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Relevance of biogas technology to Vhembe district of the Limpopo province in South Africa.

ABSTRACT: Biogas is a clean and renewable form of energy available to low-income households through anaerobic digestion of readily available organic waste. A biodigester converts fermentable organic matter into a combustible gas and organic manure. Anaerobic digestion is a process of subjecting the material to microbial decomposition in the absence of air, yielding finally, methane, carbon dioxide, and water inside the biodigester. In the recent years, biogas has attracted wide attention in view of the fuel crisis and the environmental pollution associated with the fossil fuel, and its importance as an efficient and non-polluting energy source is now well appreciated. The objectives of this desktop study are to investigate the relevance of biogas technology use for substitution of solid fuels in rural areas of Vhembe district, the subsequent health co-benefits, and the constraints to adoption of domestic biogas technology in South Africa. The correlating factors influencing decisions in the sustainable adoption and utilisation of biogas technology in Vhembe district of Limpopo Province in South Africa are examined. In this study, the sampled households involved 72 biogas users and 128 non-users. The sampling techniques was purposive and simple random. The study was based on primary data that was elicited using open and closed-ended questionnaires. The logistic regression model was employed for data analysis. The energy demand of low-income South African households for cooking with fuelwood was found to be 27?MJ/day and the total energy demand 68?MJ/day. Approximately 625 000 households in Vhembe district can potentially benefit from bio-digester fed with cattle and pig waste, on the basis of livestock numbers. Most governments worldwide are now considering locally accessible, available, and renewable substitute energy options.

SUBMITTER: Rasimphi TE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7083760 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Relevance of biogas technology to Vhembe district of the Limpopo province in South Africa.

Rasimphi T E TE Tinarwo D D

Biotechnology reports (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 20191220

Biogas is a clean and renewable form of energy available to low-income households through anaerobic digestion of readily available organic waste. A biodigester converts fermentable organic matter into a combustible gas and organic manure. Anaerobic digestion is a process of subjecting the material to microbial decomposition in the absence of air, yielding finally, methane, carbon dioxide, and water inside the biodigester. In the recent years, biogas has attracted wide attention in view of the fu ...[more]

PMID: 32211307

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Project description:BackgroundTermites are an important food resource for many human populations around the world, and are a good supply of nutrients. The fungus-farming 'higher' termite members of Macrotermitinae are also consumed by modern great apes and are implicated as critical dietary resources for early hominins. While the chemical nutritional composition of edible termites is well known, their microbiomes are unexplored in the context of human health. Here we sequenced the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene of gut microbiota extracted from the whole intestinal tract of two Macrotermes sp. soldiers collected from the Limpopo region of South Africa.ResultsMajor and minor soldier subcastes of M. falciger exhibit consistent differences in taxonomic representation, and are variable in microbial presence and abundance patterns when compared to another edible but less preferred species, M. natalensis. Subcaste differences include alternate patterns in sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogenic Euryarchaeota abundance, and differences in abundance between Alistipes and Ruminococcaceae. M. falciger minor soldiers and M. natalensis soldiers have similar microbial profiles, likely from close proximity to the termite worker castes, particularly during foraging and fungus garden cultivation. Compared with previously published termite and cockroach gut microbiome data, the taxonomic representation was generally split between termites that directly digest lignocellulose and humic substrates and those that consume a more distilled form of nutrition as with the omnivorous cockroaches and fungus-farming termites. Lastly, to determine if edible termites may point to a shared reservoir for rare bacterial taxa found in the gut microbiome of humans, we focused on the genus Treponema. The majority of Treponema sequences from edible termite gut microbiota most closely relate to species recovered from other termites or from environmental samples, except for one novel OTU strain, which clustered separately with Treponema found in hunter-gatherer human groups.ConclusionsMacrotermes consumed by humans display special gut microbial arrangements that are atypical for a lignocellulose digesting invertebrate, but are instead suited to the simplified nutrition in the fungus-farmer diet. Our work brings to light the particular termite microbiome features that should be explored further as avenues in human health, agricultural sustainability, and evolutionary research.

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Relevance of biogas technology to Vhembe district of the Limpopo province in South Africa.

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Relevance of biogas technology to Vhembe district of the Limpopo province in South Africa.

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