How to Make your own Biogas Digester at Home in 7 easy steps.

What is biogas?

Biogas is a byproduct gas produced when garbage and scraps break down in an enclosed, oxygen-free environment. Anaerobic digestion is the process that produces the gas in a biogas generator. If that reminds you of your stomach, it should since that is exactly what it is a breakdown of material in an oxygen free space, much how your stomach breaks down food.

Because it actually is a stomach that handles anything organic, the materials, or fuel in this example, that can be used to create biogas are limitless. Manure is the most crucial component to employ in a biogas generator. As a result, there is a strong case for using biogas on farms where there are cattle since it converts cow manure into a renewable energy source. This creates the highest level of methane.

Anything organic is OK to add to your biogas generator as additional ingredients. For instance, you could add grass, leftover meat, discarded food from the kitchen, noodles, or bread.

The generation of biogas has significant environmental and societal advantages:

1. Biogas is a renewable energy source that may be used to generate heat and electricity.
2. By replacing fossil fuels with biogas, which is produced through the fermentation of renewable raw materials, greenhouse gas emissions are decreased.
3. Only the amount of CO2 that the plants have already absorbed during growth is released during biogas burning. This indicates that one of the fuels that is CO2-neutral is biogas.
4. Biogas is available continuously and can be stored without any issues, unlike wind, water, or solar energy.
5. Organic waste from businesses and homes is recycled in an ecofriendly way using biogas.
6. Spreading fermented liquid manure results in significantly less offensive odors than regular liquid manure, and the smell dissipates more quickly.
7. Plants absorb the fermentation substrate more readily than regular manure, which can boost crop yield.
8. Environmental contamination can be prevented and artificial fertilizers’ costs can be decreased.

The biogas production Process

At the moment, every manure digester on the market processes organic material as a slurry. Dry manure can be broken down, but the fermentation process is exceedingly slow and renders the system unprofitable. Water increases the amount of surface area that is available to the bacteria that convert nitrogen into methane.

Making Your Own Biogas: 7 Steps

To begin with, you will require certain supplies. Some of them may already be in your home, while others may need to be purchased from a store or online.


For the purposes of this post, the container should be one of those 20-liter office water cooler bottles, if you can find one. The smallest size I would suggest is this. A moderate container would otherwise just be a straightforward 5-gallon bottle for a water cooler, but if you have access to a larger container and want to use a large amount of gas, you can use that as well. All of this relies on the amount of waste you collect.

PVC hosing to connect from the biogas digestor to the gas holder and valve

PVC piping

Gas tap valve

T-valve (it should have three connectable points)

Funnel (for the scraps and manure)

Gas holder: The majority of the biogas digesters I have seen use a tyre tube, similar to what you would use when swimming. Depending on where you store it, this could be dangerous because ultimately it will be full of gas and turn into a very combustible object (can catch fire easily) It’s important to think about where you put it because safety is a concern.

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Super glue or an airtight sealant

Saw to cut PVC pipe

Black paint for the water container to stop sunlight

The PVC pipe must be measured in relation to the container’s height. This will be the input pipe, so mark it out.



You can alternatively add the contents through the top of the 5-gallon water cooler bottle and then seal the top with the lid. The optimum time to do it would be at the beginning, when you add the water and manure.

Measure the length of an outlet pipe that will run horizontally through the container as well. PVC pipe should be measured at half the container’s width. In this manner, you can utilize it as the container’s central output.

The top and sides of the container should both have the outline of the PVC pipe marked on them. The inlet pipe should be placed on top of the container, halfway between the inside and exterior. The exit should be located approximately 10 cm from the bottle’s top breadth.

Cut out the markings after you have made them. Depending on the material you’re working with, there are many ways to accomplish this.

Make sure to leave 2-3 inches of space at the bottom when feeding the input pipe in (from the top). This allows inlet waste to drain down the pipe and gives you room to force any blockages out through the inlet line.

The gas input will also require the same procedure, which should be carried out in an alignment similar to the one below. Feed the piping through after that is finished.

After the pipes have been fed through, we must air tighten our container. Either with a sealant or super glue with sand.

Ensure that your pipes have caps on the exposed ends. Only when we are adding waste to the inlet pipe or dispensing fertilizer from the outlet pipe should we want to open them.

Gas feed hose sealing is important.


Do you recall the T-Valve from the equipment list? Use that on the gas hose’s end. Two additional PVC hosing pieces are also required. The first one will attach to the tube or wherever you decide to keep your gas reserve, and the second one will be fastened to the valve.

