The engineers at HomeBiogas say that three billion people still cook over open fires and four million people die every year from exposure to smoke or burns. Their first project involving off-grid biogas generation turned waste into cooking gas, and outreach involved communities in Jordan, Palestine and Uganda. The company is now back with HomeBiogas 2.0, and concentrating on the 1.3 billion tons of food that are dumped into landfills every year.
The process, simplified on the campaign page, says that when food scraps or manure are fed into the system sink that bacteria will digest this organic waste. Biogas is created within the unit and then cooking gas and liquid fertilizer are created for use. The full system is 2.1 cubic meters in volume, with 700 liters in the gas tank and 1200 liters in the digester tank. Up to 12 liters of kitchen waste can be added per day, or 36 liters of animal manure. Estimated daily energy output is 4.4 kilowatt hours, and the unit has a footprint of 115 x 205 x 125 centimeters.
HomeBiogas works best in warm regions. The campaign page says that temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius are ideal, temperatures between 20 and 25 will give good performance, and temperatures less than 20 degrees Celsius will require a heater to properly function. The only component of the biogas system that is called out as patented is the gas pressure mechanism, there are filters for gas purification and a pressure release mechanism that are not patented.
My favorite part about the HomeBiogas program is the continuing work that the company does to bring their technology to underdeveloped parts of the world. As this new 2.0 version launches there are already HomeBiogas 1.0 units in 76 countries. This first run of 2.0 units will help to fund some of the company’s initiatives in Puerto Rico and Kenya. The wildly successful Kickstarter campaign ends on December 13, 2017 and first units are expected to ship in March, 2018.