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| Launching the new biogas plant digester by BiogasPro |
Designed for individual households, townhouse developments and for export, the fibre glass biogas plan digester name BiogasPro3 meets a need that we have identified in the market
We are very excited to have the prototype of the AGAMA BiogasPro 3 ready for installation and testing. We intend to start rolling them out approximately the middle of 2013. Much as we love the BiogasPro6, we realised there was a place for a smaller digester to serve the needs of families of 5 or less people, generating 10 or less kg of total waste per day and with gas requirements of a couple of hours cooking and water heating time daily.
The BiogasPro 3 biogas plan digester (as its name suggests) is half the volume (not physical external size) of the BiogasPro 6, with half the loading capacity but identical functionality. It can handle a maximum of 500 litres of water per day (instead of 1000 litres) and will generate a maximum of 2 to 3 hours gas burn time on a single ring gas plate daily.
We also wanted to address the issue of transport costs particularly for the export market. We could only fit 5 BiogasPro 6's into one 40 foot container making shipping overseas prohibitively expensive per unit. We have had so much interest from other African countries and also from as far afield as New Zealand, Australia and the United States, that we needed to come up with a solution. Shipping costs were affecting the price so negatively that we were losing very enthusiastic clients.
Back to the drawing board we went with the brief being to reduce size, weight, production costs and, most importantly, to design the digester in such a way that it could be cost effectively shipped in bulk. In other words we had to manufacture in sections that could "nest" within a container. To do that we needed to use a material other than plastic. Fibre glass can be welded on site using epoxy-like welding compounds that are easily transported.
We found a fantastic manufacturing company in Cape Town, "Formo Fibreglass cc" that were willing and excited to work with us to come up with the perfect design. After several iterations and a few failed attempts, we found what we were after. The design enables us to ship the digester in 4 segments. 50 units will fit into one 40 foot container, and already individual homeowners and developers are clamouring to get their hands on one.
Why would developers be interested in biogas you may ask? Because many of them are struggling to get planning permission for new developments due to the fact that the local municipality does not have the capacity to supply that development with sufficient water and/ or sufficient energy. The longer planning permission is delayed the more money they lose. Add to that, the marketing opportunities related to marketing a development as environmentally sustainable and you are onto a winner.
Supplying a new development with a centralised, on-site waste water treatment system is very expensive. The money to build and run the system has to be spent up front before a single house is sold, affecting cashflow. With individualised on site waste water treatment, the money to manage the sewage only has to be spent as the house is sold, with little or no running costs attached to the system once it is live.
We have teamed up with an aerobic package plant agency in Johannesburg, Biobox (see: www.biobox.co.za) to provide a plant that can purify the water leaving the digester to a point where it is safe to use it for irrigation. Their system also uses minimal electricity particularly if there is a slight gradient to the land being developed.
The homeowner will have a reduced energy and water bill as a result of the biogas and the recycling of waste water and the development as a whole will put less strain on the grid making municipalities more willing to grant planning permission. It's a win win win situation for developer, municipality and customer.
sourcehttp://www.biogaspro.com/biogas-blog/item/launching-the-new-biogaspro-3.html
