期刊
WASTE MANAGEMENT
卷 138, 期 -, 页码 8-18出版社
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2021.11.004
关键词
Anaerobic digestion; Cost-benefit analysis; Economic feasibility; Smallholder farming; Techno-economic analysis; Water-Energy-Food nexus
资金
- African Union Research [AURG-II-1-075-2016]
- Stellenbosch University, Department of Process Engineering
This paper presents a probabilistic techno-economic assessment tool for anaerobic digestion technology, and demonstrates the financial and economic feasibility of smallholder farm-based anaerobic digesters through a case study.
Anaerobic digestion (AD) technology holds numerous potential benefits for farmers, however, challenges persist in terms of implementation costs and sustainability in developing countries. This paper presents a probabilistic techno-economic assessment tool for AD. A clear distinction is made between direct financial feasibility and wider (socio) economic feasibility. The tool identifies the technical-and economic factors influencing the returns of a particular AD process as well as the sensitivity of model predictions to variations in the value of the identified factors using a Monte Carlo approach. The tool is applied to assess the feasibility of a smallholder farm based AD installation under a variety of substrates and operating conditions as an illustrative case study, where on-going flows of costs and benefits were considered over a 15-year period and discounted at a rate of 8%. The results of the case study revealed that the installation of a 10 m3 smallholder farm-based anaerobic digester are likely to be financially and economically viable with a financial benefit-cost ratio of 1.30-1.38 and an economic benefit-cost ratio ranged from 5.49 to 6.01. Risk assessment results confirmed the strong economic feasibility of a smallholder farm-based AD implementation: under the most conservative cost estimates, there is a 73% probability of achieving a financial benefit-cost ratio > 1, while there is a 96.6% probability of achieving an economic benefit-cost ratio > 1. The case study demonstrated the utility of probabilistic techno-economic assessments for informed decision making, a tool which can be readily generalized to other settings.
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