Slashdot Mirror
Manure-Powered Generators On The Rise
Sunkist writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a report on Marin County rancher Albert Straus that, after 25 years of work, began using a generator powered by manure. While this type of 'power' has been in use for a while, recent legislation has made it more widespread. From the article, 'The Straus Farms' covered-lagoon methane generator, powered by methane billowing off a covered pool of decomposing bovine waste, is expected to save the operation between $5,000 and $6,000 per month in energy costs.' Let's hear it for poop!"
Shit.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
So if vegetarianism were to become the norm and these maure-power setups become common, cows would no longer be slaughtered, but still they'd still be raised commercially. For their milk... n' shit.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
...but i'll take a shitload of fuel to power a city.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
That's great and all but what does Tina Turner have to say about it?
What could possibly go wrong?
Stand by for a s-storm of bad puns.
..and it arrives at the perfect time, the production of bullshit is at an all-time high!
This little midget riding a huge musclebound retarded guy challenged me to Thunderdome!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Heh, its gotta beat oil ;)
but hell its gonna stink in ya car :D
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Oh wait... (or is it "moo wait..."?)
I guess I'll have to hurry to put those machine gun mount points in my car
please excuse my apathy
to the "shit's going to hit the fan"...
The CO2 produced. Without forrest like we used to have CO2 buildup will not slow down. The need to develope better, safer Nuclear Energy.
So what's the waste generated from this? Obviously CO2, but what else? Is it considered "clean" energy? Is used poop as good at fertilizing as new poop? Would it work with human poop? Can I build a small version myself? Are their poop bylaws? (I can cover my lawn with poop after all..). And most importantly, does it run Linux??
Mod +5 Drunk
it's not petrolium, so can't really be useful. Besides, isn't methane dangerous??
Stuff like this is far from new. What would be a new twist however is if our society accually starts using this and other ideas like it.
All in all, damn fine work, I just hope this kind of thing becomes widespread. Soon.
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
I don't know if I believe this article... something smells kind of funny about it.
buh-du-bum-ching
... such as the output of Redmond?
I've been using cow dung as fuel for bonfires for quite a while. Once it's dried (which is when I'd be using it) it doesn't smell bad, and carries a lot of methane. A better use of it may be fertilizer, though my compost bin is full of other organic material.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
"manure." "widespread."
Maybe I just spent too much of my childhood on strawberry plantations.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
When I was a kid we would visit my Uncle's dairy farm. Even with him using a lot of manure to fertilize his fields - getting rid of it all was still an issue. They went to a system where they processed it to liquid and it went into a big liquid manure pond. I can remember watching their dog- walking around on the 'crust' that formed on the top of it. Every so often his legs would slip through. That was a nasty dog.
Eventually my Uncle's family farm went under and was auctioned off. I wonder if this kind of thing would have been enough to keep him in business? He now works for a big giant 'corporate' farm. Truth be told- from a purely economic perspective he is better off. He gets regular vacation (never had that with his own farm) and makes o.k. money.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
a generator I could run off my septic tank to power my house. But my whole family doesn't produce as much poop as one cow. Although when we have TexMex, we rival cows in overall methane production. But who wants to carry a mini-generator attached to their butt?
This ought to help the unemployment rate, as there will be a new employment opportunities in the poop-picking-up field. Someone has got to walk around the field collecting this stuff if they're going to burn it, after all. What a great opportunity! Virtually no training or education requited. If you walk a dob in the city, you are already a seasoned professional, and could quickly rise to management level.
... until they start shipping in poop from India.
I also see a new market opening for human droppings. Why limit ourselves to animal manure? People donate plasma for a pocketful of money don't they? Why not have pay toilets pay us?!
All of this is good news for out-of-work and soon-to-be-out-of-work programmers!
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I was just sniffing it to get high, I didn't realize that you could generate power too!
I wonder how much power we could generate off the BS coming out of Washington, DC... OPEC eat your heart out!
--You're BOTH right. It's a floor wax AND a desert topping!
On the panel, an electricity meter began running backward, indicating that power originating from a nearby poop-filled lagoon near the town of Marshall was feeding into PG&E's electric power grid.
A well-fed dairy cow produces 120 pounds of manure every day, or 40,000 pounds per year per animal.
These cows are pooping money!
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Manure-Powered Generators On The Rise
Is "generator" really an accurate name for political campaigns?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The folks who are promoting this energy source are just plain full of shit. =)
Paul Lenhart writes words!
