Waste to Fuel in Benin

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

“The process is rather simple and works like a human body. You feed the digester with organic waste, animal excrement (such as chicken droppings). For one tonne of waste, you need 1000 liters of water (it's a 50/50 ratio). In order not to use clean water, we have developed a fish farming activity so we could use the enriched water coming from the ponds. It also provides fresh fish to local people. Biogas is then naturally produced and stocked in big bags before we can distribute it.” Scale it up, scale it up.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

This might actually work in Africa; not so much for the industrialized world.  The reason is the labor costs of placing the waste material, and the costs of disposing of the waste material after the gas components are removed.  The cooking of the waste will take about 22 days, thus requiring vast amounts of land and digesters in order to handle the volumes in say a Western dairy farm  (cows produce some 130 lbs of manure per cos per day).  With Western volumes, it becomes impossible to construct enough of those digesters.  However, other Converters of manure are on the horizon, in the prototype stage, that will handle the waste. 

If what you are handling is chicken droppings, the volume will be small enough to manage.  The other advantage of removing chicken droppings rapidly from chicken coops is that rats and snakes are attracted to the droppings, and thus you remove hazards to the folks that are keeping the chickens (and live in close proximity to them).  Unless, of course, you don't mind a big snake curling up with you in bed at night!

[ronwagn + 6,290]

Please see my references on biogas: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N-TLMeHsKYBCirxS0vbqMGHpU2SmyLuCc7bqp8eYXVM/edit