Optimal sizing of Decentralized Biogas Plants in the West Bank

As environmental issues are the key question recently, and because of the Palestinian political situation in the field of energy generation, a need for a renewable solution is essential. Biogas became one of the answers, which is a well-recognized renewable energy source with a wide variety of organic raw materials including food waste, animal manure, municipal waste, agriculture waste, and sewage. Palestine has high potential of bio waste, especially animal manure due to the widespread in animal gatherings. Detailed data on the types of farm animals, amount, and their distribution from the Palestinian central bureau of statistics (PCBS) was the raw material of this research. This paper focuses on studying the feasibility of constructing decentralized biogas plants in the West Bank region supplied with animal manure as the organic matter. A full design for a biogas plant at each animal gathering was conducted. The simulation took into consideration the construction of the rubber fixed dome vertical bio-digester and all electrical and mechanical components, for each gathering the size of plant was determined in terms of bio digester volume (ranges between 2.5-24,000m
³
. Risk management was implemented while making the study in four stages of: (1) Raw Material Analysis, (2) Plant Engineering/ Design, (3) Technology Available and (4) Economics. The main constraints were the dependency of biogas production with the ambient temperature and animals' feed. They could be minimized by proper design for the plant and management of raw materials. As the production of biogas depends on the availability of raw materials, the West Bank regions were analysed in terms of the potential of animal number and their manure production. It was recognized that the highest derived energy under standard conditions is from Hebron city, with an average reference yield of 473√kWh/day that generates an annual of 1.72 MWh electricity. The plant construction, operation and maintenance phases were analysed economically in terms of different parameters to define Internal Rate of Return IRR for each plant size. The Life Cycle Cost LCC could give an indication of the plant investments where the CHPgenerator has the highest contribution with 91.5%, followed by the construction cost of 7.5%. The study could approve the feasibility of having BG-plants in the West Bank as the average IRR is 15% and Levelized Energy Cost LEC for producing electricity from BG-plants is 0.021 $/kWh which is less by 80% from the price of bought electricity by the Palestinian Electricity Transmission PETL. BG plants adds up many benefits to the Palestinian market and community, by (1) achieving an average profit of (0.84-0.065)$/kWh for size range of (210-8500)m
³
. (2) Creating new job opportunities. (3) Considered as a clean energy source with no net carbon emissions.