Biogas Production System Design for Condominium and its Feasibility
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Date
2011-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The research is concerned with designing of Biogas Production System for Condominium and
studying its Feasibility by crosschecking field survey and information from literatures. The field
survey data support the opinion about the importance of constructing biogas plant for
Condominium where the average family members’ number is five with average monthly energy
cost for cooking is Birr 385 per family.
The study indicates that at optimum condition 43.2 m3 day of biogas is obtained from the
substrate collected from 10 blocks of Condominium. Based on present energy consumption,
43.2 m3 day biogas fulfills the cooking energy requirement for 43 households. If households
use biogas instead of kerosene only, it can serve the cooking energy need for 115 households.
Compressing biogas reduces storage requirements, concentrates energy content and increases
pressure to the level needed to overcome resistance to gas flow. As the result of installing
compressor for this system, 43.2m3 of biogas volume is stored in 7m3 of pressure vessel and the
pressure increased to 11bar from 1.106bar.
In this study, it was possible to see that the Biogas System Design for Condominium is
financially as well as economically feasible as the NPV is positive and benefit cost ratio is
greater than one. As financial analysis shows the 40 households will save annually Birr 121,175
or Birr 3,029 per family as a result of using biogas instead of other cooking energy sources &
using biogas only instead of kerosene, the 115 households save Birr 1,067 per family per annual.
This result is obtained if households construct a 96 m3 biogas plant with daily loading 1.5m3 of
night soil in to digester