Biogas from organic waste

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Biogas Video Transcript

Pune, one of India's silicon cities. An unlikely home for biogas development, a fuel usually linked to cow dung and rural energy supply. But one man's vision is turning conventional wisdom upside-down, proving biogas may yet be an option for the city dweller.

The Appropriate Rural Technology Institute, ARTI, has developed a revolutionary approach to produce methane. The new method is much more efficient than the traditional one and doesn't need dung. Our system is four hundred times more efficient than the dung-based biogas plant. This is like any normal biogas plant where you have a fermenter here and a gas holder here. ARTI has found that the bacteria will eat leftover food instead of dung. This household has expanded their system to two inter-connected tanks, allowing them to use biogas as their main energy source. "I only use the LPG now to heat bath water. I cook all our meals just using biogas." Mohan Carti collects leftover food from his neighbors. The leftovers have to be left to ferment for a few days or mashed to a pulp before being fed to the bacteria in his rooftop biogas tank, providing the perfect solution for organic city waste, which is just left to rot as landfill space is limited. "We use that effluent as fertilizer." It takes just two days to produce the gas rather than a month. There's another advantage to not using dung that really appeals to city dwellers. "We are studying here, just a few feet from the plant, but can you smell anything? No, there's no odor."

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