The Complete Biogas

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How To Build a Small Biogas Digester
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55-gallon digester

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Underground digester

Plastic ag digester
How to Build an Underground Masonry Digester
If reports are to be believed, some 14 million digesters have been built in
China, and many millions have been built in India and other countries as well.
Depending primarily on the size of the digester and local prices for bricks
etc.!, such a unit may cost from "#$%&' to "#$&'' and up, which is a great
deal of money for a village family in most of the world. Consider that in the
year (''')
about 59 percent of the Indian population
(495 million people) had an annual household
income of less than [$280!
*orld +esources Institute, Resource consumption
patterns and implications: India, ('',
-herefore the great ma.ority of these millions of digesters have been built with
government and international /01 subsidies. Is that 2sustainable34!
#peaking generally, virtually all of these digesters are either 2fi5ed dome3 or
2floating dome3 also known by some as 2Chinese6style3 and 72Indian6style3
digesters, respectively!, such as these two8


-he process for building either type of digester in any of their many
variations! is roughly similar. 1ne digs a large pit, and most often using brick!
builds up the main structure of the digester. 9inishing touches are put on and in,
and the digester is covered over with earth.
-hat:s a simple description of a process that can re;uire significant work. <nd
that implies that in the transition from a digester made from, say, a single &&6
gallon drum to a digester made from two water tanks, to the point where one is
considering an underground masonry digester, the game changes.
Consider long6term use, for e5ample. =ased on what we have seen, almost all
&&6gallon drum digesters are fairly ;uickly abandoned> owners do not
continue to feed and care for them> because, as mentioned above, they can be
difficult to deal with and they do not provide truly practical amounts of biogas.
=esides, most folks who build a &&6gallon drum digester are almost always
trying to scratch an itch rather than meet a need. -hey want to know, but they
don:t really need the biogas being produced. "se it, don:t use it8 no biggie.
If we assume that a typical <+-I6style digester is ,ft?(m in diameter, and ,ft?(m high,
then it will have a volume of 1@'ft
%
?4.Am
%
?B1,%'' gallons. *ith a 4'6&' day C+-
retention time!, then to maintain full output, one must feed such a unit (&gal?1'' liters of
slurry every day. -hink about it8 every day you:d have to fill up three6to6five &6gallon
containers with a mi5 of water, food scraps and other organic matter from around your
neighborhood. Dvery day.
1f course, if you don:t want or need full output from the digester, you can feed it less.
Eut it on a diet.!
*hile data known to us anyway! are not available, it would not be surprising
if far fewer <+-I6style digesters were abandoned, because they can provide a
good supply of cooking fuel, most folks who have them need that fuel, they
would have a hard time paying to replace it, and the units re;uire a fairly
significant financial investment. #ome, of course, will be abandoned, and if so
our wager would be that a survey would find that owners primarily in urban
settings! found it difficult to continue to gather the amount of organic matter
needed to keep the digester properly fed.
*hat has been found with studies of underground masonry digesters is that as
long as the owners?users were properly selected Fmeaning, for e5ample, a)they
have an on6going source of organic matter to feed the digester, b) realistic
e5pectations, and c) sufficient knowledge about G d) a committment to
properly maintaining the digesterH, and if they continue to get good support
from the program that built the digesters, most of those digesters will continue
to be used, perhaps for (' years or longer. <nd again, those who have the
digesters would actually need the biogas for cooking and lightingI they could
only replace those functions with considerable labor gathering wood daily!, or
paying very scarce cash for kerosene or similar fuels.
<begin lecture>
#imilar points will apply to you, if you are considering building a small
digester. -hat is, as the size increases, the e5pense likewise increases, and as
well, the time and money re;uired to maintain and feed the digester increases.
-o make it all work, you likewise would need to have a certain situation and
outlook. -hus, again, as we asyou! transition from those smaller digesters to
larger digesters, doing it because 2it would be cool3 or simply to learn more
about biogas becomes less and less tenable as a primary motivation. 0reat
place to start, but that can:t be all you:ve got, or it won:t be sustainable.
In other words, it would only make sense to build a larger digester where
you have enough time, money, knowledge TCBH4! and skill to do so,
