Author : Soham Trivedi, Omprakash Chahar and Krishna Mehta

The critical reason for extensive climate change, resource exploitation, and limiting living standards of humans in developing countries like India is the increasing energy demand. The per-capita energy consumption is a great determinant cum indicator of economical development, economic prosperity and quality of life in most countries. Thus, finding alternative, clean and economical sources of energy has nowadays become a major concern due to the increasing prices of fossil fuels and taxes on energy sources. The present studies had focused on Biogas technology that can be adopted as a substitute for firewood and cattle dung for energy requirements. Biogas has potential to meet the energy needs of the rural population, is based on renewable energy and can be utilized as an alternative for natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas. Anaerobic digestion of organic compounds can yield to value-added Biogas and is highly inflammable. Biogas is a mixture of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) and the heating value is straightly linked to its methane content. Biogas digesters like floating drum type are cheap, easy to handle and can reduce the amount of organic domestic solid wastes. These digesters can be handy for effective solid waste management. Moreover, after anaerobic digestion the end products has high potential to be used for agricultural purposes. Both, Biogas and fertilizer obtained at the end of anaerobic digestion can be utilized for cooking, lighting and electricity. Thus, the technology can serve the dual purpose of generation of energy resources and also its residue utilization as soil amendments. In lieu of these advantages, present studies had focused to develop In-house Biogas digester that can process domestic food wastes into biogas. The model was based on the floating drum digester type. The entire experiments of biogas generation in developed model were carried out for a period of 12 months and it was concluded that at average ambient temperature of 30.56°C, the average digester temperature remains consistent at 34.63°C and at this point of time, the average pH value will remain at 7.09 in the digester and the peak volume of biogas i.e., 64.16 liters will be generated in the developed In-House Biogas Digester, wherein the average amount of generated Methane gas will be 54.56%. Therefore, the results indicate that about 128.32 liters Biogas can be generated by only one kg of food refuse as raw materials when it is fed in the built model. Moreover, cost analysis done suggests that the digester is cost effective i.e., Rs 842/- only, has high uptake capacity and requires less technical expertise. Moreover, it requires less space and maintenance so can be adopted for household applications. Thus, the model can be readily acceptable and affordable at rural-scale and is environment friendly technology.

Keywords: Solid Waste Management, Food Wastes, Biogas, Anaerobic digestion.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.4 (Aug-2015)