Biogas production in Pakistani rural areas

Introduction and Background
Energy in the form of gas or electricity has become an essential part of global world. The economic growth will be simulated due to the presence of sufficient quality and quantity of electricity at affordable prices. The history about biogas plants goes us back to ancient China and Persia. Millions of bio energy plants have been installed in developing countries like India, china, Nepal etc. In the era of 1950’s small biogas plants have also been installed in India, now these plants are also installing in poor rural areas. In the 19th centenary, the covered sewage tanks were being used by china to generate power energy. The 1st plant of biogas was built in 1859 at the Bombay in the India by Panhwar. 30million rural households in china that have biogas digesters, these rural areas have many benefits such as saving fossil fuels, saving time, protecting forests, saving money, saving cooking time, improve hygienic conditions, improving the rural quality of life, reducing water and air pollution(Prabhu et al.).
Biogas is a kind of bio-fuel and it is derived from biogenic. Biologically break down of organic materials in the absence of oxygen is referred to as Biogas. Organic wastes include kitchen-wastes, dead-plants, animal-dung etc, these organic wastes are converted into biogas.
Pakistan has one of the biggest unexploited coal and biogas resources. Greater than 70% population of Pakistan is living in rural areas or small towns. Around 4% rural people use LPG for cooking, while 33% people are used to cut trees (Babbar, 2009). The people of these areas have to face a number of problems such as load shedding of electricity for a long period of time, the prices of diesels are very high, poor sanitation system cause various health problems, absence of light for nights, absence of gas etc. the biogas plants can solve these problems because these plants of biogas can be used as an alternative source of energy and income. It is roughly estimated that, 115MJ/HH/D of energy is required for cooking purposes in rural areas.
Traditionally, fuel-wood is one of the largest proportions of biomass fuels, where annually 40% of the total wood-cut is used for cooking and heating. It is estimated that 3kg of total wood is used every day for cooking and heating in the rural areas. Daily demand of energy per capita equals to the 10 to15kWh, 2 m³ of biogas can be recovered it. Therefore, a biogas plant saves the forests from the deforestation.
In the rural areas of Pakistan, the desertification as well as deforestation has become very common due to the cutting of trees for the fuel-wood, every year. 10-15kg of dung can be produced from the large sized animals, may be used to produce biogas for cooking and some other necessities (Wang & Calderon). Biogas digesters produce biogas using the poultry-wastes and cow-dung {Agus, 2000 #1173}.Depending upon the location and size, the biogas plants which are made of bricks can be installed in the yard of rural houses, and their investment would be between 50,000 to 65,000Rs.
Mostly the rural people collect the cow-dung in the courtyard which does not only release green house gases (GHG) but also produce unhygienic conditions, which make the atmosphere very polluted and then it leads towards the global warming. Flies and mosquitoes also breed in such polluted place. Dangerous gases like CO(carbon monoxide) are emitted through cow-dung when they are burned for domestic purposes{Khurshid, 2009 #1117}. These green house gases can be aliminated through the production of biogas (King, 1997).
0.52 m³ of wood-per-capita is required to fulfill the energy-needs. A huge quantity of poultry-wastes are produced through poultry form, these wastes emit harmful gases like GHG which pollutes the environment. Fresh manure, produces from the egg laying broiler and chicken has 170-200 m³ of biogas from one ton
(Li et al.).
ADP is associating with FIDA to build the plants for biogas in the villages, near the Dera Ismail Khan. Energy is generated in the Buchcha village for cooking and some other necessary purposes through conventional means such as fire-wood, kerosene and dung cakes. These methods of generating energy are very unhygienic as well as expensive resulting in the medical ailments and high costs. In 2012, 368plants for biogas would be installed by PCRET in different rural areas.
PDBP is the Pakistan domestic biogas programs, its aim is to improve quality of life and livelihood of rural people. PDBP is also involve in the production of biogas plants especially in the rural areas of FSD (Faisalabad).
Because of the high rates of energy fossils, poverty reduction as well as useful effects on environment, people are taking a great interest in biogas production. Energy in the affordable form to the rural people will contribute to the better quality of life and poverty reduction (Garg et al., 2005). Fuel- woods and cow-dung are used by rural communities as a major source of domestic energy (Brennecke et al., 1997). We can use biogas as a clean fuel, this type of fuel does not contain any hazardous particles(Hansen et al., 2007).
The main purpose of writing this research paper is to achieve the resources of biogas production in rural areas of Pakistan and look into the challenges and problems as well as success and useful factors.

REFRENCES

❖ Babbar, J. (2009) What do we mean by "Asian"? Transcult Psychiatry 46(3), 531-5. ❖ Brennecke, S.P., Gude, N.M., Di Iulio, J.L. & King, R.G. (1997) Reduction of placental nitric oxide synthase activity in pre-eclampsia. Clin Sci (Lond) 93(1), 51-5. ❖ Garg, R.N., Pathak, H., Das, D.K. & Tomar, R.K. (2005) Use of flyash and biogas slurry for improving wheat yield and physical properties of soil. Environ Monit Assess 107(1-3), 1-9. ❖ Hansen, T.L., Jansen, J.C., Davidsson, A. & Christensen, T.H. (2007) Effects of pre-treatment technologies on quantity and quality of source-sorted municipal organic waste for biogas recovery. Waste Manag 27(3), 398-405. ❖ King, N.M. (1997) Research on humans: what have we learned? Forum Appl Res Public Policy 12(3), 132-6. ❖ Li, R., Chen, S. & Li, X. Biogas production from anaerobic co-digestion of food waste with dairy manure in a two-phase digestion system. Appl Biochem Biotechnol 160(2), 643-54. ❖ Prabhu, V., Lui, H. & King, J. (1997) Arabidopsis dihydropteroate synthase: general properties and inhibition by reaction product and sulfonamides. Phytochemistry 45(1), 23-7. ❖ Wang, Z. & Calderon, M.M. Environmental and economic analysis of application of water hyacinth for eutrophic water treatment coupled with biogas production. J Environ Manage 110, 246-53.