Have you seen a Biogas plant in a Balcony?

Almost 160 years ago, the first successful biogas generation plant was established in Mumbai, India. Since then, approximately five million biogas plants cater to domestic needs like water heating and cooking.

Based in Jamshedpur, this executive, Gaurav Anand, has led the movement by becoming the first man in the steel city to build a biogas plant small enough to fit into his apartment’s balcony!

Not only has it slashed his monthly expenditure on LPG, but has also rewarded him with rich slurry compost that makes his garden bloom.

A chief manager, (environment and sustainability) at Jusco, Tata Steel’s civic utility subsidiary company, 41-year-old Gaurav has been associated with several sustainability projects, in his professional and personal lives.

The idea to set up such a system at his house stemmed from the need to manage domestic waste in a better way.

Thus, in 2017, with the help of a friend, he assembled and created a portable biogas plant of 1-kg capacity in his balcony.

An arrangement which cost him less than Rs 10,000 and a few hours of labour to assemble, now comprises a re-informed fibre plastic (RFP) cylinder and a dome.

While the biogas takes around 24 hours to form and come out of the outlet, the slurry generation takes ten days.

According to Gaurav, the biogas plant has helped the family cut down on their LPG consumption by half, saving thousands of rupees in the process. He adds that for a family of four or five members, one needs to have an area of 1-metre diameter and a height of 1.5 metres, to successfully install the portable biogas plant.

The project not only earned him community recognition but has also encouraged several residents to embrace biogas more positively.

If people start treating their waste on a domestic level, it would not only reap benefits for them but also drastically bring down the overall waste generation and impact the environment positively.

Reference: The Better India