I tried to run small generator on manure for a while, but I gave up because the fuel filter kept clogging and the carburetor kept fouling. In fact, I never even got the engine to start. Even putting my herd on a 100% bran fiber diet didn't help.
He used the methane from the pig manure to heat the pig shelters in the winter. This was some 20 years ago. I loved to visit that place (ride the tractors and bobcats), but it did smell something aweful and there were so many flies--this was in Iowa in the summer....great vacation spot :)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I work for SCO and we run tottaly on Bullshit
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
That's a shit load of power!
Our power company, SRP, does a similar thing with landfills. After the landfill is full, they tarp it and collect the methane in order to generate electricity. Then, a few years later when the methane generation slows down enough they remove the power generation equipment and build a public park on top. Three uses for one piece of land is not a bad idea at all.
In India, they call them gobar gas plants (more details in a 1971 Mother Earth New article). As long as one keeps the 30:1 carbon/nitrogen ratio, they can consume other organic waste too (grass clippings, urine, food waste, etc.). The only problem with them is that they tend to create hydrogen sulfide that makes the gas highly corrisive to iron equipment (some people use a filter of steel wool to remove the H2S).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Insert standard government, SCO, Hollywood, and pop music jokes here.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
This maakes no more economic sense the last "power from poop" story:0 9/182320 6
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/
On a more serious note, it sounds like a win-win. If waste-lagoons are being covered and methane tapped for energy, it stands to reason that it will reduce both potentially global-warming inducing methane releases into the atmosphere (yes, it will be released as CO or CO2 emissions eventually from combustion, but by displacing other fuels it will be a net win, and please, let's not have the conversation about whether global warming is real or not today) and reduce noxious emissions, a win for the neighbors of big farming facilities.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Now they can put all that bull shit which they pile on to their assignments to good use! Finally, a use for humanities majors other than staffing McDonalds!
If I were a cow farmer, I'd pay money for this shit.
I wonder how bad it smells? I'm sure I'd put up with it for saving 5 grand a month though.
Poop is good, that is all.
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/11/12/manure031112e -electricity.htmi ews/c3Views200309.pdf/ ap_gas_45671.aspc owpower.jhtml
http://dnr.metrokc.gov/dnrp/press/2003/0717methan
http://www.climatechangecentral.com/resources/c3v
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11272001
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/03/032502t_
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
cows would no longer be slaughtered, but still they'd still be raised commercially
I see this as more of a way of recycling. Crap is a by-product of an animal using energy. The actual energy needed to produce that crap is immense. Think of the grass that has to grow and the nutrients placed into the soil, then what your body can't use is the crap. When it gets down to it... we would probably save money, and resources just growing tress on that land and burning those(skip the cow). The benefit to the current setup is that we can raise the cow, eat em, and then recycle the by-products.
Chinese farmers have used pig manure to produce methane for cooking gas for a long time. Not a universal practice, but it has been done. Of course, when you are living from hand to mouth, you get innovative in order to survive, hence the widespread use of human feces as "nightsoil" for fertilization, too. And of course on the plains "buffalo chips" have served as fuel for fires for hundreds of years.
...So it's a good thing the US didn't sign the accord. Still pretty sh*tty in terms of greenhouse gas emissions so it wouldn't help meet Kyoto targets. Oh well, Kyoto is all about politics and shifting wealth and does nothing meaningful to address climate change or environmental protection anyways (I'll put away the flamethrower now).
On the upside, sh*t is a renewable resource and supply has historically exceeded demand, so it a cheap source of energy. And because it is renewable it could be argued that it is "good" greenhouse emissions as it is less disruptive on the "carbon cycle" of the global environment (that is, we are not pulling carbon sources out of the ground that have been out of the cycle for a bazillion years and disrupting natures balance to the same degree).
Good to see some creative ways to address our energy needs. Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done. Good fertiliser I suppose and I'd hope a great deal less aromatic.
I think a variety of energy-producing methods is a great first step towards lessening oil dependency. It doesn't have to be one size fits all: for some areas, solar would work well, others, wind or thermal. Less chance for monopoly that way as well. Then, we could use the oil that was still around for the situations that truly required it. Now if we could just get the prices down for the equipment it takes to use alternative sources....
"Who run Barter Town!"
They're getting energy from what was considered to be a waste product. If they weren't doing this, we would have to make larger nuclear power plants, or whatever other form of energy product you feel is acceptable for the environment.
