J. Socio. Res. Dev. 6(5): 657-660, October 2009, website: www.gscience.

net

FEASIBILITY OF EXPANDING BIOGAS PLANT IN RURAL AREA OF BANGLADESH

M. SOHAG1, S. A. IMRAN2 and K. M. HASAN3

ABSTRACT
The study was conducted at Satkhira district of Bangladesh during the period of June to August, 2009 to
asses the economic viability of expending biogas plat. Empirical result explore that biogas is extremely
efficient than general cooking for saving huge time and cost. Using cost benefit analysis this paper finds
setting biogas plant is totally feasible because it has economic benefits, environment friendliness and plenty
of raw materials. Based upon the major findings of the study, this paper also suggests that, biogas program
has to be linked with government’s as well as NGOs initiatives. There is highly needed to ensure financial
support, availability of feeding materials, modernized methods of livestock management and Information &
knowledge management has to be one of the key areas of concerns.

Keywords: Biogas, Feasibility, Raw materials, Livestock and Waste management.

INTRODUCTION

Fuel demand is increasing with the increase of population. But we have not enough reserve of fuel for
our future requirement. Experts apprehend that the stock of 10.7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas in
Bangladesh that will be exhausted by the year 2020 (BBS, 2007). It is also not possible to expand the
gas lines at the Upazila level due to excessive cost involvement. In the rural areas, the environmental
situation is weakening for cutting trees to use as fuel. To solve this fuel crisis, expansion of biogas
plants can play an important role to motivate people, to make them interested towards the use of biogas
and construct biogas plants at their family level. However, long term sustainable development in energy
sector requires improvement in renewable sources of energy. Country like Bangladesh, making people
renewable way and meeting energy demands, considerably biogas technology is cheaper option. Biogas
generation from disposal waste of animal husbandry, agricultural residues, human execrate from an
average households can make people more renewable to an environment friendly technology and meet
the fuel requirement of cooking without causing any environmental problem.
Biogas has been gaining worldwide importance and popularity recently, especially with the developing
countries, because of it's appropriateness in the context of technical, socioeconomic and resource
endowments of these countries. Added to this, worldwide crisis of fuel oil and increasing demand in the
use of fertilizer, some countries notably China and India have met with considerable success in
extending the biogas technology (Eusuf, 1993). For the use of common people both urban and rural
Bangladesh has favorable situation in the adoption of the biogas technology. Necessary steps might
open a new horizon of development for our country. It is estimated that 39 million tons of organic
matters are burnt away in Bangladesh every year (REEIN, 2009). As a result community and public
forestry are being depleted with an accelerating rate creating environmental and ecological
problems. Natural gas deposits in Bangladesh are limited and can meet energy demand for another 20
years (REEIN, 2009). Biogas, a renewable energy from organic matters seems to have tremendous
potential as an alternative source to meet energy crisis in near future. The objective of this research is to
provide a propel call to the rural people of Bangladesh as well as concerned authority to concentrate on
environment friendly biogas technology for the purpose of country’s economic gain and make a
positive initiative for fighting the climate change through protecting global warming.

1&2
Economics Graduate,3Lecturer, Economics Discipline, School of Social Science, Khulna University, Khulna, Bangladesh.

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METHODOLOGY
Data was collected through interview schedule during the period of June to August, 2009 in some
randomly sampled biogas households in Satkhira district of Bangladesh. Analysis and interpretation of
the result has been done with the data and information from 100 households. Various statistical tools
have been used such as arithmetic mean, important summation and other calculation has been done for
data analysis.
Empirical model
A feasibility study’s main goal is to assess the economic viability of the proposed project. The
feasibility study needs to answer the question: “Does the idea make economic sense?” This paper
constructs feasibility study by comparing the cost of two cooking system, general cooking and cooking
through biogas. Economic theory suggests that total cost of a project includes fixed cost and variable
cost (TC= FC+ VC). In this study authors avoid the term fixed cost for setting biogas plant because
most often it is bearded by NGO’s or Government.
Cost of Biogas Cooking (Cb): Cost of Biogas cooking includes only raw material cost and transportation
cost of raw materials but this is not a general case for all households, some household is able to manage
raw material of biogas cooking from its own livestock waste.
Cost of General Cooking (Cg): Cost of General cooking includes setup cost, fuel cost and transportation
cost of fuel; here setup cost is a fixed cost.
Cb= RMc +TRc……………………………………………….. (1)
Cg= STc+TRc+ Flc ……………………………………………. (2)
Where,
Cb= Cost of biogas cooking, Cg= Cost of general cooking, Flc=Fuel cost, STc= Setup cost
TRc= Transportation cost, RMc=Raw Material Cost
If Cg >Cb or Cb / Cg> 1, than expending biogas plant is feasible

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Reasons for starting biogas project
Fig. 1 shows that respondents started cooking through biogas mainly for three reasons- save fuel cost,
for the waste management and for saving electricity cost. Among these three to save fuel cost is
important. In this survey 57% respondents said that they have started biogas project to save fuel cost.

Waste
Manage
ment
33% To Save
FuelCost
To Save 57%
Electricity
Cost
10%

Fig. 1. Reasons for starting biogas project.

It is well known that fuel cost is an emerging issue in this present world and the fuel cost of the
household is increasing day by day. As a result households are facing lot of problems for lack of fuel.
Waste management is also an important issue in this present world. It is an environmental issue and
everyone wants to keep the environment neat and clean. Biogas project can help in this situation, so
some people used biogas plant to waste management.