The end you will cook on, or burn off if you’re only using it for the fertilizers nutrients, is the valve. Having this close to the kitchen window allows some people to feed their gas pipes through the window and into a camp stove or side burner so that the gas is ready to go when they want to cook.


The T-valve’s central section should be attached to the hose that joins your tube. Your tube ought to have an air nozzle you may use to inject the gas into. Depending on its components you use in the biogas digest, you can simply leave this on and it will be full in a week.

One approach is to place a piece of wood on the tube or other container you use to collect your gas and then place a stone on top of that. When you are prepared to use your gas for cooking, you can slowly release the valve for a good feed of gas because the additional weight keeps the pressure of the gas in the tube.


Use your fuel in the final stage. The greatest kind of manure for our biogas digestion is cow dung. You can utilize any type of dung if there are no cows around. Even chicken poop is sufficient to activate the bacteria in our digester.

Black paint for your water container is another smart move. This prevents sunlight from entering the container, which would otherwise result in algae that produce oxygen. We don’t want that. For all of the nice stuff to happen, we need a low-oxygen, dark environment like our stomach.

I would advise mixing 1 kg of manure with 1 liter of water when utilizing your fuel. Before adding other ingredients, such as food scraps or anything else, let it sit for two days.

You may try this out as a little project for almost no money at all and then scale it up once you feel acquainted with the procedure.

Don’t forget about the juicy outlet either; it works wonders on crops and eliminates the need for fertilizers.

Collecting methane gas from cow manure

The farmer collects the manure at the farm and deposits it in a collection tank. A mixer is located inside the tank and stirs the mixture to achieve homogeneity. After that, a macerator separates the combined liquid into tiny particles. For the purpose of producing biogas, slurry, a homogenized paste, is fed into anaerobic digesters.

Microbes in the manure digester convert the organic material therein into methane and nitrous oxide. You should frequently add organic matter to keep the digester in good condition. To increase the production of manure gas, you can gather animal waste from other farms and businesses and add it to the slurry.

Biogas from pig manure.

Check out this pig farming guide

Every day, an adult pig produces about 5 kilogram of manure. The waste may generate 4.8 cubic feet of biogas per day and is 90% water and 7% volatile solids. Pig manure has a high nitrogen level and a low carbon content, thus using it alone is not advisable. Because of its high alkalinity, it has the ability to prevent microorganisms that produce methane from growing. Methanogens prefer an acidic environment. However, combining pig manure with biomass (Wood (logs, chips, bark, sawdust) Agricultural waste (fruit pits, corn cobs, straw)
Solid waste (garbage, food processing waste) or cow dung can enhance the biogas production process.

Chicken manure biogas

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Due to the fact that 100kg of chicken litter will yield about 20m3 of biogas, chicken manure is an appropriate feedstock for digesters. However, the high nitrogen content of poultry manure makes it difficult for the bacteria in a biogas plant to digest it. By combining chicken waste with carbon-rich materials, such as biomass or cow dung, you can improve the quality of poultry biogas.

How to use the biogas you generate

The biogas produced by the most effective digesters contains 60% methane and 40% carbon dioxide. Manure biogas has an energy potential that is 60% greater than that of natural gas. As a result, it can take the place of traditional fuels in power plants and central heating systems. According to comparison studies, it is competitive with the majority of fossil fuels and nearly on par with LPG and natural gas. Place condensation traps along the gas pipes to capture the water vapor if you plan to cook with and heat boilers with biogas made from manure.

Handling the waste

Since only 25% of the feedstock is turned into biogas, there will be an abundance of effluent left over once the volatile solids have been used up. The digestate can be applied as fertilizer. This kind of fertilizer has a lot of nitrogen, which makes it more nutrient-dense than raw manure. In comparison to raw manure, it is also considerably simpler for crops to absorb.

In comparison to the 25% and 50% found in deep litter and slurry, respectively, the digester turns nearly 80% of the nitrogen in the waste into ammonium nitrate. The utilization of this type of nitrogen by plants is significantly simpler. The waste that you do not intend to utilize right away should be placed in an airtight container because ammonia is known to leak. Before drying and treating the substrate to create fertilizer pellets, you can press it to eliminate excess water.

Final remarks

There are various kinds of biogas digesters, and each one is appropriate for a specific class of feedstock. When establishing a manure gas plant on your farm, always search for one that is appropriate for livestock waste. The majority of digester manufacturers offer thorough instructions on how to blend different feedstock sources.

Due to the fact that biogas is volatile and capable of causing explosions under certain circumstances, your plant should also adhere to local safety laws. If someone is exposed to it in an area with insufficient airflow, it can potentially result in asphyxia.

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