This is a win-win situation, for those involved -- they de-water the waste, compact the waste for easier removal, and get energy back in the process to help offset the operational costs for the process.
For those who didn't take sewage treatment classes in college, there are four main types of setting -- type 1 is for things that accelerate from gravity (sticks, rocks, etc), type 2 is things that floculate (clump together as they're falling), type 3 and 4 are not typically done in a water treatment plant as they don't happen quickly enough. So, what they do is syphon off the 'mostly' clean water at the top, and dump the sludge at the bottom... but the sludge at the bottom is still mostly water, which is heavy, and bulky. Depending on the area, they'll spread it out to dry in the sun, or use anaerobic digestion (such as in the bottom of a pond), to get it to compress further.
And let's not forget that composted manure makes great fertilizer, which the farmer might otherwise be buying for the plants that go into feeding the cow. It's all just an example of a nice little ecosystem.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Manure-powered generators... sounds like a pile of crap :)
...a beowulf cluster of these? Pew!
See this description (e.g.) for an example of even earlier prior art.
(From The Good Life, aka Good Neighbors in the USA.)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
"With net metering, small producers like Straus can reduce or erase their energy bills but cannot be paid for pumping excess energy into the grid. Net metering has been available to owners of home solar systems for several years."
Why do we allow laws that strip us of potential income, and benefit companies like PG&E?
You are probably right. I personally doubt that the amount of energy produced by a methane powered generating plant in a feed lot would equal the cost of the energy consumed by farmers raising crops and shipping crops to the feed lot. This is more of a way to minimize the loss of energy from our fuel dependent farm economy.
So, basically it runs on bullshit? Looks like SCO may have a business model after all...
I could take over from 3 mile island here!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
During the gas shortage in the early 70's, some friends and I toyed with the hypothetical idea of a methane-powered vehicle in which the normal seats would be replaced by toilets. There would be a tray of jalapeno peppers on the dashboard for when you wanted to pass...
"Bob fell into the manure pond yesterday."
"Can he swim?"
"No, but he sure went through the 'movements'!"
*ducks*
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
"We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home "
I still think that converting the Fresh Kills landfill to a facility that captures methane emissions, generates hydrogen from garbage compost, and burns the rest in a euro-style plasma furnace could really help SI, as well as NYC (and probably the country at large)..
;); NYC would get more tax revenue from the sale of power, hydrogen and methane to power generators and municipal vehicles/facilities and taxes from jobs and industry, as well as additional independence from out-of-city power generation and some relief from peak periods of use. NYC would also reduce its payments for handling trash, thus reducing its budget problems. Talk about a win-win-win-win-win!
;)
SI would get cleaner air and jobs in a good local high-tech industry (we'd be HAPPY to import garbage
Just keep Tony Soprano's hands off it
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
I hear that this is what Skywalker Sound is using to power their facility at the ranch. With George and his new Unholy Trilogy around it never runs out of fuel.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
...he should consider applying for a job in IT.
20 minutes into the future
Collecting methane at sewer plants and from city dumps is being done on a large scale at over 200 US municipalities. It works quite well.
World wide there are literally hundreds of thousands of them (methane digesters using arobic digestion), most of them being single family sized units where the collected gas is burned in small cookers and for lighting.
I built a digester in the mid 70's, was EXTEREMELY easy to make. I worked on a large dairy then, despite running the digester for all summer and collecting gas, just a small display size prootype unit, I could NOT get the farmer to drive over one mile to my cabin to look at it. His stock question was "why aren't THEY doing it if it is so good?" The gas collected was great, basically burned like propane. I tried other farmers over the years,I have yet to get one to take the plunge and actually do anything different, alwatys the same, it ain't in their propaganda magazines for their particular niche for farming. You can NOT get those guys to do anything practical until they get "permission" from the agribiz cartels, and right now, the agribiz cartels want the farmers to buy expensive petroleum and chemical products from them or their country club buddies. and the farmers WONDER why they keep going broke....and they TEACH going broke in the ag colleges, which is AMAZING to me they can suck young guys into doing that.
At least this one dairy farmer in the article gets it, it's probably only one in a thousand or less that can actually think for themselves. Work hard, 7 days a week, YEP! They do, been there done that meself. think outside the box? Hardly ever happens, so petrified of their buddies at the co-op and the feed store thinking they are "enviros" or something near as I can tell.
