Supplementing energy demand of rural households in Bangladesh through appropriate biogas technology

This paper has sought to show the potential of energy recovery from rurally available agro and household organic wastes and thus, the possible impact on supplementing energy demand, reducing deforestation, and replacing fossil fuel as well as avoided greenhouse gases. Results show that co-digestion of a wide range of manure, crop residues and household wastes with cow manure was successful to produce increased gas yield than what would be if cow dung is digested separately and the energy value from this can supplement 57–79% of the rural energy demand, depending on the methane yield from organic waste mixtures. However, particularly considering for cooking purpose, it can save 1586–2213 Kg firewood/Household/year. Therefore, the results suggests that implementation of co-digestion in the centralized plant could be a viable solution to produce decentralized energy for the rural households in terms of sustainable waste management, reducing deforestation as well as replacing fossil fuels