Summary

Due to the exponential increase in greenhouse emissions causing climate change to worsen,
countries have come up with protocols such as the Kyoto protocol and The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty to lessen the greenhouse
emissions and combat climate change. As small as it may seem, DUT and its students have
decided to help fight the battle of climate change and our own countries current issue,
electricity, by designing a biogas plant. A plant that will convert food wastes into biogas that
can then be used to produce electricity. This will be done by collecting the food wastes
produced on our campuses, having the food wastes go through the process of anaerobic
digestion which will produce the biogas. The biogas will then be stored in a gas tank, ready
to be used in our labs. From our research, we’ve estimated and average of 800kg per week,
about 114kg per day, will need a retention time of at least 7 days for the anaerobic digestion
to take place and biogas to be produced. From our research, about 5.4m3 of biogas will be
produced per day.

(add justifications for material used for piping and the digester, etc.)
 Conclusion and Recommendations
A solution to the worlds problem of climate change and south Africa’s unique problem of
electricity. Biogas. About 800kgs per week of food waste being produced in our campuses
can be converted into biogas via anaerobic digestion, the process whereby food waste is
fermented in a digester for a period of time and biogas is produced and stored in gas
holders, ready to be used and converted into energy. Due to our pressure constraints
(75kpa) outlined in our guidelines, our retention time in the digester is about 7 days, with a
temperature of 28 degrees Celsius. This produces an average amount of biogas, enough to
complain with the pressure constraint given. With a feed rate of 800kgs per week, 114kgs
per day, only 95% of that food waste is biodegradable, therefore, only 108.6kgs per day is
converted into a slurry and transported to the digester where anaerobic digestion will take
place. This process will yield about 5.4m3 of biogas per day, 162m3 of biogas per month. To
cater for this amount of biogas being produced, we have carefully researched the best
materials to be used for the digester as well as the piping.

(add justifications for material used for piping and the digester, etc.)