Indian Biogas Digester
February 28th, 2008Outstanding! I’d like to order one.
Via: Fortune:
Sintex Industries, a plastics and textiles manufacturer in Gujarat, India, is betting it can find profit in human waste. Its new biogas digester turns human excrement, cow dung, or kitchen garbage into fuel that can be used for cooking or generating electricity, simultaneously addressing two of India’s major needs: energy and sanitation.
Sintex’s digester uses bacteria to break down waste into sludge, much like a septic tank. In the process, the bacteria emit gases, mostly methane. But instead of being vented into the air, they are piped into a storage canister.
A one-cubic-meter digester, primed with cow dung to provide bacteria, can convert the waste generated by a four-person family into enough gas to cook all its meals and provide sludge for fertilizer. A model this size costs about $425 but will pay for itself in energy savings in less than two years. That’s still a high price for most Indians, even though the government recently agreed to subsidize about a third of the cost for these family-sized units. “We want to create a new industry for portable sanitation in India that’s not available now,” says S.B. Dangayach, Sintex’s managing director.
…
Biogas digesters are just a small fraction of Sintex’s business. The company has installed only about 100 of them. But it plans to increase investment and production tenfold in the coming year. That growth potential has helped Sintex stock more than double this past year. Human waste may be a stinky business, but to investors it smells like money.
I want one too!
Would love to cook my food off of the chicken shit!
Please find out where to buy one!
They’ve been cooking with wood in our kitchen since 1751, but I too could see a simple Biogas system as a great local source of heat energy inputs — as well as generator feedstock for a backup electrical source.
Here’s the contact point:
http://www.sintex-plastics.com/contacts.htm
SINTEX IDUSTRIES LTD.
PLASTICS DIVISION
KALOL (N. GUJARAT) 382 721 INDIA
e-mail: plastic@sintex.co.in
This technology has been around since WWII when the Nazis investigated “wood gas”. Several city utility companies in the States have been using this technology in their waste water treatment plants to power their electrical needs with excess sold back to the grid. FYI, with minor modifications, this gas can also be burned in a gas-fueled auto!
Not only nazis, let me correct you!
During World War 2, a finnish invention was taken into use. It was a wood gas reactor installed on cars – with that “häkäpönttö” as its called here, cars could make their own wood gas and run on it – wood pellets. Its still a viable technology, and swedish Volvo has even made cars with modern versions of those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas
It was invented in Finland in 1928 by J.A.Hellfors, and was utilized by many countries during WW 2 when oil was scarce.
Or at least the patent holder was J. A. Hellfors in 1928…Cant say for sure if it had been invented before that, its possible sure…
Yes, it was invented already in 1800s according to Wikipedia…