Compas de Nicaragua

CIPRES Bio-Gas System

In rural Nicaragua, the majority of families still cook with wood stoves.  The use of wood for cooking has contributed to the deforestation of many parts of Nicaragua.  As firewood becomes scarce, families must travel farther in search of wood and scavenge and fall trees in critical ravine areas.  The smoke from wood stoves causes respiratory illnesses and eye irritation in women and children.  

In 2009, Compas built 5 bio-gas systems in La Paz.  The systems provide an average of 5 to 7 hours of cooking gas a day.  The systems virtually eliminate the use of wood for cooking.  Families are saving time and energy involved in splitting wood and starting fires and saving money in the purchase of firewood.  Best of all, the systems are helping to save rainforests, and eliminating harmful wood fire smoke. 

At first, families were reluctant about using manure for cooking.  Now that they have seen how beautifully the systems work, how easy they are to maintain, and that they do not emit any unwanted odors, more and more families are signing up for the systems.  

In 2010, Compas hopes to build another 10 systems in La Paz.  With each system we build, we are working to support rural families in Nicaragua and at the same time, helping to save rainforests and reduce our carbon footprints. 

Bio-gas is generated when bacteria degrade biological material in the absence of oxygen, in a process known as anaerobic digestion. Bio-gas, a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, is a renewable fuel produced from waste treatment.

UNH students working on installing at Bio-gas system

Bio-gas provides a clean, easily controlled source of renewable energy from organic waste materials for a small labor input, replacing firewood or fossil fuels (which are becoming more expensive as supply falls behind demand and which contribute to global warming). During the conversion process pathogen levels are reduced and plant nutrients made more readily available, so the sludge produced provides a better fertilizer for crops.   

There are many advantages of bio-gas over wood as a cooking fuel:

Benefits of the systems:

- Destroy methane, the highly destructive greenhouse gas, so it does not go into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming

- Provide clean-burning fuel for stoves and lamps instead of using wood or dung which lose their soil building and fertilizing value when burned

- Reduce labor, since women now spend one day a week to collect a backbreaking 60 - 80 lb. load of scarce firewood

- Save families money, labor and time needed to purchase, search for and split firewood

- Protect the remaining forests by reducing the need to gather firewood

- Reduce respiratory disorders and eye irritation caused by smoke from cooking with firewood which especially affects women and their small children

- Improve village hygiene

- Yield more potent sludge fertilizer than the original manure waste

- Motivate users to contain livestock which otherwise consume forest regeneration as they graze

These low tech systems are easily installed and maintained, and the primary material (cow or pig manure) is readily available.