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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HOMEBIOGAS (Turning food industry\'s organic wastw into value)

Teaser

Summary

HOMEBIOGAS 2.0 is a revolutionary household biogas appliance that has made anaerobic digestion and on-site waste disposal accessible to hundreds of families across 90 countries. It converts familiesâ€™ organic waste into free clean energy. HOMEBIOGAS 2.0 has served as a life-changing catalyst in developing countries, where over 4 million people die every year due to indoor smoke inhalation from open fire cooking ; in such areas, there are no waste management services, and efforts to get firewood result in deforestation.

Our success is driven by a simple approach: HOMEBIOGAS appliances are effective, affordable and user-friendly. They are delivered in do-it-yourself kits and are clean and easy to operate, providing end users with a functional way to turn their organic waste into clean, free energy.
Since 2014, we have also successfully deployed two large operational biogas systems to sites in Israel (school dining rooms) that process 200-250 kg of organic waste per day. From this starting position, our goal is to adapt our systems to the requirements of an important sector of the European Food Industry, which is searching for an affordable solution to manage their high production of organic waste on-site. This sector includes groups like food services (such as restaurants, hotels and cafeterias) and food retailers (like supermarkets, groceries and specialized food stores) that need to handle up to 200 kg of food waste daily and have sufficient outdoor space for our system (which has an area of 12 m Â²).

By combining the success and the experience of the household system (HomeBiogas 2.0) with the large operational biogas systems, HomeBiogas will offer food businesses an innovative, affordable biogas system that can convert up to 200 kg of organic waste per day into clean energy with an immediate payback and advanced features.

There are more than 2.32 million food service and retail businesses in the EU that annually generate over 15 million tons of food and kitchen waste. HOMEBIOGAS is an attractive technology for this market for several reasons: waste collection is expensive, food services and retailers are energy-intensive, organic waste disposal has a significant environmental impact and the food industry sees recycling as a means to improve their social responsibility.

Currently, there are no commercially available, economically viable biogas systems suitable for the food services and retailer industry sector that support the needs described above. Therefore, there is a real business opportunity for an advanced, cost-effective and convenient biogas appliance able to process the these businessesâ€™ organic waste on-site.

Work performed

HomeBiogas worked on the design of the B2B commercial HomeBiogas TG6 biogas system.

The TG6 design is based on the HomeBiogas 2.0 household biogas system, which gained worldwide recognition and was sold by the thousands following our successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1846577405/homebiogas-20-transforms-your-food-waste-into-clea?ref=user_menu).
Several potential customers have already shown interest in the system and found it valuable and cost-saving. Initial customers have already asked to receive the system once it is available or to take part in our pilots.

We have developed, installed and operated the first pilot system at our facilities in Israel. The second pilot, with an improved design, is planned for the end of year. The second pilot will be installed at a boarding school dining room close to our facilities.
The system design has been updated. It is now larger and able to handle twice as much organic waste as required by potential customers. The shipment and installation will still be cost-effective, as the design of the system is slim and includes foldable digester and gas tanks that are easily shipped on one pallet and can be installed quickly.
HomeBiogas changed the pricing model to pay-per-use. As a result, customers will pay a monthly fee for the use of the system. This price is cost-effective for our customers since the fee is significantly lower than their usual expenses for waste management and gas.

We designed a management application and control sub-system module. These additions will allow customers to monitor their savings on waste disposal and gas production.

The first worldwide distributors training event was conducted in Israel during March 2018. 30 participants from about 15 countries took part in a 3-day training and learned about sales, marketing, support, assembly and troubleshooting. The success of the distributors training event, which will occur annually or bianually, together with the new easy-to-ship design, allowed HomeBiogas to optimize the supply chain and manage its distributors from its headquarters in Israel.

HomeBiogas has participated in conferences and seminars worldwide (France, Spain, USA, India) in order to promote the project and look for distributors and partners.
Our technology is backed by an updated patent that covers the new TG6 model base design. HomeBiogas has also started the CE certification process, where TG6 preliminary design has been approved. The process will continue next year with the updated design of the system.

At the beginning of January 2019, we plan to launch the second alpha pilot at a boarding school near the HomeBiogas facilities. Following this, we will conduct two beta pilots at sites in Europe.

Final results

Anaerobic digestion is the most cost-effective technology for handling with organic waste at the source, both in economic and environmental terms. Biogas systems (which utilize anaerobic digestion) process organic waste into biogas, which can be used for cooking, heating or lighting, as well as a bio-slurry that can be used as a liquid fertilizer. Current commercial on-site biogas systems are either basic, low-capacity systems targeting families and farms in rural settings or expensive or high capacity systems oriented towards agricultural and food processing industries. Food businesses in urban and peri-urban settings that generate moderate amounts of organic waste (up to 200 kg per day) are forced to rely on municipal waste collection and therefore incur a significant expense.

There are currently no biogas systems available for urban food services and retailers generating moderate amounts (200 kg) of organic waste. When compared to other existing systems, HOMEBIOGAS TG6 targets a completely different category of end users, presents the smallest footprint and shortest installation time in relation to its capacity, is suitable for indoors and provides advanced features (monitoring system, remote control, safe sealed housing) in line with those of systems twenty times more expensive. There are therefore no available commercial systems able to compete with HOMEBIOGAS TG6 in our target market.

The HOMEBIOGAS project is perfectly aligned with the flagship initiative for a resource-efficient Europe under the Europe 2020 strategy, which supports the shift towards a resource efficient, low-carbon economy to achieve sustainable growth. HOMEBIOGAS will make a significant contribution to these initiatives by reducing GHG methane emissions resulting from organic waste; reducing the need for fossil fuels; reducing food waste by turning it into clean energy and fertilizer; eliminating the need incinerate organic waste or send it to a landfill; and therefore, preventing land, air, water and soil pollution.