THE ABILITY OF BIOGAS AS SUSTAINABLE ENERGY TO MEET RURAL LIVELIHOODS

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Lecturer of Agric. Eng., Fac. of Agric., Zagazig Univ., Egypt.

Abstract

The increase in the environmental pollution and economic growth, energy usage requirement cause increase in world clean energy demand. Biomethanization is one of the promised technologies to produce clean and renewable energy source compared to fossil energy resources. This research was done in two trials, the first trial focused on comparing the potential and actual values for heat and electric energy from different biomass hence, select the best for the equal energy required for different livelihoods in rural applications. The second trial, the preferable feedstocks synthesis (25% cattle dung + 75% poultry droppings) from the first trial was select to apply in the second fermentation, which done in home scale digester (68 l) under three different agitations at under mesophilic temperature 38°C. The results showed that using a combination of feedstocks (co-digestion) led to improving the biogas yield by 67.68% - 7.10% because of the increase in organic content and optimizing the conditions for anaerobic digestion. Also, the percentage for every row feedstock in the combination has an equally significant aspect. The calorific efficiency was average 54 -78 % and correspondingly, the electricity produced efficiency ranged between 52.43 - 68.09 %. Hence, the combinations of feedstocks can be selected to be enough to purposes of heat and electricity applications. In the home scale digester, the regression equation for methane yield to retention time under two-time agitation per day was y = 0. 347x + 0.5016x2 -0.0162x3. In additional it was found that the biogas production was 3993.87 l/month from 25 kg only of animal wastes, this covered 4 days of cooking or gas lamp demands or 12 days of a refrigerator. Hence, decrease the using of conventional sources and improve the healthy living in rural communities.

Main Subjects