Biogas Plants. Benefits and advantages

Apart from the usual benefits of renewable energy sources, such as environmental protection and independency to fossil fuels, biogas technology offers additional special advantages.

- The financial pressures against the conventional crops are getting continuously more intense. The number of farmers who are forced to abandon their land is increased in many areas worldwide (in Greece, too!) due to the fact that their income is unable to conserve them and their families. From this point of view, the available subsidies to biogas plants investments along with the attractive feed-in-tariffs for electricity may provide to this part of the population a considerable extra income. Thereby, the biogas plant investments can play the role of the vehicle which drives the rural population away from misery.

- The construction and operation of biogas plants assists to the decentralized power production which is among the main objectives of the European Union on its efforts to compromise with its energy commitments towards 2020.

- The biogas plants feedstock materials are usually organic wastes (e.g. animal manure, agroindustrial wastewater) which deteriorate the environmental quality of the region where they are produced. The collection and energy exploitation of these materials through anaerobic digestion, not only provides significant amounts of green energy to the grid, but also mitigates the pollution effects on the local ecosystems. As a result, the operation of biogas plants improves the life quality of rural population while on the same time they enhance their general development.

- The application of conventional aerobic systems for organic wastewater effluent treatment produces mainly waster and carbon dioxide. Both of them are substances that can’t be burned; thus aerobic treatment doesn’t produce any amounts of energy. At the same time, the energy consumption of these systems (e.g. for wastewater aeration) is substantial. On the contrary, when a biogas plant is processing organic effluents, the energy consumption is fully covered by the biogas combustion, whereas the rest of energy produced is supplied to the grid.

- The management and final disposal of the organic waste is getting easier due to their smaller volume compared to the aerobic treatment processes.

- In the case of energy crops utilization as a feedstock to the biogas plant, the anaerobic digestate can be applied in the field where the same crops are cultivated limiting, thereby, the demands for mineral fertilizers.

- During the treatment of manure in a biogas plant, the odor disturbances are much lower than when spreading untreated manure directly to the fields.

- The minimization of the fees from the European Union due to improper organic waste disposal. The amounts of those fees, not only for Greece but for many other countries, are considerable.

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