SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador, Mar 01 (IPS) – In a win-win relationship, a section of El Salvador’s agribusiness business is taking steps to ease the stress of the historic socio-environmental battle attributable to poultry and pig farms, whose waste has precipitated concern and anger in close by communities.
Right this moment, some firms within the sector are changing the waste into biogas to provide electrical energy for their very own consumption and to inject the remainder into the nationwide grid.
“Folks now not say that the rooster manure is contaminating our water or land. That is essential for the group, now we do not have to take care of that air pollution anymore,” small farmer Elizabeth Méndez, who welcomes the investments made by Grupo Campestre to course of the waste and generate biogas, instructed IPS.
Méndez, 44, lives within the San Carlos El Amate canton, within the municipality of San Miguel in jap El Salvador. Close to her group is situated one of many 4 poultry farms of Grupo Campestre, which owns a number of firms within the agribusiness sector and fried rooster restaurant chains.
“Issues was once completely different, there was a foul stench. However now we live in a extra favorable surroundings,” burdened Méndez, after a tough day working as a farm laborer, throughout an IPS tour of rural localities in San Miguel close to poultry farms.
El Salvador, the smallest nation in Central America, with 6.7 million inhabitants and a territory of 21,000 sq. kilometers, is the scene of disputes between poultry and pig farms and the agricultural households that dwell close to them, because the business has typically did not handle its biowaste correctly.
Round economic system: biogas from manure
Grupo Campestre took a key step about 4 years in the past when it determined to take a position round seven million {dollars} to sort out the thorny challenge of biowaste head-on, and bought state-of-the-art expertise to provide biogas, to generate electrical energy for consumption and injection into the nationwide grid.
The corporate’s biogas plant is situated within the El Brazo canton, additionally in San Miguel, close to the world the place the farms are situated, which produce eight million chickens per yr, whose manure is the primary element to provide biogas.
All biowaste from the corporate’s varied enterprise actions, resembling rooster manure from the farms and liquid and stable waste from the poultry processing plant, in addition to biodegradable materials from the fried rooster eating places, are processed right here.
“As a part of the sustainability of operations, the necessity arises to maneuver in direction of a round economic system mannequin, to reincorporate waste into its life cycle, by reuse, recycling, or producing power,” Jimmy Gómez, environmental compliance supervisor for Grupo Campestre, instructed IPS on the facility.
The biogas plant, in operation since 2021, processes some 40,000 tons per yr of organic waste with power potential, which is fed into two enormous biodigesters the place micro organism decompose the waste to generate gases resembling methane, the primary gas that drives a generator with 850 kilowatts of put in energy.
The biodigesters generate round 10,000 cubic meters of biogas per day, producing 17 megawatt hours a day of electrical energy.
“Right this moment rooster manure is the primary waste product that’s given new worth on the biogas plant, producing about 80 % of all of the power we produce and promote,” stated Gómez, a chemical engineer.
Grupo Campestre has entered into an power gross sales contract with Empresa de Electricidad de Oriente, one of many 4 electrical energy distribution firms in El Salvador, owned by AES El Salvador, a subsidiary of the U.S. transnational AES Company.
“We resolved a socio-environmental challenge, which introduced complaints from close by communities about dangerous odors and flies, and we turned it into a possibility, which has additionally helped us to supply help to the opposite firms within the group,” stated Gómez.
When the plant started to function, it was additionally obligatory to deal with the noise air pollution attributable to the generator that produces the biogas. The answer was to surround it in a steel container in order that the sound now doesn’t exceed 50 decibels and can’t be heard from 20 meters away.
A part of the power generated, round 50 kilowatts, is used for the plant’s personal consumption, manufacturing supervisor Rubén Membreño instructed IPS. As well as, tons of of photo voltaic panels, positioned on the roof of a big shed containing 1000’s of chickens, generate 5.5 megawatts per hour per day.
This power effectivity supplies the corporate with the capability to even present waste processing providers to different firms within the agroindustrial sector that haven’t but made the required investments to hold out the transition.
“We’re profiting from all of the waste from our personal firms, and in addition from different firms. For them it’s waste however for us it’s our uncooked materials” to generate electrical energy, Membreño identified.
The expertise used within the plant was offered by European firms, primarily from Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, he stated.
Aid for the local weather
Methane, the primary gasoline produced within the bacterial decomposition course of within the biodigester, is among the main pollution and causes of the greenhouse impact. However utilizing it within the manufacturing of electrical energy prevents it from being launched into the environment, thus assuaging the results of local weather change.
In keeping with firm estimates, methane makes up 60 % of the plant’s biogas manufacturing course of, thereby “capturing” round 24,000 tons of CO2 or carbon dioxide per yr, which damages the environment and impacts life on the planet by local weather change that produces excessive rainfall and droughts.
If that methane weren’t “burned” on the plant, “it might stay on the bottom, within the open and would go into the environment,” stated Gómez.
One other agroindustrial firm that has included new applied sciences to course of its waste and generate biogas is Avícola El Granjero, which produces eggs from farms with multiple million hens.
Its 5,000 cubic meter biodigester produces the biogas that drives two 360 kilowatt turbines, and the ensuing electrical energy is fed into the nationwide grid.
Granja San José, within the poultry and swine business, additionally has a biodigester that processes the manure from 13,000 hogs and 75,000 hens.
Pending disputes
However regardless of these strides, the poultry and swine farming sector has not utterly reconverted and socio-environmental conflicts are nonetheless simmering in a number of components of the nation.
In Might 2023, IPS reported on the wrestle of rural villages close to the municipality of Suchitoto, within the central Salvadoran division of Cuscatlán, to defend their group water system, inbuilt 2002, which will probably be affected by Avícola Salvadoreña, an organization that’s constructing an agribusiness farm close by.
“The work has continued, vans with building supplies are passing by on a regular basis,” Blanca Portillo, a resident of Nueva Consolación, one of many seven rural settlements affected by the mission, instructed IPS in a dialog on Feb. 28.
Portillo stated native residents have discovered {that a} court docket, which is dealing with the battle, has requested that the poultry firm perform a brand new environmental affect examine and citizen enter session, because of obvious violations dedicated beforehand.
Lots of the close by villages will not be equipped by the nationwide grid, and have labored onerous to arrange their very own group water tasks, which at the moment are liable to being contaminated with waste from the farm.
“The authorities have instructed us that they won’t give water exploitation permits to the corporate if there’s a threat of contamination. However we do not know if they’re simply saying that to maintain us quiet,” stated Portillo, a member of the Haciendita Rural Water and Sanitation Affiliation, which serves some 1,000 households in seven communities, together with Nueva Consolación.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
