To develop and embed new capabilities to optimise a novel anaerobic digestion technology with significant potential for positive environmental and social impact.

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Agricultural waste in sub-Saharan Africa has significant untapped potential for biogas production. Biogas technologies are being applied to the conversion of some of these wastes into clean renewable energy, but to date this has relied largely on first generation 'wet' anaerobic digestion (AD) systems with high capital and operational costs and high parasitic energy loads. In this project, a consortium of leading experts outline to introduce innovative and efficient sequencing batch 'dry' AD system enabled by robust ancillary monitoring systems that will optimise the AD process. This will be supported in county with increased analytical capacity building that will support this project and the wider AD sector, addressing one of the key failure points for AD systems - lack of technical support. This will provide a route to clean affordable energy in rural sub-Saharan Africa by utilising high dry matter and high cellulose wastes. This novel approach is systematically designed to overcome the key barriers to adoption and sustainability of energy from waste fed AD systems; capital cost, complexity, operational cost and local capacity. The AD system will be designed as a flat pack system to be built in Kenya using local components for final installation. In the commercial phase this enables rapid roll out of the technology whilst the project developers ensure quality of build and IP. The business model looks to provide value to wastes through heat and power generation, selling these services to the agro processing sector, that are coming under increasing legislation in terms of waste control whilst having intermittent power supply. Excess biogas will be dried and compressed and used in local communities for cooking, lighting and cooling. Digestate will be processed to a compost and reused back in agriculture. The respective innovations will help to overcome the energy trilemma whilst providing commercial ecosystems services to business and communities.

Rice is the world's number one food crop, but its stems and leaves (straw) are a major waste product in developing countries, especially in Asia where around 300 million tonnes of it are burned each year for disposal, damaging the environment and human health. It is generally a poor quality feed for livestock and is not suitable for incorporating back into flooded rice fields, which would result in emissions of methane - a powerful greenhouse gas. Prior research has shown that it can be made into a clean-burning cooking fuel (biogas) using anaerobic digestion, but there are many technical and non-technical barriers to be overcome, such as getting the straw from the field to a hub economically and overcoming challenges in processing it into fuel. This project brings together two innovative businesses and leading academics in their field to set up a field trial in the Philippines, backed up by significant lab work and analysis in the UK. The aim is to develop a practical solution that could profitably serve remote communities of rice farmers, who are among the 3 billion people worldwide who lack clean cooking fuel but are surrounded by this vast, underused bioenergy resource.