You are involved in an agricultural activity; you are producing vegetal and animal residues and looking for a solution to valorise it. You are interested in Biogas plants but first need an economical evaluation.

By consulting the biogas experts in your area of reference and after a brief discussion and evaluation of your activity, you will be advised about implementing a Biogas activity.

This helpdesk can give you a first economical evaluation. You will know the context of the Biogas production in your area and get the maximum outcome of information regarding production potentials, legal obligations, technical advice for biogas plant production and finally a first overview of economical viability for biogas production.

This information is proposed on the basis of calculations and evaluations made with tools developed during the AGROBIOGAS Project and based on real activity results in various European regions.

The main information provided by the Helpdesk should help the farmer who:
  1. Needs to know what are the available biomass resources and combinations (simulation toolkit) with the various biomass resources available
  2. Needs to know the amount of digestate that should be produced with the local biomass resources (substrate database)
  3. Needs to know what the regional market opportunities are (to be aware about the real opportunities). (Investment Decision Tool)
  4. Needs to make a first financial evaluation of a planed activity (Investment Decision Tool)
  5. Needs to know the legal steps and obligations for implementation of the biogas plant and for the production and distribution of biogas (Investment Decision Tool)
  6. Needs to know the suppliers of the various type of equipment needed (Investment Decision Tool)

Investment Decision Tool

The purpose of the Investment Decision Tool (IDT) is to aid farmers in the process of decision making by considering the establishment of biogas plants. It’s designed to make a first economic evaluation of a biogas project.

The IDT is based on a generic anaerobic digestion plant. This means that the economic evaluation is made assuming a model biogas plant (MBP) with a standard set-up consisting of a pre-treatment unit, a digesting unit, a gas treatment unit, a combined heat and power unit and a decanting separator.

It is also assumed that the used biogas produces both electricity and heat and also a solid fraction of biomass from the digestion separation.
Thus, there are three products that can be sold, electricity, heat and compost (see following scheme).


Simplified flow diagram of the model biogas plant


One of the big interests for you and one of the great challenges in making an economic evaluation of a certain biogas project is to estimate the capital cost, here described as total project costs (CAPEX).

Using these principles the IDT calculates the CAPEX for the Actual Biogas Plant project based on the amount of feedstock fed into the plant per year which is at your disposal.

Based on the input requested by the farmer, e.g:
  • Kind of Feedstock available
  • Quantity available each year
  • Cost of the feedstock
  • Sales price of end-products (Electricity, Compost, Heat),
Some financial pre-evaluations are proposed:
  • Biogas production data
  • First economic evaluation of the proposed project (internal rate of return, own capital payback period)
  • Generation of electricity (KWhe/year) and heat (KWhth/year)
  • Estimated revenues from:
    • Electricity sales
    • Thermal Energy sales
    • Sales of fiber fraction
  • Operating costs (fixed and variable costs)
  • Capital costs