Study of domestic biogas plant performance: Case study: Nyamagabe district.

Abstract

To popularize the use of biogas digesters in rural households has helped to achieve a best solution to an important environmental. Some installed biogas plants are non-functional. The scope of this study was to investigate the functional and non -functional domestic biogas digesters. In total 263 domestic biogas digesters visited in different sectors of Nyamagabe district. Amongst the visited biogas digester the 241 (91.6%) were non- functional the resulting from the causes of non-functional are: the insufficient feeding materials (62.6%), Lack of availability of water (34.4%) unavailability of water in summer period, problems of mixing water and substrate (2%), Feedstock contains foreign materials (1%) and the real pressure of gas production is 0KPa and the 22 (8.4%) biogas digesters were functional. The algorithm determining the performance of 10 fixed dome domestic biogas plant find out that the real pressure of gas production efficiency vary between 50 up to 87.5% and the performance of 12 balloon digesters are varied between 37.5 up to 81.2% less than their rated value means that the digesters operate less than their rated capacity of pressure. Biogas technology can play the role of improving the quality of life for these households. The purpose of domestic biogas plants will be on cooking and agriculture by using effluent as organic fertilizer.