Abstract
This review is a summary of different aspects of the design and operation of small-scale, household, biogas digesters. It covers different digester designs and materials used for construction, important operating parameters such as pH, temperature, substrate, and loading rate, applications of the biogas, the government policies concerning the use of household digesters, and the social and environmental effects of the digesters. Biogas is a value-added product of anaerobic digestion of organic compounds. Biogas production depends on different factors including: pH, temperature, substrate, loading rate, hydraulic retention time (HRT), C/N ratio, and mixing. Household digesters are cheap, easy to handle, and reduce the amount of organic household waste. The size of these digesters varies between 1 and 150 m3. The common designs include fixed dome, floating drum, and plug flow type. Biogas and fertilizer obtained at the end of anaerobic digestion could be used for cooking, lighting, and electricity.
Highlights
Due to the increasing prices of fossil fuels and taxes on energy sources, finding alternative, clean and economical sources of energy has nowadays become a major concern for households’ and nations’economies
The biogas produced from swine manure and urine was used for cooking, lighting, or to maintain the temperature inside the greenhouse for optimum vegetable growth and the digestate were used as a fertilizer to replace chemical fertilizers
The biogas production was more in the summer than in the winter, and the plug flow digester was less influenced by the temperature
Summary
Due to the increasing prices of fossil fuels and taxes on energy sources, finding alternative, clean and economical sources of energy has nowadays become a major concern for households’ and nations’. By the time fuel and fertilizer reaches rural areas, the end price is relatively expensive due to high transport costs, leaving people to find alternative resources other than oil [7]. Many of the rural communities in developing countries are forced to rely on the traditional energy sources such as firewood, dung, crop residues, and paraffin. These traditional methods are often expensive and/or time-consuming [9,10,11]. The application for rural and urban waste biogas production is widely spread It is a challenge for engineers and scientists to build an efficient domestic digesters with the materials available, at the same time taking the local and economical considerations into the account. This review deals with a summary of different household biogas digesters, their operating parameters, cost and materials used to build them, startup, and maintenance, the variety of applications employed, and associated social and environmental effects
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