Extremly Alternative Energy

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Natural Gas from Poop:

California cows start passing gas to the grid

RIVERDALE, California (Reuters) - Imagine a vat of liquid cow manure covering the area of five football fields and 33 feet deep. Meet California's most alternative new energy.

The next energy source: Barnyard animals

Save America's energy. Feed a cow.

That pretty much sums up the work of Microgy, which has discovered that manure and other waste products from cows, pigs and other livestock is a largely untapped source of energy in the United States. The company, a subsidiary of Portsmouth, N.H.-based Environmental Power Corp., builds industrial-sized "digesters" that, through heat and microbes, reduce mountains of waste into gas or electricity that can be reused on the farm or sold on the open market.

Microgy's Huckabay Ridge facility--under construction at a major composting center near Stephenville, Texas, at a cost of up to $11.5 million--will house eight 916,000-gallon digesters, which together are capable of processing the manure of 10,000 cows. The plant will start shipping natural gas (methane) to a customer in the third quarter and, when fully operational, will churn out an estimated 1 billion cubic feet of biogas a year for $4.6 million in revenue.

Generating Hydrogen From Biodiesel Waste

ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) — Scientists at the University of Leeds are turning low-grade sludge into high-value gas in a process which could make eco-friendly biodiesel even greener and more economical to produce.

Biodiesel – motor fuel derived from vegetable oil - is a renewable alternative to rapidly depleting fossil fuels. It is biodegradable and non-toxic, and production is on the up. But for each molecule of biodiesel produced, another of low-value crude glycerol is generated, and its disposal presents a growing economic and environmental problem.

Now researchers Leeds have shown how glycerol can be converted to produce a hydrogen rich gas. Hydrogen is in great demand for use in fertilisers, chemical plants and food production.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Woohoo for Inovation!!! I'm pretty sure there are some other really cool things out ther too.

[Msterbeau]

Vast quantities of poo leech into groundwater systems. Not good. Got a plastic tarp that big... ?

They should put the cows in a huge building and collect all the methane gas... :-)

I was reading recently about using algae as a source of oil. There's a number od research projects on it... some getting fairly close to production processes.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

it's not a plastic tarp... if they used modern building practices.. it's a sprayed on plastic lining a couple inches thick.

[ttogreh]

Actually.... for every ten parts per volume of biodiesel, there is one part glycerol. Perhaps on a molecule by molecule basis, they are equal, but Biodiesel takes up much more mass.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Actually.... for every ten parts per volume of biodiesel, there is one part glycerol. Perhaps on a molecule by molecule basis, they are equal, but Biodiesel takes up much more mass.

What?

You lost me when you started making stuff up.

Let me see if I can explain this to you in a way that you can understand.

When someone makes biodiesel from vegetable oil...

For every one biodiesel molecule

They get one glycerol molecule that is a waste.

The volume of space each of those products take up in comparision to each other mean nothing to this topic. How much mass each product takes up has nothing to do with this topic.

The point is, the waste product can now be converted to a usefull product rather than going in a landfill or the water table.

[ttogreh]

Responsible manufacturers of biodiesel never sent the glycerol to the landfill or the water table to begin with. Glycerol is, in fact, a very useful product. Soap, sweeteners. thickening agents, toothpaste, mouthwash, and so many other commercial uses have been found for glycerol.

It might be "waste", but it isn't Waste.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

At the minimal rate we are creating biodiesel, the markets are already flooded with crude glycerol. At an increased rate of production a point will be reached where it can't be unloaded as fast as it is created. We can only store so much... going to have to do something with it.

btw... all of those products.. end up in land fills and the water table.

Now, can you stop looking for a reason to argue and get bnack to the topic of extreme alternative fuels?

[Destroit]

Seems like a better and more effective source of fuel than biodiesel imo. So...I'm obviously guessing that this new poop energy doesn't have glycerol as a by-product?

[sass_in_the_pants]

I saw this thread title and I was like 'Poop. It HAS to be about poop.'

HA!

[ttogreh]

No, I can tell you right now, every time I eat a cookie sweetened with glycerol, after I am done with it, it does not end up in the landfill. Perhaps in a round-about manner of thinking, one could argue that it ends up in the water table.

I wasn't the one making the assertion through allusions that glycerol is this totally useless waste product. Indeed, people are developing new ways to process it all the time. I mean, we use it for packing foam, nitroglycerin, and hundreds upon hundreds of other uses.

The increased production of biodiesel is a GOOD thing. The glycerol could displace the need for petroleum on any number of commercial products.

There's "waste", and then there's Waste. Glycerol clearly falls into the label of "waste".

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

*sigh* must look for something to argue about? Is it that damn important to you to attack me all the time?

[jadnifer]

Is using the methane gas from poop really that safe? It was interesting that they are able to do this, but they didn't really go into detail on whether or not it had health concerns to run things on methane gas from poop. Poop is bad to ingest. Would it be possible to do this if it was used to power things?

I know that sounds gross, but I think that it's a legitimate concern.

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

Methane is methane.

The methane that comes out of poop, the methane that comes out of the ground, the methane that rises from the swamps, the methane trapped at the bottom of the oceans and the methane that comes out of our butts (farts) are all exactly the same thing.

They are all going to smell different, but thats because methane is an orderless and colorless gas. It's the particulates that give it a scent.

[ttogreh]

The "woe is me" tack really does not suit you. I simply pointed out that biodiesel takes up more volume than glycerol. That's all I did. You said that that didn't matter, because now glycerol is useful. I pointed out that glycerol has always been useful. You tried to obfuscate and equivocate your way out of embarrassment. I simply maintained my point that glycerol is useful. You then said all I am doing is looking for ways to attack you.

Which is ludicrous, because I simply said that glycerol takes up less volume than biodiesel, is a useful product, and does not end up in the landfill or water table... right away.

***mod edit***

[Gaf The Horse With Tears]

The glycerol is a waste product to the energy company that is making biodiesel. It doesn't matter if other companies have a use for it... it's a waste product of that process. it can then be turned around into a profit by selling it to someone who has a use to it. That does not change the fact that it started as a waste product. I'll give you an example.

Hydraulic oil in a large factory. When clean, it;s used to run the presses and machinery that make the plant go. Presses leak... a great deal. Once that oil leaks out of the machine it gets contaminated and is waste product. It's then collected via someone with what looks like a shop vac. Stored in a large container on site and when enough is collected it's sold off to a recycling plant... most of the time it's burned to run some other machine or for heating.

If you don't like the terminology I used, take it up with the various industries that use them.

***mod edit***

[odims_sphere]

This Thread is now locked.

I'd like to point out the reason:

1C. Personal Arguments

Heated personal relationship arguments and other very private personal "fighting" between individual posters should be taken off the board into email, IM or otherwise.

For further clarity on the subject please refer to the full DGN rules