Waste to wisdom: Strengthening biodigester practitioners in Southeast Asia
Introduction
| Location: | Wariyapola, Sri Lanka, Sabah and Sarawak states, Malaysia |
| Technology: | Biogas digesters |
| Costs: | Total: 38 200 € |
| WISIONS financial support: 38 200 € | |
| Partners Involved: | Green Empowerment https://greenempowerment.org/
Janathakshan https://janathakshan.lk/ |
| Duration: | October 2017 – May 2019 |
Eighty percent of rural households in Malaysia's North Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak still rely on firewood for cooking, contributing to lung disease and deforestation. At the same time, the burning of organic and inorganic waste remains commonplace in many Malaysian communities.
Exchange need and objective(s)
Practitioners and communities throughout Malaysia have articulated the need for clean cooking technologies. These groups have also expressed a need for technologies and approaches to reduce the amount of waste generated by rural communities. Biogas digesters could be an appropriate technology to address both challenges simultaneously. However, in Malaysia and the Philippines, there is a lack of knowledge among organisations about how to use biogas digesters in a rural context. In Sri Lanka, in contrast, the Janathakshan organisation's approach to the technology has been very successful. Their system design, using fibreglass moulds, would also be appropriate for the Malaysian rural context where many sites are difficult to access. Therefore, this knowledge exchange aimed to fill the technical gaps in organisations in Malaysia and the Philippines by sharing knowledge from Sri Lanka. By giving rural communities the skills to install and operate biogas digesters, the aim was to provide a clean cooking fuel alternative while encouraging them to think more creatively about waste.
This knowledge exchange aimed to:
- transfer knowledge about low-cost, locally appropriate biogas digester technology from Sri Lankan practitioners to South East Asian practitioners;
- develop a plan with stakeholders for introducing and scaling community biogas digester installations in South East Asia;
- enable Sri Lankan practitioners to supervise the installation of a community biogas digester in Sabah, Malaysia;
- produce a biogas training manual and “installation kits” for participants.
Participants & target group(s)
Rural development practitioners from local NGOs, engineers and students, as well as small business owners and farmers, were trained in the design, installation and management of community biodigesters. Further target groups involved in stakeholder meetings were public representatives, vocational schools and aid organisations such as UNDP.
Activities
This knowledge exchange focused mainly on different trainings with both theoretical and practical components. First, a two-week training course in Sri Lanka on hard shell digesters was held, comprising theory lectures, site visits, and the construction of a biodigester. The 13 participants from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia were enabled to design, install and manage low-cost biogas digester systems. They also developed mock proposals for biodigester projects. The second training was attended by representatives of local NGOs, small business owners and farmers from several regions of Sabah state, Malaysia. It was led by the participants from the Sri Lanka knowledge exchange to promote the dissemination of biodigester technology within their home regions. A first pilot biogas digester, made from ferrocement and capable of producing up to 3 cubic meters of gas a day, was constructed at a nursery and preschool site. As its kitchen serves the preschool and a café, it has an ideal feedstock of waste as well as a need. Last but not least it receives hundreds of local and international visitors a year, so the visibility of the project would be high. The third and final training on the technology took place in Nampasan Village, Sabah state, Malaysia. The aim of this training was to design and install a tubular gas biogas digester based on already installed examples in Latin America. With slight improvements to the local conditions in Malaysia on the geomembrane, the biodigester got more durable and puncture resistant to the environmental circumstances. The biodigester was installed on a pig farm and will produce 3,095 liters of biogas per day, which is enough to cook for ten hours or to cook for five hours and burn two gas lamps for six hours each. The training of the trainers was geared toward practitioners who had already had training on biogas digester technology and will work with community members to install biogas digesters. The trainees included staff from different NGOs and local organisations. For both hardshell and tubular biodigester types, design, installation and operation manuals were developed and translated into Malay for trainings in Malaysia.
Results & impact
The participants left the exchange with the knowledge to design, install, operate and maintain low-cost biogas digester systems. As a result, a number of projects has been proposed by Sabah’s public representatives for both village level and municipal level biogas projects. Discussions with the Sabah Skills Training Center, a vocational school, are under way to set up a field based curriculum. The knowledge exchange has built a core of human and knowledge resources able to replicate biodigester systems. These practitioners have also demonstrated that they are able to advocate for greater proliferation of the technology in their home regions. Both the knowledge and experience of Janathakshan in Sri Lanka and that of Green Empowerment in Latin America have helped Malaysia, and to a lesser extent the Philippines, to access a range of tools that will be valuable for the further development of the sector.
Lessons learned
Although the trainees were able to obtain an adequate grasp of the functionality of a biogas system, there were challenges in the installation process. Correct construction of the digester requires a very high level of skill from the masons working on it, as even the slightest crack will cause a leak and render the system dysfunctional. The trainees were able to complete the structural masonry but hired masons were required for the finishing and waterproofing and sealing of the system. The shortage of qualified bricklayers in Sabah needs to be addressed and this is one of the objectives of involving vocational training institutions in the process. In addition, it remains to be seen whether the tubular biogas digester will be a viable solution for Malaysia.
