posted 6 years ago
From what I remember from reading about biogas, it works ideally at temperatures like 37C (ie body temperature, for obvious reasons), and processes slower and slower as it gets cooler. At 20C it slows almost to a stop. We live in a cold climate and have cows at our school, so we were thinking we'd have to put the digester in a passive solar heated situation. If the process slows to a stop, not only would we not get gas at that time, but undigested manure would come out as the slurry. With cow dung that's not a problem, but human excrement would be unpleasant. One way around this, we thought, is to use a tank big enough to hold 3 months of manure, so that even if digestion slows down to stop in the winter, the manure remains in the digester and gives gas when it warms up after the coldest part of winter is finished. However your homebiogas.com link says that this is not a solution as the slurry in the digester changes its ph and is hard to recuperate from.
If you can't use the heater as suggested on their website, you might have to use a different toilet system for the coldest months, such as a Humanure bucket system, if you don't want any extra cost.
Works at a residential alternative high school in the Himalayas SECMOL.org . "Back home" is Cape Cod, E Coast USA.