How Uganda is turning waste into power

Uganda’s largest slaughterhouse runs 24 hours a day, turning up
to 700 cattle, 200 sheep and 300 chickens each day into meat for
the local market.
But the energy-thirsty Kampala City Abattoir is often brought to
a stutter by the city’s daily power outages, which can last up to
12 hours. At those times, it is forced to rely on polluting diesel
generators that are expensive to run.
Then there’s the problem of the large amounts of blood,
wastewater and other waste produced, much of which is drained
directly into nearby Murchison Bay in Lake Victoria.
Across East Africa, increases in processing of agricultural
products – a change meant to boost local economics and
provide jobs – is being accompanied by an increase in organic
waste dumped into bodies of water and open landfills.
But a pilot project to turn that waste into biogas is getting started
this month in Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
Funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency (SIDA) through the Bio-resources Innovations Network
for Eastern Africa (Bio-Innovate), the effort aims to provide
training and technology to agricultural factories to help them
generate their own power, save on electricity and cut down on
climate-changing emissions.
Capturing cheap energy
At the Kampala City Abattoir, the changeover is already
underway.
To turn waste into power, the slaughterhouse puts its waste and
wastewater through a fermentation process that releases
methane, which is then captured and burned to produce
electricity.
The facility uses the biogas it produces to power its generator.
“We are generating on average about 10 to 15 cubic metres of
biogas daily,” said Joseph Kyambadde, head of biochemistry at
Makerere University and one of those involved with the project.
“With 60 cubic metres of gas we (would be) able to run about 15
security lights, 15 deep freezers and 15 refrigerators at the
abattoir, helping save around 8 million Ugandan shillings
($2,800) per month,” he said.
To add to the project’s green credentials, it uses solar panels to
heat water and raise the temperature in the digester, to allow it
to produce the most burnable methane, said Robinson Odong, a
biological sciences lecturer at Makerere University and a
manager of the biogas project.
Besides helping the slaughterhouse get around the city’s
frequent blackouts, using biogas for energy has cut the plant’s
monthly diesel bill by 90 percent.
“We are now spending 300,000 Ugandan shillings ($105) per
month on diesel instead of 3.5 million shillings ($1,200), as the
generator now runs on biogas during power blackouts,” said
Nsubuga Muhamed, the Kampala City Abattoir secretary.
Plans to scale up
According to Odong, the project currently treats 40 percent of the
Kampala abattoir’s waste, though the facility plans to eventually
treat 100 percent.
“There are plans to upscale the technology to completely rely on
biogas and sell the excess (energy) to the national grid,” said
Kyambadde of Makerere University.
Using $275,000 in SIDA funding, backers hope to replicate the
project across Uganda, said Allan Liavoga, manager of the Bio-
Innovate project.
Uganda’s government is also watching the effort closely, to see
if it might offer one answer to Uganda’s energy problems.
“We are an energy-poor country, with 95 percent of rural
households having no access to electricity,” said Ronald
Kaggwa, an environmental economist at the Uganda National
Environmental Management Authority.
If the biogas project is scaled up, it could allow Ugandans who
live too far from the power grid to generate their own energy, he
said.
And if the country could turn more of its waste and wastewater
into biogas, it would also be closer to its goals of switching to
greener power sources and reducing deforestation, officials say.
“About 15-20 percent of our felled trees are used to produce
charcoal (which is in) demand in urban areas,” Kaggwa said. But
“biogas will help us save our forests,” he said. (Reporting by
Sophie Mbugua; editing by Laurie Goering)