Impacts of Small-Scale Biogas Technology on Households

Up to the present day, wood has been used to supply the needs for cooking in rural Africa. Due to the ongoing deforestation, households need to change to other energy sources. To cover this need, a large amount of people is using residues from agriculture (straw, manure) instead. However, both straw and manure also have a function in agriculture for soil improvement. Using all the straw and manure will seriously affect the food production. In this book, we first determine the amount of energy that households need for cooking, heating and lighting. Then we estimate the number of residues that can be obtained from the agricultural system and the amount of energy for cooking that can be derived from this amount when different conversion techniques are used. The amount of residues needed is strongly affected by the technology used.