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A Biogas Decision Support System Tool |
| Published in: | Innovation and Development for the Americas: Engineering, Education, Research and Development: Proceedings of the 8th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology |  |
| Date of Conference: | June 1-4, 2010 |
| Location of Conference: | Arequipa, Peru |
| Authors: | Cristián Cárdenas-Lailhacar
Anuj Lahoti
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| Refereed Paper: | #66 |
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Abstract |
The importance that renewable energy sources are having nowadays is tremendous. Among them perhaps one of
the most important ones is the generation of Biogas. Its current cost is very competitive with Natural Gas regular
prices, electricity and other renewable. In this work we present a Biogas generation Decision Support System
application that allows for a very simple calculation of the amount of Biogas to be generated from a given organic
material. The other way around is also considered. .
The general background is discussed, with emphasis on the theoretical background discussing the amount of
Biogas a digester can provide. Then, we present the application designed using Microsoft Visual Basic application
we developed. Sample calculations are shown, with simple user friendly screens. Our calculations are validated
against current costs of natural gas. The subroutine presents very good results for applications of different
biomass sources. Moreover, the user can update the database used with different new raw materials sources.
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