Biogas, Fuel From Trash

In Santa Fe and the country, several institutions use biodigesters to obtain natural gas and to make work kitchens, thermotanks. Advantages from a technology used in some cities of Europe on scale as a method to solve the problem of trash.

In the city, the people from Santa Fe generated 250 tons of residues each day. The plastics, metals, glasses and cardboards are separated for their later recycling, but the organic thing arrives at the sanitary filling and it is accumulated. After several years, the necessity reappears to find new spaces to throw the remainders that cannot be commercialized.

They have the humid grass, the orange peels and the rest of food that we threw to the basket some value? They are re-usable? They can generate, from its decomposition, something more than smelly scents?

The organic residues that the cities produce can be transformed into biogas, a “biological fuel” that allow to put into operation kitchens, thermotanks and refrigerators with cycle of absorption and produce electricity in generators.

In order to turn sweepings into energy it is required of a biodigester, a reinforced plastic or concrete camera with fiber glass to which anaerobic bacteria get up themselves – that live in the absence of oxygen. “These microorganisms, when feeding itself on the organic matter to be able to subsist, produce methane (more well-known like natural gas) and carbon dioxide. The methane is the same that circulates around the gas pipelines of all the cities, but is biological, it does not generate greenhouse effect gases and it is renewable because, while exists residues, we are going to have biogas”, explained Ing. Eduardo Groppelli, member of the Group of nonConventional Energy of the Faculty of Chemical Engineering of the National University of the Coast and coordinator of the Program of Socially Appropriate Technology of the Foundation To protect, that emphasized that the anaerobic bacteria are in the intestine of the mammals and they are possible to be obtained from the dung of the animal.

When the biodigestion process finishes, not only it generates fuel, but also an installment that has characteristics similar to the humus and of fine granulation the more that the dung, which facilitates its penetration and mixes in the ground, where it acts like enhancer.

Local Experiences.

Biodigestors in Argentina began to be constructed by the end of the 80s and since then they prospered in different provinces. Rotary Club Santa Fe the Components, of District 4,830 – Groppelli- needed, financed and favored the installation of 18 equipment to supply scholastic dining rooms, day-care centers, schools, homes and communitarian centers of Santa Fe, Buenos Aires, Cordova and San Juan.

In our city, the Foundation To protect covers from 2004 its demand of natural gas with its own biodigester and the past month also from the neighborhood Juana Azurduy was put into operation.

But it was in Emilia, a town of Santa Fe, where in 2002 the first biodigester of Argentina settled to treat the domiciliary residues. “It is the first great experience at level country. With the organic remainders of all the town biogas for the Agrotechnical School is generated Monsignor Zazpe and the organic installment that leaves uses in a fruit mount that stood alongside”, commented Groppelli.
The professional mentioned that in Humberto Primo, the commune constructed a digester with a subsidy of the Secretariat of Environment of the Nation and is next to put it operation. He will follow the one to him of the Creole, where the Rotary finances the installation of an equipment to process the remainders of a town of three thousand inhabitants.

Benefits

A biodigestor is a simple technology that does not require of millionaire investments, but of political decision. “For a municipality of up to 6 thousand inhabitants, investing 25 pesos per inhabitants, a biodigester can be installed to deal with the organic residues all the town”, commented Groppelli.

In our city it would be possible to produce about 6,500 cubic meters of methane per day, from the 125 tons of organic trash generated by the people from Santa Fe. “A typical family in winter consumes around 4 cubic meters per day. Therefore, we would be supplying a little more than 1,600 families”, affirmed Groppelli.

The Old Continent has a vast experience in the processing of residues through biodigester processes. First in applying it was the French city of Amiens, in the decade of the 80, and since then, “they did not stop to grow”.

“In Europe there are more than 60 treatment plants of organic residues. We have the example of Barcelona, with three ecoparks to deal with all the residues its metropolitan area, and are speaking of biodigesters constructed in concrete that they have between 2,500 and 3,500 cubic meters of volume and that are able to process between 600 and thousand tons of organic residues per day”, commented Groppelli.

In the Old Continent, biodigesters are used as “an alternative to clean residues, with the benefit obtained from the trash, they get the electrical energy to move all the plant and to remain with a surplus of 60% to introduce it in the public network”, maintained Groppelli.

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