engleski

Biogas potential in Croatian farming sector

Farming sector, in general, is a big producer of manure and thereby also a big producer of greenhouse gasses. The issue of methane production from animals on farms should be seen as an opportunity in producing green energy and contributing into reducing green house effect. Croatian farming sector is pretty undeveloped if we compare it to the other EU member states. This is one of the legacies from past state where agriculture was not something worth of heavy investments. This was not only the case for Croatian farming sector, but also Croatian agriculture in general for the last twenty or more years. However in the last five years there were a lot of improvements and investments in agriculture and in the farming sector. More and more questions regarding energy issues and energy management on farms are becoming important. But this is still not enough if we want to use all of our resources and potentials. If we consider the fact that there are more than 24 200 pig farms in Croatia and over 240 000 dairy cows alone it is obviously that there is a big potential for biogas production. Especially if we consider the fact that there is no serious biogas plat in Croatia jet. All of this information with a promising increase in agricultural investing leads us to a question of total biogas potential for the farming sector in Croatia. Through this paper we will show the total number of farms and their potential for producing, storing or using biogas. The main challenges would be to separate small family farms that basically have no biogas potential and bigger modern farms that could be considered for biogas production. One other concept would be the possibility of gathering farms for joint biogas production but for this scenario special calculation should be made taking into consideration economic viability and distances between farms. The value of finding Croatian s biogas potential regarding farms is also important since farms are consuming a lot of energy in their everyday operations: water heaters, milk coolers, vacuum pumps, lighting, irrigation pumps, fodder dryers, ventilation etc. A lot of this energy consumption can be compensated from renewable energy source like biogas. This is also one of the aspects of this research. In this case primary focus is on electrical energy that could be produced from burning biogas in an engine but also heat energy that could be produced in this process.

biogas ; farming sector ; renewable energy ; pigs ; cows ; manure

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