[Digestion] The relatively high cost of digesters.

[Edgar Blanco-Madrigal]

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. 

People peddling lagoons, and UASBs for sewage treatment with no control of emissions are as greedy in my opinion as the bankers that got the world to this financial melt down. 

In the UK we have companies especialised in "Grant milking" going around building small digesters on the back of subsidy in the form of feed in tarifs (FITs) in the knowledge that they will secure the money for the build and dissapear. Proper AD needs good regulation, and rightly so, once these plants begin to face the realities of operations those doing the heavy selling that promise it all will not be there.

I visited Bucaramanga (Colombia) last year, where I think the largest UASB plant in Latinamerica for sewage treatment is operational. Honestly, I smelled the plant from over 2 kilometres away, all the time I was there. How can an engineer design an anaerobic system where the effluent is discharged into a series of facultative lagoons close to inhabited areas? I think the mentality that "its a developing country, anything is better that nothing". I wonder if such a system would even be considered in Europe! 

Please, do not peddle technology on the basis of its low cost, do it on the basis of quality!



----- Original Message -----
From: P M Allison <pmallison at optusnet.com.au>
To: digestion <digestion at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:23:34 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: [Digestion] The relatively high cost of digesters.

The reason digesters can be expensive is because of our lazy and wasteful past. 
It is only due to the present energy crisis that development of sustainable waste management practices are now being implemented. If we had any sense in the past to regard waste as a resource, rather than a problem, the situations we now face with greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, water shortage, soil degradation, pollution, wildlife extinction, fish stocks crashing, climate change, etc, etc, would not be happening now.
The way we are going, western civilization has the same conclusion all civilizations of the past experienced; finality.
Bacteria have been more beneficial to this planet than all the rest of us combined.
Peter.