Abuja — A Nigerian Sweden-based Biotechnologist, Dr. Ade Abdulrahim has said Nigeria could generate as much as 600,000MW of electricity by employing a technology that utilizes bio-gas from refuse materials to produce power.

The expert who was among the many Nigerians in Diaspora that attended the just-concluded Diaspora Forum on Science and Technology in Abuja, said he was confident that the Federal Government could realize the target capacity if it could deploy $2bn into the project, the same way it is currently doing for the thermal power projects.

"The calculation I have now is that compared with the proposed investment in the Mambila Hydropower project, which is costing the Federal Government about $2bn to generate 2000MW is that investing the same amount on bio-gas energy technology can give the country 600,000MW of electricity", he said.

Abdulrahim whose previous efforts to sell the idea to Nigerian authorities failed to receive necessary attention, described the technology as combination of Micro-biology and Biotechnology systems, making use of household refuse, especially human faeces, chicken waste products to generate bio-gas.

For instance, he said Kano State government has invited his team to carry out a feasibility study on the viability of the project but after turning-in a positive report, the authorities decided to abandon it.

Explaining how the technology works, the expert said through a system of refuse management, "we can collect refuse, sort it out and put them on top of a membrane (a kind of filter) and compress them using a compactor so that no oxygen is allowed in it to enable it ferment well.

He said the kind of bio-gas facility envisaged for the country could have refuse stock-pile up to a dept of 12 - 20 metres and would be capable of generating about 6 million mega watts of electricity power.

"The least one is a generator plant generating about 1m watts and a typical generator plant designed for the country would be made up of 6 generators with 6m watts (or 6MW each) and would last for a period of 18-25 years", he said.

This kind of technology can very well thrive in most of the nation's capital cities and other major towns in the country because of their refuse generating capacity.

In this period of epileptic power supplies which is hampering business development in the country, the Biotechnologist said establishing bio-gas driven power plants could prove a better and more efficient alternative to other sources of power generation.

The Nigerian said he is supervising an on-going project in Tailine, Estonia (one of the break-away Republics of the former Soviet Union) using the same technology.