Development of Biogas Plants in Latin America and Africa

摘要

The development of renewable energies is a hot and serious theme in environmental protection and clime protection. Biogas as a clean energy from the waste can be developed for household and industrial application. The slurry from biogas plants, which contains rich nutrients, can be used as fertilizer for the agricultural production. With 26 million household biogas and 8500 large and medium-sized farm biogas projects, the biogas technology in China is so strongly anchored in the culture. The climatic condition in most areas of Latin America and Africa is optimal for biogas plants, especially in the Caribbean and the tropical countries. And the amount of available substrates for biogas digester is likely to be enormous. Nevertheless, in all of Latin America and Africa there are only a few thousands of such plants. The biogas plants, which were built in the 80s or 90s, are almost out of order. The reasons for the inadequate dissemination are certainly the lack of support from Government and lower population density. The causes for the failure or failures of existing biogas plants resulted from quite a few aspects, such as inadequate training of users, material errors, technical defects, reduced animal holdings or water problems etc. At the present some organizations have established and started series of the national and international biogas programs so as to promote the development of biogas technologies as a solution to the environmental problems and covering the energy gap in Latin-American and in Africa.