Uncontrolled burning of crop residues leads to massive air pollution during the harvesting seasons, in particular during October and November. Enormous amounts of residues especially from the harvested rice crop are set alight in order to clear the lands.the result is a massive "Black cloud" that suffocates the inhabitants of nearby urban areas. (Skidmore,2002)
The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) supported by the government of China has facilitated the construction of biogas plant in Kafr El Amir village, Tomai El Amdid district, El Dakhlia Governorate to overcome the open field burning of rice straw that causes the black cloud and to generate biogas for the village. The study objectives are: to identify the effectiveness of biogas plant in producing biogas for households in Kafr El Amir village, to identify the socio economic impact of Biogas units on the families households, and the challenges that face the sustainability of this project.(Arafa and Nelson,1981)
The study was conducted during the period of February - April 2012. in Kafr El Amir village.To achieve the study's first objective that focuses on the Biogas plant effectiveness information were gathered through the discussions with the technical employees. While Concerning the second and the third objectives respectively that focus on the socio economic impact of Biogas and the challenges facing the benefited families , a questionnaire was designed to gather data from 40% of the village citizens representing 42 chief head of benefited households.
The main findings of the study that the majority of the benefited chief households representing (90.5%) accepted the idea of the project but preferred to have the management through NGOs (55.5%)not the government due to their perception that NGOs service will be better and have more community participation than the governmental management .
The results showed that there is increase of the average degree of benefit for the chief household respondents and their families' members from the biogas project. The scale varies from (high benefit, medium benefit, low benefit) that was graded varies (3, 2, 1) respectively. The average score for the all respondents was almost close to high benefit score which is (3).The average degree of benefit for the chief of household, wife, daughter, and son was (2.7, 2.9, 2,8, 2.5) respectively. The above results are due to the be advantages of the project especially from the economic perspective, as biogas support in saving money of buying butain gas cylinder in addition to the social perspective in saving effort and time exerted to buy butain gas cylinder especially in shortage of energy time. Finally from the health perspective, biogas reduces the open field burning of rice straw
Concerning the advantages of using Bio-gas energy in Kafr EL Amir village. The respondents indicated that Biogas units' advantages are as follows (safe, additional source of fuel, Save effort and time) representing (57.1%,47.6%, 38.1% respectively) .The disadvantages of using Biogas units as indicated from Kafr EL Amir of respondents indicated that the main disadvantage of using Bio-gas units is the (Weak availability of spare parts, Weak availability of consistent maintenance staff, weak gas pressure) representing (52.4%, 50%,42.9% respectively).