envelop calculation shows that one must
compost the biomass from about 10 ha to provide one ha with the necessary
NPK.
Yours
A.D.Karve

On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Johan Ellingsen <
Johan.Ellingsen at norgesvel.no> wrote:

>  I am a 62 years old Norwegian senior adviser in a Norwegian NGO called
> Norges Vel (The Royal Norwegian Society for Development). I am working with
> environmental projects within organic farming and climate change. I am an
> engineer in chemistry and have been working with agriculture for 30 years,
> also on my own organic farm 30 km outside of Oslo. The farm was organic in
> 1989. We had animals for 10 years, but today we only have cereals and green
> manure.  I hope that a new biogas plant for the city  of Oslo can provide
> the farm with digestate. I see an unique option to recycle organic food
> waste through digesting in a biogas plant, if the quality is acceptable for
> organic farming.. ****
>
> ** **
>
> *JOHAN G. ELLINGSEN*
>
> Seniorrådgiver****
>
> Dir. tlf: + 47 64832035****
>
> Mobil: + 47 90921568****
>
> Johan.ellingsen at norgesvel.no
>
> Postboks 115, N-2026 Skjetten****
>
> Telefaks: +47 64 83 20 01****
>
> www.norgesvel.no
>
> [image: Beskrivelse: cid:image001.jpg at 01CA8EB4.9173BFE0]****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
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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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