The production of coffee is one of the main economic and agricultural cornerstones of South American economies and follows a long tradition in means of production and processes. But in particular this production has enormous environmental impact because of the intensive use of water during the production process, conseqently resultiung in high amounts of untreated wastewater. More than 80% of the coffee bean dissolves in the wastewater, which actually makes it a highly polluting crop for the environment. However, the opportunity to use this untreated wastewater has been considered by the speaker Osmer Ponce (Universidad Catolica de Honduras) as an highly promising source of anaerobic digestion and the following production of renewable energy in biodigestor technology. In this webinar Osmer Ponce presents more infomation about the potential of biodigestor technology in the coffee production processs! Listen and watch here! 

Organic Waste-to-Energy (OWtE) technologies are considered to provide a simple and sustainable source for renewable energy in forms of electricity or heat from processing of biomass waste into fuel. Therefore, this type of energy production has great potential for energy access and actually reducing carbon emissions due to the substitution of carbon fuels. Regardless of the developmental advantages of the technology in the energy access context, the application of it is significantly underrepresented even though progress has been made. The research team of Silva-Martines, Sanches-Pereira, Gomez Galindo and Coelho have been supported by WISIONS team member Willington Ortiz and collectively they conducted the presented study in order to evaluate the current state-of-the-art of OWtE in the LAC region. By taking a closer look on the situation in the region, which is experiencing an increasing demand of technology and simultaneously meeting carbon emission goals, they aimed to analyse current challenges and concluding opportunities for the application of OWtE technologies in the region. Subsequently, they found out that the potential and impact of such technologies would generally have social and economic benefits, but also substantially contribute to improve waste and energy systems for sustainable development. The study concludes with important key findings for further analysis on the topic and could contribute to improve the dissemination of OWtE technologies in the LAC region.

The presented study can be accessed by following this URL-Link

Find out more about biodigestor technology in our latest webinar edition : 8. Development and application of biodigester technology - Advances from Latin America and Caribbean

More detailed information about the situation in LAC from our practitioner network RedBioLAC