Biogas

The concept of the waste biorefinery is known as one of the several energy recovery technologies capable of producing multi-products in the form of biofuels and value-added products treating different fractions of municipal solid waste (MSW). The conversion technologies such as anaerobic digestion (AD), pyrolysis, transesterification, incineration treat food, plastic, meat, and lignocellulosic wastes to produce liquid, gaseous and solid biofuels. Makkah city landfills receive about 2750 tons of waste every day. While during the Ramadan and Hajj seasons, these quantities become 3000 tons and 4706 tons per day respectively. More than 2.5 million animals were sold for slaughtering in 2014 Hajj, and their blood and organic solid waste were disposed of untreated. Similarly, around 2.1 million plastic Zam-Zam cups were wasted every day during the 2014 Ramadan time. In the first three days of 2014's Ramadan, 5000 tons of food was wasted only in Makkah municipality. Collectively, about 3853 tons of waste were generated each day during 2014 Hajj and Ramadan. The waste from Al-Haram and Al-Masha’ir (Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat) and their surroundings was mainly composed of organics (up to 68.5%). There is no waste-to-energy facility existing in Saudi Arabia. The waste biorefinery in Makkah will divert up to 94% of MSW from landfill to biorefinery. The energy potential of 2171.47 TJ and 8852.66 TJ can be produced if all of the food and plastic waste of the Makkah city are processed through AD and pyrolysis respectively. The development of AD and pyrolysis under waste biorefinery will also benefit the economy with gross savings of 405 and 565.7 million SR respectively, totalling to an annual profit of 970.7 million SR. Therefore, the benefits of waste biorefinery in Makkah city and other parts of the Saudi Arabia are numerous including the development of renewable-energy science and research, solving solid waste problems, new businesses and job creation opportunities and minimizing environmental pollution.

Using standard laboratory equipment, thermochemically pretreated oat straw was enzymatically saccharified and fermented to ethanol, and after removal of ethanol the remaining material was subjected to biogas digestion. A detailed mass balance calculation shows that, for steam explosion pretreatment, this combined ethanol fermentation and biogas digestion converts 85-87% of the higher heating value (HHV) of holocellulose (cellulose and hemicellulose) in the oat straw into biofuel energy. The energy (HHV) yield of the produced ethanol and methane was 9.5-9.8 MJ/(kg dry oat straw), which is 28-34% higher than direct biogas digestion that yielded 7.3-7.4 MJ/(kg dry oat straw). The rate of biogas formation from the fermentation residues was also higher than from the corresponding pretreated but unfermented oat straw, indicating that the biogas digestion could be terminated after only 24 days. This suggests that the ethanol process acts as an additional pretreatment for the biogas process.

"Volatile fatty acids (VFA) including acetic, butyric, formic and propionic are extensively utilized in contemporary industry. Their commercial value is of high significance while their often derive from petroleum which is non-abundance source. Other methods for the production and recovery from these substances have been proposed and investigated.  Waste effluent streams are potential candidates for VFA recovery, especially if for their processing filtration technology will be used. Membrane filtration is an effective and efficient choice as it is a low cost, low energy, easy integrated method tested for the separation and concentration.
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Current refugee influx has become an impediment for economic growth and environmental safety worldwide, particularly during the last decade. Challenges for additional space requirement to dispose waste produced by refugees, and fuel and energy requirement to fulfill the demand for additional population has become a major burden on hosting countries. Bangladesh is one such country accommodating over 1.2 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar since 2017. It has provided temporary housing to this large number of refugees in Cox’s Bazaar district. To mitigate this additional energy demand, utilizing via biogas production, from the organic waste of the refugee camps, may contribute significantly. This case study aims to determine the present and future waste generation of Rohingya camps and assess the present and future biogas resource potential in Rohingya camp via a bottom-up analysis approach. Municipal solid waste has been considered for the projection of biogas production through anaerobic digestion process. The simulation outcome presented that, in 2019, organic fraction from generated waste was 110.98 Million ton (Mt) and in 2025 it is projected to be 136.56 Mt. Biogas potential from that organic fraction in 2019 is 7.16 Mm3 which will increase to 14.43Mm3 in 2025.

As companies and other organizations increasingly recognize society’s demand for greater social and environmental sustainability, university and college business schools have responded with new pedagogic approaches. Business schools have begun to offer courses in business models and business model innovation that focus not only on profit-normative goals but also on social and environmental goals. This paper describes an Experiential Workshop for university undergraduates in which the Service-Learning pedagogic approach is taken and Flourishing Business Canvas is applied as a tool for collaborative visual business modelling. In the Workshop, the students work with business model innovation for a biogas production cooperative of farmer-members in southern Sweden. The students take the role of problem-owners and problem-solvers as they co-create new business models ideas for the cooperative. The paper presents the students’ achievement of three Learning Objectives as they engage in meaningful, “real-world” simulations with a high degree of autonomy that allows them to combine their theoretical knowledge with practice. Implications for educators who wish to test the Experiential Workshop in their classrooms are proposed. The paper concludes with the suggestion that Education for Flourishing is a useful expansion of Education for Sustainable Development.

This paper was part of the special issue “Education for Sustainable Development” (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production/call-for-papers/developing-sustainability-into-a-golden-thread-throughout-al) and features the Flourishing Business Canvas as the tool used for the business modelling aspect of this research.

В роботі наведено аналіз відомих біотехнологій переробки відходів шкіряного виробництва та досліджено можливості отримання біогазу з таких відходів. Показано, що відходи підприємств з виробництва шкіри можуть слугувати сировиною для отримання біогазу з високим вмістом метану при раціональному співвідношенні С:N (20:1). Ключові слова: біогаз, відходи шкіряного виробництва, жировмісні відходи, інокулят, анаеробний ферментативний процес.

Methane (CH4) emissions from palm oil wastewater, more commonly known as biogas released from palm oil mill effluent (POME), represents a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. POME releases biogas, which consists of 60–70 per cent methane and 30–40 per cent carbon dioxide (CO2) when it is treated in open ponds. Given the large palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia, not to mention other agricultural activities in Southeast Asian countries, methane capture in the agroindustry has the largest potential for carbon capture in the region. This is especially important given that the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CH4 is 28 times that of CO2. This policy brief explores the methane mitigation potential through biogas capture and utilisation in Southeast Asia’s clean energy transition.