Description
The utilisation of renewable resources for energy production - especially for bioethanol and biogas production - are often criticised for their competition with food markets and for rising prices of products for everyday needs. In order to enhance the production output without a significant impact on the consumers’ development, the focus is now on the usage of diverse organic waste and by-products like straw, wood chips, catch crops and liquid manure. One property of most agricultural by-products is the relatively low energy content compared to the transportation volume - therefore long transportation is not reasonanble [Ramesohl et al. 2006]. Today the average biogas plant size in Austria is about 270 kWel and the size is still rising [Loibnegger et al. 2010]. Even if this plant sizes are small compared to other European countries (cf. Germany average size ~400 kWel ) they are too large for an excessive use of the just mentioned substrates due to Austria’s basic agricultural conditions. The average livestock unit in Austria is around 25-50 per farm and for many regions it is not possible to provide a sufficient amount of liquid manure to reduce energy crops input within a profitable radius of 5-10 km. Today the proportion of liquid manure used is only 5-6% of the theoretical amount available. If all liquid manure were used, 2.352 GWh - of total energy would be produced, which is equivalent to 150% of the power generated via biogas today. For an increase in the liquid manure used, it is necessary to reduce the plant capacity dramatically so that only short or, even better, no transportation is necessary.| Period | 30 Mar 2011 |
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| Event title | Progress in Biogas II |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Stuttgart Hohenheim, GermanyShow on map |