Search Results (2)

Energy availability is a pivotal driver in fostering sustainable socio-economic development. However, sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) grapples with paradoxes headlined by abundant energy resources but with the world’s lowest access to clean energy index per capita. Faced with a lack of access to clean energy sources like electricity, rural areas in the majority of SSA countries almost exclusively depend on biomass-fuels, mostly fuelwood, leading to heightened respiratory health risks as well as environmental degradation and accelerated climate change. As an alternative, this review investigates the potential of animal manure as a sustainable energy resource for rural SSA households, emphasising its utilisation as a feedstock for biogas production using anaerobic digestor technology. Results show that despite the abundance of literature that reports on successes in lab-scale bioreactor optimisation, as well as successes in the initial rollout of biogas biodigester technology in SSA with the help of international collaborators, the actual uptake of biogas bioreactor technology by rural communities remains low, while installed bioreactors are experiencing high failure rates. Resultantly, rural SSA still lags significantly behind in the adoption of sustainable clean energy systems in comparison to rural communities in other regions. Among some of the hurdles identified as driving low technology assimilation are onerous policy requirements, low-level government involvement, high bioreactor-instalment costs, the lack of training and awareness, and water scarcity. Prospects for success lie in innovative technologies like the low-cost portable FlexiBiogas system and private–public partnerships, as well as flexible energy policy frameworks. Bridging the knowledge-implementation gap requires a holistic approach considering cultural, technological, and policy aspects. Full article

In this study, a black-shading cylindrical water tank made of high-density polyethylene was locally manufactured as a household digestor for treating cow manure in Bangladesh. Effluent slurry instead of water was reused for manure dilution under manure-to-slurry ratios of 1:2 and 1:1, to assess this small prototype’s production efficiency and feasibility. The specific biogas production at both ratios matched well, by 0.12 m³/kg VS and 0.14 m³/kg VS, respectively, while the former slurry dilution operation outperformed in daily and accumulative biogas production by 16% and 57%, correspondingly, referring to 0.49 Nm³/d on average and 8.55 Nm³ in total, potentially meeting a 2 h household cooking energy requirement. From a nationwide viewpoint, slurry dilution was proven to be a great initiative to conserve water amounting to 50,286,751 m³ for 114,810 households of 6 person-equivalents annually, while cutting chemical costs by USD 32,720,684/yr and trimming annual greenhouse gas emission by 1.8 million tons of CO₂e. This study revealed that a small prototype digestor could be an alternative energy source for cost-effective and eco-friendly household applications. Full article