Efficiency of producing biogas in agricultural enterprises

Abstract

The analysis of the economic efficiency of biogas production is carried out. It has been established that the economic efficiency of biogas plants operating on livestock waste currently operating in our country is very low. None of them have a satisfactory return on investment (at least ten years with a useful life of twenty years). Biogas yield during cattle manure fermentation is insignificant and according to the results of our research averages 0,7 l/hkg dry organic matter, which does not allow us to quickly pay off investment, even taking into account the "green" tariff for electricity produced from biogas. By adding a small amount of cosubstrate to the substrate based on cattle manure, the biogas yield, according to our studies, increases to 1,4 l/hkg dry organic matter and above. A study of the efficiency of biogas production in agricultural enterprises was carried out on the example of a model farm with a herd of 1000 head of cattle (500 head of dairy cows and 500 head of young and heifers). The dependence of specific capital costs for the construction of a biogas complex on its capacity has been established. Since agricultural enterprises have limited access to cheap, high-performance cosubstrates, which can significantly increase biogas output when cattle manure is fermented, it is advisable to introduce processing industries, for example, processing milk into dairy products and producing starch from potatoes, which are grown here. The waste from these processing plants is able to fully provide the biogas plant with high-performance cosubstrates, which will make it possible to obtain a payback period of the biogas plant at the level of 6,4 years.