Shakti Surabhi: Backyard Energy from Waste V.

Ramakrishnan, Project Co-ordinator, Vivekananda Kendra - NARDEP Shreekant Patwardhan,Akshay Urja Associates With cooking fuel gases sky-rocketing de-centralized domestic energy solutions are gaining importance. Shakti Surabhi is one such decentralized backyard energy producing plant. This is a Biomethanation plant developed by Vivekananda Kendra Natural Resources Development Project (VK-nardep). The plant produces cooking gas from kitchen and vegetable waste. Over a quarter of a century experience in biogas technology development and dissemination, has resulted in the development of this plant. More than a machine This is a living system which essentially based on the functioning of a stomach with methogenic bacteria initially derived from cattle dung, produces methane from starch rich material of domestic kitchen waste. Only for initial inoculation the cattle dung is required and subsequetly the system runs on kitchen waste. The waste can be mixed with water and the colloid is fed in. The ratio of waste and water should be 1:1.This will facilitate easy flow of waste through inlet pipe into the bio-methanisation plant. About 5 kg.of kitchen waste is required for 1 cum. plant. Apart from the blue flame for cooking, the slurry coming out from the outlet can be used as manure.

How does a Bio-Methanation plant work? The organic waste feed goes to the digester and spreads to the entire digester surface. This is because of the the inlet pipe extending from the gas holder itself. Here the bacterial reactions generate the gas. This gas uplifts the gas holder. The counter weights on top of the gas holder provide enough pressure for the gas to go the stove through the gas outlet and hose pipe. The biogas slurry can be collected at the slurry outlet and this is essentially a nutrient concentrate. So this should not be fed directly to the garden plants. But it has to be well diluted before feeding. We can feed cooked rice, dal, gruel, sambar and other cooked wastes including coffe and tea powder. Also non-edible oil seeds including Neem, Pungam, Mahua etc can also be fed after keeping them soaked. In the case of vegetables keep them soaked in water and pour only that water. In the case of the non-vegetarian feed, make sure to remove the bone components. The value of pH of the kitchen waste should be ideally kept in the range of 6.8 to 7.5 for optimum production of biogas. This backyard Bio-Methanation plant is an excellent example of decentralized energy management through creative application of technology. The plant can be scaled up to meet higher inputs.

Community Bio-Methanation Plant A scaled up Bio-Methanation plant, becomes community-solution for waste management. Mamallapuram town panchayat, in Tamil Nadu, is an internationally renowned tourist area with its thousands of years old shore cave temple sculptures. Even though the town has only a moderate population of 12,345 persons with only 400 households, it generates a huge volume of organic waste mainly kitchen waste from various hotels and restaurants catering to tourist population. Technological solution to this problem was provided by VK-nardep in the form of high volume Bio-Methanation plant. A local NGO Hand in Hand took care of both community engineering and the plant maintenance with support from the town panchayat. Every day the kitchen waste amounting to more than 550 kg to 600 kg is collected. The plant has a 100 cubic metre volume floating drum biogas generation system The plant design is recognized by Ministry for New and Renewable Energy, Government of India. This is a plant suitable for both rural and urban use. The domestic design comes in both fixed and portable model. This small plant thus has a huge potential to change the energy scenario of India in her domestic backyard in a very literal sense.