Home biogas: turning food waste into renewable energy
Home biogas: turning food waste into renewable energy
Australians love cooking with gas, but what if you could make your own supply, using leftover food waste? It may be time for more households to embrace home biogas – and stop paying gas bills.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/114503
In practical terms, I put in about 2kg of food waste each day and so far I have had enough gas to cook with, sometimes twice a day. If I ever needed more gas, I could put in more organic matter. I will continue to monitor the system as part of my research and will publish updates in due course. If interested, watch this space.
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I've looked at these before, really cool idea. I think one issue is the amount of waste needed. How does the author get 2kg a day? I reckon my house (of 4 people) chuck about 4kg a week into the compost.
A good way to supplement it would be with yer chook droppings, but still not enough to cook for a household.
It takes some careful waste management for sure and probably only makes sense if you grow food in your garden (where you can also use the slurry as fertilizer).
I also think it might be useful to have some high starch or sugary material in reserve to spike the gas production temporarily if you know you will be doing some more extensive cooking in the near future.
A potential solution could be having a larger central community plant taking the scraps from several households. But again it won't be enough to provide cooking power for all, maybe it could give back some other type of community benefit.
Spitballing here but that slurry could go to community gardens.
Yeah, seems like they take up quite a lot of space, too. Only really an option if you live in the countryside or have a huge garden.
EDIT: Plus, the amount of food waste required seems quite high. Sounds like it would be most practical if you had some chickens or goats, or a really big family, to generate that amount of compost.