The Possibilities for Biogas in Bolivia : Symbioses Between Generators of Organic Residues, Biogas Producers and Biogas Users

• Main Author: Aue, Gabriela
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: KTH, Energi och klimatstudier, ECS 2011
• Subjects: biogas; bolivia; Industrial engineering and economy; Industriell teknik och ekonomi
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-37003

This master thesis investigates the potential use of biogas from organic residues in the area of the cities of La Paz and El Alto in Bolivia. The two cities have currently a contamination problem and biogas emerges as opportunity for both waste management and energy generation. There are approximately 274 500 tonnes/year of residue that can be used to produce biogas. This amount of residue can generate approximately 33,500,000 m3 of biogas. The advantages and disadvantages of five different digester types (the smaller tubular digester, the fixed dome digester, the floating drum digester and the bigger German AEV digester and a Swedish digester) were investigated to see if they could be an option for use in Bolivia. The German AEV digester is better when compared to the Swedish unit from Flotech in case a larger biogas digester would be implemented. Among the smaller digesters, the tubular digester already has access to the necessary resources and knowledge, and they can be operated at a cheap price. The fixed dome digester and the floating drum digester are  not used in Bolivia at present, and there is no knowledge in the country about how to implement them.  There are technical, social and economic issues related to an eventual installation of a big digester in Bolivia including transportation logistics and costs, how to motivate the population to sort out the different residues, and also the state subvention of natural gas production that lowers the price of biogas required to make it competitive. To see if it is economically viable to build a functional biogas generator for this area, economic data were compared. The analysis shows that the fixed dome and floating drum digester are much better economic investment than the tube digester. The bigger digesters are economically viable without financial aid if there is a market for the by- product fertiliser in Bolivia. The data for this analyse also shows that the conditions that exist today in Bolivia make it economically viable to invest in a bigger digester but only the fixed dome and the floating drum digester are economically viable without a market from the fertiliser === MFS