Biogas Nicaragua.
Biogas Nicaragua has optimized the design and process of methane production from biogas digesters to address the issue of the growing energy need in the area surrounding the town of Diriamba, Carazo, Nicaragua. Biogas Nicaragua has developed a three-tiered scaffold to incorporate three interdependent reactors that are part of a multi-phase continuous biogas digestor. The innovations of this project are:
- Having a three-stage process allows for separation of the phases of methane production which enables more regulation of the pH in the various production stages, resulting in an optimized environment for methanogens and other bacteria to convert biomass into biogas. This will yield more methane per same amount of manure than a single-phase generator.
- Incorporating more process engineering principles into the design of biogas digestors in terms of component sizing, support structure, and use of gravity to facilitate autonomous process dynamics and achieve a continuous production of biogas at steady state.
- Integrating rural house planning with energy structures that involve biogas technology.
Biogas Nicaragua will work on the land of an ecological reserve/farm called Rancho Guadalupe to build a full-scale prototype, a small-scale version of which has already been designed and built at MIT, that reduces retention and start-up times and improves the energy production of existing biogas technologies currently implemented in Central America.
Final Proposal (PDF)
Final Presentation (PDF)
