Biogas — Answer to solid waste menace
UMAWA-Ghana and its French partner, Arkolia Energies, are set to establish a biogas plant in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi.
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The Ghanaian and French companies recently formed a joint venture, UMAWA-Arkolia West Africa Ltd.
Umawa (Unser Man Aus West afrika), a German expression which literary means ‘Our man from West Africa’, is a wholly Ghanaian-owned company, while Arkolia Energies is an established French company with expertise in renewable energy production.
Arkolia has built about 50 biogas and photovoltaic plants across France.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of UMAWA-Arkolia, Mr Francis Kwaku Mensah, the project has been designed to help resolve two of the country’s major challenges — waste disposal and the provision of reliable power.
Biogas production
Biogas, also referred to as methane gas, is a mixture of gases produced through the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen.
Biogas can be produced from raw materials such as household waste, farm residue, industrial waste and animal manure.
It is a renewable energy source and with the right technology it can also be harnessed to fuel domestic stoves and boilers.
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Its benefits to the environment are two-fold — dealing with garbage in a controlled and environmentally friendly manner and producing the much needed energy for accelerated economic growth.
With waste-to-energy plants, landfills that have been an age-old method of managing our waste will be a thing of the past
The Accra metropolis alone produces in excess of 2,000 tonnes of solid waste daily, while about 65-70 per cent is collected and simply dumped in diminishing landfills, not to mention the stench that goes with it.
The city also suffers from acute darkness at night, a situation worsened by load-shedding exercises which have become frequent in recent years.
“The use of biogas in energy production avoids the alternative disposal of household waste. The waste engulfing the nation could easily be tranformed into electricity and at the same time compost for our farmlands, with the requisite capital available.
“We have the requisite technology and resources; we are set to be the pioneers in West Africa to commercially produce energy from household waste,“ Mr Mensah affirmed.
The biogas project
Many, including the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), have failed in turning mounting garbage into energy, largely because of the high organic content found in the type of solid waste produced in the cities.
Mr Mensah, however, indicated that the UMAWA-Arkolia biogas plant, using Arkolia’s own invention — the now acclaimed ArkoMetha — required high organic matter component in the waste, stressing that “the higher the organic matter in the rubbish, the better the methanisation process for the ArkoMetha. The ArkoMetha digests the waste through methanisation in closed vats and in the absence of oxygen, a process that doesn‘t emit hazardous odour in the environs of the plant. We are real environmental cleaners if you want”.
He said French technicians would be in the country for 18 months during the installation of the plant in the Garden City and at the same time train about 40 local engineers and technicians to manage and plan the construction of other plants.
Mr Mensah said UMAWA-Arkolia would replicate the exact technology as available in France.
Arkolia representatives visit Ghana
To firm up plans for the biogas plant scheduled for construction in 2015, two representatives of Arkolia Energies, Messrs Alain Planchot, the Chairman of the board, and Laurent Bonhomme, the CEO of Arkolia Energies, visited the country to hold discussions with prospective partners.
During the one-week stay in the country, the team, led by Mr Planchot, had meetings with officials of the Ghana Investment Promotion Council, the Electricity Company of Ghana, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, the Energy Commission and the French Ambassador, Mr Frédéric Clavier
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It also met with the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Kojo Bonsu, who assured them of his support for the project.