where there is enough organic matter on6site or conveniently nearby to
keep it fed, and
where the e5pected outcome has sufficient value, as you see it, to offset
the e5pense, time, and hassle.
1J4 -hat:s the lecture.
</end lecture>
/ow as far as how that translates, first consider a partial materials list for a
typical underground masonry digester a 2fi5ed dome 00C ('4@ model3!
adapted from the =iogas #ector Eartnership /epal site
www.bspnepal.org.np!. [Note 2/26/12: We had a link to the proper page on
BSP Nepal but !ost o" the entire site has disappeared as o" late #eb 2$12%
&'en their o(n !ain !enu links gi'e )$)s% * good alternati'e re"erence is
+,eal -ost o" -onstruction Sur'ey o" a .ypical Bio/gas Plant0
"ound here1 -he materials list is not complete, and so the totals shown do
not reflect the complete cost. /evertheless, based on casual visits to a few
hardware sales websites, we assume the listed materials, purchased at retail in
the US, would cost
$A.(& for B1'' lb. bag of cement &' kg K 11' lbs.!,
%'L per brick although as compared with /epal, the size of our bricks
may be different!,
both M%4 2gravel3 161?(7 to (7 rock fragments! and sand cost $%& per
ton where a m
%
of small rocks, sand, or gravel is about %,A'' lbs.!, and
smaller gravel costs $(A per ton.
*e will not show the cost of each item in the table below, but based on the
above information, if you are really interested, you can find out how we got the
total costs we show by making your own spreadsheet, or you can contact us and
we will send you what we have. #ince =#E indicates one can use either rocks
or bricks, we calculated based on which was cheaper.
*e do not figure or include the cost of paint last column below!, because
frankly it makes no sense to me that anyone could do very much that is
practical with a single liter of paint when using it on a several cubic meter
underground masonry digester. #ee further below for some suggestions for
waterproofing the inside of such digesters.
Plant
Size
m
3
Cost of partial list of materials
needed, on desri!ed !asis
Cement
!ags
"o# $or%
Bri#s
&ra'el
$(% Sand Paint
)*+
#g,!ag m
3
!ri#s
- of ement
!ags liters
4 $,,% 1161( %.& 1,('' %' ,' 1.'
, $@@& 1%614 4.& 1,4'' %& @' 1.'
A $N1@ 1&61, ,.& 1,@'' 4' A' 1.&
1' $1,111 1N6(1 A.' (,''' &' N' (.'
9or more on materials with which to coat the inside of the digester> after all
it:s made from brick or cement, and if it:s not coated it will not be gasOtight>
see Elasters and Coats for Digesters and 0as6Colders, pg. ,1, in 0-P:s now
0IP! publication. <ll four reports in this series are available from this page,
down toward the bottom.!
<nother report is from Biogas plants in animal husbandry8
"ome tried and pro#en seal coats$
multilayer bitumen [asphalt% applied cold (hot
application poses the&dan'er of in(ur) b) burns
and smo*e nuisance)+ sol#ents cause
dan'erous,e-plosi#e #apors. /0o to four thic*
coats re1uired.
bitumen with aluminum foil$ thin sheets of
o#erlappin' aluminum foil applied to the still&
stic*) bitumen% follo0ed b) the ne-t coat of
bitumen.
plastics% as a rule epo-) resin or acr)lic paint+
#er) 'ood but e-pensi#e.
paraffin [0a-% diluted 0ith 2253 *erosene
heated to 40056 and applied to the preheated
masonr). /he paraffin penetrates deep into the
masonr)% thus pro#idin' an effecti#e (deep)
seal. 7se *erosene,'as torch to heat masonr).
8erner% "t9hr% :
;ees% Biogas plants in
animal husbandry% 4989
[emphasis added
=iogas digesters actually either above or below ground! can also be made from
ferrocement. -he =ig Difference between a water tank and a digester is that for
the latter, the entire tank should be gas6tight, instead of .ust having the bottom
and sides be waterOtight, but that may be less of a difference than it might
sound. In any case, a fair to ;uite good resource on ferrocement tanks for
water storage, not for biogas, but hey! is -echnical Eresentation of Qarious
-ypes of Cisterns =uilt in the +ural Communities of the #emiarid +egion of
=razil. Rou may also wish to look at some of the publications on this page.
Eu5in, a Chinese company, makes a number of biogas6related products such as
stoves, including portable concrete forms to produce digesters more ;uickly.
#ee the video on this page for essentially all the information you need to
understand how these portable forms work. It would be interesting to know if
these forms would work if they were made from fiberglass)!
-he third edition of the =iogas?=iofertilizer Candbook has some good
information on ferrocement digesters as an appendi5 not the info in chapter ,!.
Rou may wish to note that rather more than half of the te5t of chapter 1 in this
book is directly 2adapted3 from -C=C.!
<s with any of these sub.ects, a good deal more can be said, but based on what
we have seen e5tant on the lovely e5plosionOinOaOlibrary known as the *orld
*ide *eb do you need the acronym4!, this page likely offers more resources
than you will find elsewhere) 9inally, we end with a picture from =#E, the
=iogas #upport Erogram of /epal8
#ee much larger original image here.