Eastern African Biogas Sanitation Projects

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  • Vaniek
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  • Product Design Engineer @ SimGas
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Re: Eastern African Biogas Sanitation Projects

Dear Forum,

So I recently came back from the field trip in Kenya, with primary goal to visit our own existing customers who currently use our biogas systems primarily for Anaerobic digestion of cow manure.

Second on my agenda was to visit some biogas projects which are combined with sanitation solutions. I am sorry that I was not able to visit any of the sites mentioned by others in this thread. My trip planning was rather erratic and several technical issues made that I had only little time to cover a big area.

Doreen and James: Sorry I wasn't able to follow-up on your suggestions. Hopefully on a next trip I will be able to enforce more power over my own schedule :)

In any case, I was able to visit a site in near Eldoret were Duke university has installed 3 AD digesters linked to 3 squat toilets ( forum.susana.org/forum/categories/105-pr...m-north-carolina-usa ).
The digesters are located at three different sites. Every site has around 15-20 people using the toilets daily. The biogas produced from the collected excrements is used to heat the effluent-slurry to remove pathogens.

Foremost conclusions:

All users preferred the AD-toilets over the existing pit latrines for following reasons:
- Lack of (bad) smell
- Easy to clean thanks to the plastic squat toilets
- No flies

Biogas was produced!!
- Currently it is being used to heat the effluent to kill-off pathogens.
- It is unclear how much gas would be left over for cooking. We are working on this.
- users were willing to use the gas if it were made available

Effluent is currently discharged into an external gutter. But users did show interest in experimenting with using the effluent as possible fertilizer. Note that the effluent is sanitized through heating it up to 70 degrees celsius. Lab tests show that no pathogens survive such treatment.

Attached are some pictures of the Duke sanitation sites and also of some of our biogas systems which are installed and used by our customers.

Enjoy!
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