คนไทยไม่ต้องหันจมูกหนีฟาร์มหมูอีกต่อไป
BANGKOK (dpa) - Not too long ago Somchai Nitikanchana, the proud owner of 40,000 pigs, was an unpopular guy in his neighbourhood.
"In the past, people tried to prevent pig farms from starting up
near their homes because they polluted the environment, caused a
tremendous stink and attracted flies," said Somchai, the owner and
manager of SPM Feedmill Company and two pig farms.
Six years ago, tired of being the local pariah in Paktho, Ratchburi
province, 100 kilometres west of Bangkok, Somchai looked into a new
technology promoted by Chiang Mai University that promised to take
the stink out of pig farming, and create some bio-gas in the process.
Working on pilot projects with funding from the German Agency for
Technology Cooperation (GTZ), the northern university had developed
and adapted German technology for turning pigs' waste into biogas
for several pilot projects.
When Somchai expressed interest in the technology in 1995, the
government's National Energy Policy Office (NEPO), backed by the
Energy Conservation Fund, had taken over up the Chiang Mai
University project as an important experiment in energy conservation.
NEPO's chief task is to find workable ways of conserving energy
consumption in Thailand, which is dependent on oil imports for more
than 50 per cent of its energy needs.
Since 1995, NEPO has been trying to encourage the Thailand's 140
large pig farmers, raising more than 5,000 animals each, to invest
in a fairly simple technology that will transform pig excrement into
biogas, which in turn will reduce their operating costs by slashing
electricity and cooking gas bills. To entice farmers into the
programme, NEPO subsidizes 30-40 per cent of the investment costs
with money from the Energy Conservation Fund, a government fund.
So far, 22 large farms with about 600,000 pigs (Thailand's total pig
population is close to 6 million) have joined the programme,
including Somchai's operation.
Somchai's total investment in the biogas technology for his three
operations - two pig farms and a feedmill, amounted to 43 million
baht (977,272 dollars), of which NEPO paid 11.6 million baht
(263,636 dollars).
The technology is fairly simple, involving building cement ponds for
the pig waste covered by tough plastic sheets that eventually puff
up with methane gas and carbodioxide as the waste decomposes. The
gas is piped off and used to fuel the farm's feedmill, heat pens for
baby piglets and cool pens for adult ones.
It can also be used for cooking. Another environmental benefit is
that the process stripped the waste of its most toxic chemicals, and
thus prevents the waste water from polluting nearby waterways.
On one farm alone the biogas has helped Somchai reduce his monthly
electricity bill from 300,000 baht (6,818 dollars) to 100,000
(2,272). With the feedmill, he is saving 3 million baht (68,182
dollars) a year in fuel bills.
"This has been one of our most successful projects under the Energy
Conservation Fund," said Piyasavasti Amranand, NEPO's secretary
general.
Over the next five years, NEPO hopes to get another 90 large pig
farms under the programme, or 4 million pigs.
He figures the biogas their excrement will generate is not
insignificant. One pig's annual waste output creates about the
equivalent of one cylinder of liquified petroleum gas (LPG).
At 300 baht (6.80 dollars) per cylinder, 4 million piggies could
save the country 1.2 billion baht (27.3 million dollars) in LPG use.
"It may not seem significant compared to the overall energy use, but
for each farm the savings is significant, and for the whole country
its the beginning of a much bigger savings," said Piyasavasti.
NEPO thinks the same technology being applied to Thailand's pig
farms can be used to treat waste water in other industries such as
food processing, alcohol production and chicken farming, all of them
big businesses in the country.
The successful biogas experiment has also allowed the government to
issue new environmental standards on wastewater treatment at pig
farms, which will go into effect in February, 2002. Without the
technology, such standards would have been difficult to enforce.
Meanwhile, the technology has proved a major boon for Somchai's
social life.
"Now I have no problem with wastewater, the stink has disappeared
and the flies have gone," said Somchai. "And the villagers love me
because I give them work."