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Time and cost efficiency of biogas
There are several methods to measure efficiency of certain factor, here authors measured efficiency by
counting time and cost. Compared to other types of cooking materials biogas is more time and cost
efficient because it takes less time and cost to complete cooking. Time and cost efficiency nature of
biogas is presented by table 1.
Table 1. Time and cost efficiency of biogas.
Average time Efficiency Rate Average Cost Efficiency Rate
(Hour/month) (Tk*4/ month)
Biogas cooking 4.84 31.19% 561
53.38%
General Cooking 6.35 860.5

Table 1 shows how much efficient the biogas in case of time and cost saving. It is clearly identified that
biogas is significantly time efficient. Every respondent said that their average cooking time is reduced
after using biogas. From the study it has been observed that the average daily reduction of cooking time
for using biogas of a respondent is 31.19%. In compared to other types of cooking materials biogas is
cost efficient too. It can save a major portion of money spend for cooking purposes. From the survey it
is clearly seen that biogas is considerably cost efficient too. The study finds the average percentage
reduction of fuel cost is 53.38% for using biogas.
By analyzing survey data and computing respective value of equation (1) and (2) mentioned before, the
benefit of biogas project has been identified as below:
Cb= 6910 + 610 = 7520, Cg = 26220 + 2430 + 80450 = 109100, Cb / Cg = 109100 / 7520 =14.50
The result of the model shows that cooking through biogas is more than fourteen times economically
efficient than general cooking. Thus the expansion of biogas plant is economically viable in the study
area as well as Bangladesh as a whole.
Availability of livestock and raw materials
For successful operation of a project availability of raw materials must be ensured. The main
component of biogas production is cow dung, poultry waste, human waste, household waste and waste
from other animal and bio-parts. In rural area of Bangladesh people rearing plenty of cows, goat,
poultry, and other birds & animals.

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Cow dung Poultry Others
waste

Fig. 2. Component of raw materials.

Thus the availability of raw materials for biogas production is not scarce in Bangladesh. In the study
area people use cow dung for biogas production mostly. Here 68% respondents are using cow dung,
15% people are using poultry waste and other 17% use other items for biogas production (Fig. 2).A
mentionable point here is that people in the study area are unwilling to use human waste as a

*
US dollar ($) = Taka (TK) 69
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component of biogas production for various social taboos. But according to environmental experts’
human waste have a good potentiality to biogas generation (Aktaruzzaman, 1999) and this can be a
beneficial component of biogas generation for Bangladesh if it is possible to manage in proper way.
Availability of funds
Funding is an important question when one wants to run a new project of biogas plant. Government and
NGOs have an important role in this regard. From the study authors found that fund is not a serious
problem, there are many NGOs are working in this region and they are providing money for this project
and even the role of government is also satisfactory. But the problem is people are not aware about this
even they don’t know about the biogas plant and have no idea about how to collect the fund. SONALI
foundation and other NGO like Grameen Shakti are trying to set biogas plant in this region.
Availability of technical assistance
Technical assistance is not a problematic issue in case of biogas plant expansion in the study area
because; there are small numbers of NGOs who are giving technical facility to the households. People
who are setting biogas plant with the help of these NGOs are getting built-in technical support from the
engineer of these respective NGOs. Thus if any one subscribe to setup a biogas plant in their household
then NGOs give an engineer to built biogas plant without any charge, even they help in the repairing
works to the plant.
CONCLUSION

Worldwide so many people lack for safe and clean fuel. They rely heavily on traditional fuels like
wood, dried dung, kerosene or natural gas. But the price of this fuel is increasing day by day, and
becoming a serious issue. In this survey it is tried to see that is biogas setup feasible in a selected area?
After the study it is found that the biogas setting of this selected area is totally feasible, because the
main component of biogas plant is very much available in this region. It is found from the analysis that
biogas may be a cost saving way for the cooking purpose, because person who has biogas plant are
saving a good amount of fuel as well as money. Most of the household in the surveyed area have
positive perception about biogas that means they want to setup biogas plant in their home. So, it can be
concluded that, biogas technology is needed to spread in the surveyed area. But the trend in declining of
number of cattle in Bangladesh is a serious threat to biogas program. The situation is further
alarming in absence of immediate government program on livestock development. In one hand the
grazing land are declining to accommodate the need of the rapidly increasing population, and in the
other hand globalization and modernization process has encouraged people to switch on alternatives
professions. There is high need to aware people on modernized methods of livestock management so
that feeding materials will be constantly available. On the whole the biogas plans and policies in
Bangladesh are needed to come in stronger form in the national planning framework so that the
impact of consequence could be felt in lives of targeted communities and the country as a whole.
In a situation where there is high need of strengthening and reformation the Government policy
regarding the development of biogas technology.

REFERENCES

Aktaruzzaman, K. 1999. Development and Dissemination of Biogas Technology in Bangladesh: Problems and
Prospects International Workshop on the Design, Performance and Marketability of Biogas Systems,
Mapalana, Sri Lanka.
BBS, 2007. Statistical Year Book of Bangladesh. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Dhaka, pp. 244- 251.
REEIN, 2009. Renewable Energy and Environmental information Available at
http://www.reein.org/biomass/biogas/design.htm accessed on August 29, 2009.
Eusuf, M. 1993.Utilization of Agricultural Residues, Other Biomass, and Identification of Priority Projects in
Bangladesh. Article presented in “Regional Workshop on Human Resources Development for Utilization
of Agricultural Residues as Energy Source, Beijing and Huangzo, China.

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