Home solution for producing GAS from waste

 Biogas from home food waste 

Presently, biogas plant models are available at community or village level. Which have its own pros and cons. 

Positive impact - centralized biogas system, and installation away from residential place ensures safety ( Methane - biogas being flammable gas ) in perspective of reach from kids and general public. 

However, collection of wet waste adds burning of fuel (diesel, petrol, or consumption of electricity) by garbage trucks, then cost of distributing this centralized produced gas to customers. 

[Money !! Money !! Money !!] households, restaurants have to pay monthly to collection community, the centralized authority managing this have to invest on developing the central biogas plant, operations cost of collection and distribution. 

Solution could be - production of BIOGAS at the source of waste generation. 

Some facts : 

   - 1 Kg of green leaves produce ~ 100 gms of biogas.  

   -  Average family  needs 500g of LPG per day, and generates about 400-800 gms of food / wetwaste. 

   -  Biogas production from Anaerobic decomposition process, which means waste fully immersed in water, without addition of any cow dung or slurry is more efficient compare to traditional use of slurry/cow-dung etc. 

Existing solutions : There are some ideas available, where people have already tried solution with a big tank (syntex water tank, blue plastic tanks, metal tank) and the collection in some king of rubber bags ( tire -tubes, heavy plastic). 

However, commercialization is still not much. Mainly, because of challenges : 

    - big installation, which also includes usually production on roof / balcony and brining the gas all the way to kitchen

    - double line of gas, in case of more demand, a back-up of LPG cylinder is required. 

    - storage/usage of the biogas ( biogas production directly proportional to daily feed)

    - limitation for households in multi-storey buildings, small space, no roof. 

    - limited safety features 

Solution to above, open doors to big business. As market is huge, Value -advantage to end-user not only in terms of cost saving, rather reduces dependency on gas booking, waiting period etc. One solution can work both in Urban and Rural areas. 

The implementation of each mini-biogas plant can also be linked with ESG ( Environment, Sustainability and Governance) and corporate funding can be raised, by translating this to Carbon - neutral Credits. 

Reference : 

- https://www.energy.gov.za/files/biogas/presentations/2013-NBC/Biogas-in-India.pdf

- https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/njes/article/download/22714/19295/70952 

- Photo courtesy : www.freepik.com