Crappy Energy

Its been about a decade since I took a serious interest in biogas as a viable alternative, for cheap and local energy source, to meet the urgent and growing energy needs of a developing nation like India. The idea was appealing - to convert waste organic matter into energy and digested slurry- a good fertiliser for reuse in agriculture based systems. At that time, most attention was directed towards turning farm and food waste to producing biogas for cooking and heating purposes. I had encountered only one bio-digester in Bangalore, set up specially to treat human waste for a slum district within the city. This had been done using financial and technological support of a European nation in alliance with a local NGO. While the system was operational, I felt that the set up cost, and the corresponding energy generated, did not tally up to an attractive enough prototype for further duplication or benefit.

Recently, a friend's appeal re-ignited that interest and I spent this morning searching the net for current status of biogas digesters - technological advances, and operational costs. A google search showed up the usual meta-zillion entries including sufficient numbers of commercial providers of bio-digesters for community to family size usages. Further more, human crap definitely featured as a usable source for energy generation with claims that waste from a family of four could sustain their cooking and lighting needs via biogas generation. Of particular interest for India, was the entry of Sintex Industries into the alternative energy market, with ready-to-use bio-digesters. While the affordibility of such units is still an issue for majority of Indian householders, long term energy, economic, and health benefits, far off-set the initial financial costs, making biogas a desirable option for residential communities, health care units, educational facilities. Further details on the subject can be read here.