Abstract:
In Ethiopia, in addition to the already existing
burden on natural resource imposed by the use of traditional
biomass for cooking, the processing and production of
alcoholic beverages such as local liquor (‘Areke’), local beer
(‘Tela’), ‘Korefe’, ‘Borde’ and others place further threat on the
forest. Research on potential assessment of biogas to replace the
fuel wood consumption has revealed a promising result of
biomass dependence reduction. This study showed that if
sustainable biogas energy development is implemented, the
dependency on fuel wood can be reduced by 27.7% by reducing
32, 763.70 tons of GHGs emission annually in Arsi Negele alone.
Therefore, through this study analytically designing the biogas
stove for minimum gas consumption and high efficiency,
fabrication and experimental testing is done. Additionally the
economic projection of biogas utilization in Areke distillation
is evaluated and found to be economically feasible with a
payback period of a little over three years. The overall
efficiency of the stove evaluated through Water Boiling Test
(WBT) is found to be 54.8% , 43.6% at higher flame
intensity and relatively lower flame intensity respectively. The
stove showed a remarkable reduction in time taken for distilling
a pot of distill and which is nearly half of the time it took to distill
a pot of distilland using wood. The new stove consumes only
0.994 m3 of biogas while the biogas stove tested before which is
ordinary biogas stove for general cooking purpose consumes
2.088 m3
to distill a pot of distilland. Even though the initial
investments are high, with the conducive environment available
for biogas production at Arsi Negele, using biogas for Areke
distillation without any doubt can be a viable option for ecofriendly and economically feasible production of traditional
Areke. Therefore, any concerned government and nongovernment body should act in promoting either by piloting
or partly funding the installation while putting the sense of
ownership in the mind of the users.
