Biogas factories and carcinogenicity: A new arena of applied research

Biogas is basically methane produced from natural digester process in a biogas plant. This is an anaerobic mechanism which involves the use of certain microorganisms like fungus, bacteria, yeast etc which feed upon the wet, thick liquid organic matter from the plant or animal source. The most desired sources are like cow dung, poultry feed, press mud from the sugar factories, plant straw or husk from vegetative sources like rice, Napier grass, millets or other grasses from the botanical family Graminae. The dry grass or husk is chopped, crushed, thrown into a coarse powder and then made into a semi thick running paste by a giant agitator wheel and then pushed into the dark, anaerobic chambers where the above material is digested upon by various fungi, yeast or other microorganisms and various gasses are released like methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia etc which are further passed through respective purification processes and methane is then packed in containers as compressed biogas and other gasses are also separated and packed for various purposes known in the field. This process is claimed to be clean and green operation and so is being promoted on a massive scale but there certainly are two sides of a coin and recently many drawbacks of this clean process have started to surface. The carcinogenic affect in humans is one such unwelcome outcome and the reproductive inefficiency is another. The various aspects are discussed and debated in this write up.