Energy and environmental benefits of family biogas plants in India

The potential of family biogas plants in providing viable solutions for clean rural energy, indoor air quality, fast-depleting reserves of fossil fuels, and mitigating global warming impacts of residential cooking is widely acknowledged. As a result, many developing countries such as India, China, and Bangladesh have integrated family biogas plants in their national energy planning and policies. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the life cycle energy performance and global warming mitigation potential of fixed dome and floating drum biogas plants, two most popular designs used in India. The results indicate that global warming mitigation potential of dung-based fixed dome family biogas systems drop by –26% and –60%, when replacing liquefied petroleum gas and firewood supplied by renewable sources as cooking fuel. On the other hand, the performance of floating drum biogas system using household kitchen waste improves significantly with an increase in waste input quantity.