Driven by the need to achieve ambitious political goals, such as the one under the Kyoto Protocol, an effective promotion of renewable energy technologies has been pursued in Europe in recent years. In particular, high feed-in tariffs for 'Biogas' electricity fed into the grid have led to a remarkable boom in the construction of agricultural Biogas plants. Both in Austria and Germany, the majority of the plants use mainly energy crops for digestion.
The process to generate the Biogas is an Anaerobic Methanogenic Digestion by the action of consortia of bacteria (under conditions without Oxygen). This process has long been known to produce methane (Biogas is composed of CH4 and CO2), which can be used as a "green" fuel, while degrading the available organic carbon. From wastes origin (manure and other organic materials) the process eliminates environmentally undesirable elements, shown to eliminate pathogenic bacteria by 4-7 orders of magnitudes.
The e-learning project plans at examining the anaerobic process and the use of different kinds of crops as an energy source, in different countries and under different conditions and compare the results. It will enable the students to understand better some biotechnological processes and alternative energy production.
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