World Bank Awards Grant for Biogas Plant in Nigeria

As the world's largest producer of cassava, Nigeria generates 37-million metric tons of the food and $5 billion in revenue annually ensuring that 500 million people worldwide will receive this major carbohydrate staple.   Cassava is an important food crop in the tropics, providing a source of calories and sustenance for many people in Africa and beyond.  Unfortunately, cassava waste causes water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.  Untreated cassava waste has been discharged so frequently into the rivers in Nigeria that it is now impacting the life of both human beings and the ecosystem.

The solution is a sustainable biogas plant whose zero emission technology will treat the cassava waste and produce biogas that will drive micro turbines at a low cost and produce safe, reliable, off-grid lighting for over 2,000 poor families and create environmentally safe organic fertilizer for many low-income farmers in the region.  The biogas plant would be installed at a large scale cassava processing factory in Ilorin, a city in southwest Nigeria with a population of about one million, which has emerged as a large commercial center for the struggling country.

An important partnership has formed to make the biogas plant a reality and the project has received a $250,000 grant from the World Bank being named one of the best projects in Africa.  The partnership brings together the Global Network for Environmental and Economic Development Research in Nigeria, an NGO; the Biogas Technology Research Centre of the King Mongkuks' University of Technology, a Thai technology innovator in Thonburi, Thailand; and the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit (BAWB), a global research, education, and practice center located at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  Formed five years ago, the partnership has received several international awards, the most recent - the 2005 Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) International Award for an innovative project dubbed "Cows to Kilowatts" which converted slaughterhouse gasses to renewable energy using Biogas Technology. 

To bring stakeholders together and help them plan for a sustainable biogas plant in Ilorin, Dr. David Cooperrider of BAWB will use the unique process of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to help the many, complex stakeholders come together and solve the issues facing them in constructing the biogas plant. AI, which was created by Dr. Cooperrider, has been used in developmental initiatives has across the world, producing extraordinary results.

The design of the bioreactor, microturbines and off-grid lighting systems would be carried out by the Global Network for Environment and Economic Development Research Team in association with the Biogas Technology Research Centre of the King Mongkuk's University of Technology, Thonburi, Thailand. One of the experts - on a team that includes Professor Pawinee Chaiprasert, a biotechnologist; Dr. Annop Nopharatana, a process and pipeline engineer; and Joseph Ijagbulu, an electro-mechanical engineer - is Dr. Joseph Adelegan, a chartered civil and structural engineer, whose economic development work in partnership with BAWB was featured in a documentary titled "Principal Voices. Economics of Energy", that aired for the first time on June 21-22, 2008, on CNN International.  The documentary was sponsored by CNN in association with Shell Corporation, Time and Fortune magazines, and examined Adelegan's efforts in his native Nigeria to remove the harmful waste produced by refining cassava while simultaneously providing energy to a population with limited access. The segment, featuring Adelegan and BAWB, was titled "Power to the Poor: Off-Grid Lighting from Cassava Waste in Nigeria".

The Biotechnology Research Centre would act as an (or the?)  international technical advisor in the design and construction of the bioreactor, microturbines and off-grid lighting systems. They have a world class expertise in Anaerobic Fixed Film Biogas Technology. Construction of the biogas plant, however, would be carried out by the Global Network for Environment and Economic Development Research of The Biogas Technology Research Centre at King Mongkukus' University of Technology.  The Network has been conducting research on anaerobic digestion technology for 24 years under the ASIAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program and has developed an expertise in biogas technology from the research level to the design, installation and operation of an industrial biogas pilot plant using an anaerobic fixed film reactor.

Currently, technical appraisals show the biogas plant project to be highly feasible. The cassava solid waste volume is about 1000 m3 per day and the wastewater volume is 500 m3 per day. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration is 15,000 mg/l for the current demonstration plant. Moreover, the proposed size of the solid digester is 1250 m3 and the AFF bioreactor is 750 m3 while biogas production (methane only) rate is 1,800 m3 per day.  The power generation for off-grid lighting is 150KW. Using the procedures in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) documentation for small scale CDM projects (http://www.unfccc.org/ ), the emission reduction from the project is based on the baseline emission reduction from methane emission from the cassava dump and kerosene lamps which amounts to 21,320 tons of CO2 per year.

A recent economic appraisal indicates that the biogas technology for cassava processing waste also looks good economically. The estimated total capital cost of the bioreactor, microturbines and off-grid lighting systems is approximately $310,000 USD and the average annual return on investment from the household lighting tariff (excluding the organic fertilizer) is approximately $86,400 USD (less operation and maintenance cost). This biogas plant is projected to be cost effective as its high investment cost will be outweighed by low operation and maintenance costs and a very short turnaround cycle on return on investment of about 3 ½ years,  The plant should last approximately 15 years.