Brief review of large biogas programs in India, Nepal, China and Africa.
There is a brief review of the history of biogas in India, Nepal and China in my new Kingdom Bioenergy Ltd website: (http://www.kingdombio.com). There are two very good projects in Africa as well, Rwanda and Ghana. The older information is based on my book: “Running a Biogas Programme: A Handbook” (1988), also available from Amazon (see review). The newer information is based on my visits for Ashden Awards in the past few years. See my own wikispace: http://kingdom-bioenergy.wikispaces.com/ for pictures.
The use of biogas technology fed with cattle dung to supply cooking fuel for rural families has been very successful in China (over 12 million working units), India (over 2 million units) and Nepal (over 172,000 units with a succes rate of 98% - still working 5 years after installation). In Rwanda, biogas has been used to process sewage from jails, with the benefit of a replacing 50% of the wood fuel used for cooking. In Ghana, BTWAL has built biogas plants to process sewage from hospitals, schools, universities and hotels.
The new approach in India is to process food wastes into biogas. Several groups are making plants that urban families can use to replace part of the LPG they use for cooking. More details are available on the Kingdom Bioenergy Ltd website. I am updating my book, which should be available by the Autumn of 2011, so the site is a trailer for the book.
There is a brief review of the history of biogas in India, Nepal and China in my new Kingdom Bioenergy Ltd website: (http://www.kingdombio.com). There are two very good projects in Africa as well, Rwanda and Ghana. The older information is based on my book: “Running a Biogas Programme: A Handbook” (1988), also available from Amazon (see review). The newer information is based on my visits for Ashden Awards in the past few years. See my own wikispace: http://kingdom-bioenergy.wikispaces.com/ for pictures.
The use of biogas technology fed with cattle dung to supply cooking fuel for rural families has been very successful in China (over 12 million working units), India (over 2 million units) and Nepal (over 172,000 units with a succes rate of 98% - still working 5 years after installation). In Rwanda, biogas has been used to process sewage from jails, with the benefit of a replacing 50% of the wood fuel used for cooking. In Ghana, BTWAL has built biogas plants to process sewage from hospitals, schools, universities and hotels.
The new approach in India is to process food wastes into biogas. Several groups are making plants that urban families can use to replace part of the LPG they use for cooking. More details are available on the Kingdom Bioenergy Ltd website. I am updating my book, which should be available by the Autumn of 2011, so the site is a trailer for the book.
