An Extended Boltzmann Model for Forecasting Biogas Consumption in Rural China

Abstract

Some sigmoidal growth models have been commonly used for forecasting energy consumption. In this article, a new sigmoidal growth model, which is an extended form of the Boltzmann 4-parameter function, has been developed for describing the evolution of biogas consumption in rural China. Additionally, the other three sigmoidal growth models (the general form of the logistic model, the Boltzmann 4-parameter function, and the Gompertz-Laird model) have also been applied to the same historical data on biogas consumption in rural China. These models have been compared using their goodness of fit to the historical data and the available national forecasts. The results revealed that the model newly-proposed in this paper is a very suitable candidate for forecasting biogas consumption in rural China.

Keywords:

• biogas
• energy
• forecasting
• fitting
• logistic model