Biogas, Circular Energy, Developed in Brazil Thanks to Local Arrangements – Global Issues
RIO DE JANEIRO, October 07 (IPS) – “I don’t know of a more sustainable technology to transform society than biogas,” said Professor Alex Enrich-Prast, an activist for this energy transition of various expansions and expansions. in Brazil.
It is not the only renewable and clean source of energy, obtained from the anaerobic degradation of organic waste, he argued before entrepreneurs and stakeholders gathered at the 11th Biogas National Conference on 2-3 October in Rio de Janeiro.
He also added that Biogas is the key to the world’s ability to deal with garbage and waste in general, a problem that punishes humanity, making this energy circular.
A researcher on this subject at the universities of Brazil and Linkoping University in Sweden, biologist Enrich-Prast surprised his audience that “biogas, in Brazil, is more suitable for the production of organic fertilizers than energy”.
In Europe, the expansion of this source of energy responds to a ‘geopolitical strategy’ to reduce dependence on Russian gas in a continent whose temperature needs to be heated. The Russian invasion of Ukraine revealed a drama.
In the case of Brazil, the potential of tropical agriculture, the dependence on imported fertilizers, which accounts for more than 80% of national consumption, stands out, explains the professor.
Since Russia and Ukraine are the main suppliers of fertilizers, the war caused an increase in domestic production, which is partially covered by the waste that digests its food to produce both biogas and improved compost, which removes gases. Organic fertilizers, which contain micronutrients, can produce better fertilizers than chemicals.
In addition to geopolitical and economic risks, imported fertilizers come from fossil sources, undermining the low-carbon agriculture that Brazil is trying to promote as part of its climate change mitigation goals.
High costs are a stumbling block
“The difficulty is the cost. Biofertilisers are still more expensive than fossil or mineral fertilizers, and agriculture is not willing to pay that price,” Renata Isfer, president of the Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Association (Abiogás), organizer of the scene, told IPS. .
Advances in technology and the level of production may reduce costs, but the environmental needs of the global market may lead to a faster path by establishing sustainable and less polluting production, he admitted.
In any case, “biogas is essential. There will be no human colony on Mars without biogas there,” Enrich-Prast, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who is currently on loan from a colleague in São Paulo, told the IPS.
During his teaching, the expert promotes cooperation between Brazil and Sweden. Together with other researchers, he founded the company Inova Biogás, with the aim of contributing to the production of energy and the quality of biofertilisers.
He appreciates the experience of Europe, where biogas, which when refined is equivalent to biomethane and natural gas, is now a major source of energy, as it has tested its potential.
In Brazil it is a nascent industry, which still lacks public policies, investments, proprietary technologies and regulations, developed through independent, sectoral and experimental programs and designs for expansion through local arrangements, decentralization and productive ecosystems.
Separation
“Biogas follows the classification by type of substrates. Its business model for sugar cane is different from that of pigs, dairy cattle, primary sanitation, and other crops,” summarizes Cícero Bley Junior, an icon of the sector, currently with his consulting company. Bley Energías.
“Everything is biogas, but biogas is part of the process and the business”, from activities that create a substrate or input for biodigestion to biomethane used in various types of industries, trucks and other vehicles, he said.
Founder, first president and current president from Abiogás, Bley drove the biogas movement in southwestern Brazil while he was superintendent of renewable energy at Itaipu Binacional (2003-2016), a hydroelectric power plant shared between Brazil and Paraguay on the border between two. countries.
The business model is emerging around the agro-industrial cooperative Primato, in Toledo, a municipality of 150,000 inhabitants in the west of the southern state of Paraná and the country’s largest producer of pork, where Bley currently focuses his work.
For the transportation of animal feed alone, the cooperative has 70 trucks, each of which travels an average of 200 kilometers per day using diesel.
The ongoing program to replace fossil fuels with biomethane will result in significant cost savings and an 89% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Local preparations are emerging or may emerge throughout the country, with an abundance of biomass, from an area that produces watermelons for export in the northeast of the state of Alagoas, to another nearby community of fishermen who grow and eat cassava, in the heart of the Amazon many aquatic macrophytic plants, he said .
Currently, the main production of biogas and biomethane is concentrated in old landfills and in recent years in sugarcane ethanol plants.
Local production and consumption
One of them, Cocal, west of the southern state of São Paulo, sends part of its biomethane to the gas market in three nearby cities. For this purpose, Necta, which distributes natural gas in many areas of the state, has built a local pipeline network.
This is also planned to provide a collection of 16 plant ceramics in Santa Gertrudes, another small city of São Paulo with 24,000 inhabitants. But this is not the priority of Comgás, the gas distributor in the east of São Paulo state, including Santa Gertrudes.
A major problem in the ceramics industry, the city’s air pollution has been reduced by the adoption of natural gas as an energy input, instead of the previous use of coal and wood, according to David Penna, the company’s engineering manager.
The current priority is to replace the use of diesel in trucks on the roads with biomethane, which is considered equivalent and does not require technical changes in vehicles.
Statistical study of truck traffic is now one of the activities undertaken by several natural gas distribution companies to identify key locations for future gas stations.
But these are long-term plans, as replacing diesel trucks with electric ones takes time, as these vehicles have a long service life and the automotive industry is gradually increasing the production of gas-powered trucks, Penna told IPS during the Biogas Forum.
(Re)energisa, an energy conversion company, part of the Energisa power generation and distribution group, has also adopted biogas, after focusing on solar photovoltaics.
It installs a plant in Campos Novos, in the center of the southern state of Santa Catarina, the largest pig factory in Brazil, to produce 25,000 cubic meters of biomethane per day, using waste from the surrounding meat and dairy industry.
It solves the problem of waste from the local industry, but the focus is on the production of natural fertilizers through composting, according to Roberta Godoi, vice president of Energy Solutions at (Re)energisa.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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