Flash forward almost 30 years now, I get the same thing today, I work part time on a large poultry farm, besides methane digestion I have also asked why they don't use sprouted grains instead of the dismal dried up crap they call "feed" that barely keeps the cluckers clucking. SAME ANSWER, because "they" don't do it, this "they" guy who tells them what to do, it's not in the trade mags so "it doesn't work, it's hippie pie in the sky stuff enviro whackos".
I LAUGH every time I hear of a farmer going broke, because if they only thought just a smidgen outside the box and stepped back from being brainwashed by archerdanielsdowmonsantoexxon, they could make money, and easily. But no, they'll defend practices that they follow that produce for them a lower profit return than their grand daddys got in world war two. Sure, they can grow huger volumes of much crappier food off an acre, deal is, it IS crappier food and they hand over their cash to the big companies, then the bank takes their property eventually. Lead around by the nose don't even begin to describe it.
And I get the same thing from urban internet engineering "experts" who have constantly told me over the years my solar panels don't work, they "aren't practical". Funny, my electric bill is PAID OFF, I don't get a "monthly" bill with no idea what it will be if there's any political or middleman trading shenanigans. but, "solar isn't practical".
Right.
The 21st century will belong to those who can think out of the box and stop making money for THE MAN, who work FOR THEMSELVES, and stop supporting those brane dead politicians and political parties who are in THE MAN's pockets.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
Curious to know what is done with the crap left over when its usefulness as a power source is done.
duh...of course...confirmed by RTFA...
However, from the article...
With net metering, small producers like Straus can reduce or erase their energy bills but cannot be paid for pumping excess energy into the grid. Net metering has been available to owners of home solar systems for several years
Do they at least get a credit on their power bill? What's wrong with paying ALL energy producers? With todays high-tech, automated systems it shouldn't be a problem to do this and it would certainly give incentive. I'm curious to know the threshold at which you cease to be too small to be paid as an energy producer.
That manure is more valuable as crop fertilizer than as energy. But then all of you city folks start whining about the aroma of properly fertilized fields. Bah, you should be out with me on the tractor when I actually spread the stuff: now that's stinky.
The very idea of using manure as a fuel source for a powerplant is an old one indeed.
Indeed, many developing countries have built small powerplants fuelled by what's known as biomass (e.g., manure and crop waste) at least since the 1970's. I believe that India was among the first countries to do this on a large scale.
So instead of "oil drillers wanted", will you see "people with big appetites and loose bowels needed"?
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
This somewhat reminds me of the relatively recent episode of BOFH - BOFH: Protecting bodily waste in the public domain
-Rob
...for the 2004 presidential election! Free power for all for most of this year!
this is the greatest night of my life
Ha ha ha. "Duty." Ha ha ha. "Diarrhea." Hey, Lois! "Diarrhea."
Oh, Peter, not now, I'm carrying a tray of iced tea.
This is yet another reason why we have the "Sonoma Aroma" in Marin / Sonoma County.
You'd think the Sonoma Aroma would smell like wine and vineyards. Nope. It smells like shit.... especially in the summer. Nothing beats endless acres of giant turd piles baking, up wind, in 95 degree temperatures.
If you've ever wondered what it's like to live inside of a fart... move here.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You know, this smells like a load of crap...
I'm just trying to imagine a case mod that would harness this technique to power the latest and greatest gaming machine. Hmmmm....
Might be a bit awkward having to sit 'n flush just to keep fraggin' your favourite alien foes!
Chaeron Corporation
To increase productivity and save power, management has upgraded all of our chairs to toilets. Each bowl says "Is this good for the company?"
That shits and farts were powerfull!
Well, damn - I wish somebody had said something sooner... I just threw out a whole diaper genie worth of potential air conditioning...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
I mention the theory in my first post.
At any rate, I don't care how warm it gets, I'd rather live next to a big pile of digested crap than barrels of the scary stuff nuclear facilities leave behind...
See the Green-E website. Many landfills already extract their methane emissions. This is good even from a global-warming perspective, as methane is also a greenhouse gas. Finally, the EPA has tips on reducing methane emissions from livestock themselves, as opposed to their turds.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Well thank goodness we're in an election season! Just as oil hits all-time record high prices (over $41 a barrel!), suddenly we have a way to alleviate this situation.
George W. Bush and John Kerry together, plus all the House members and about a third of the Senators ought to be able to create enough "bull-energy" to save us from rising petroleum prices!
Donald "I know where over a third of the WMDs are located" Rumsfeld alone ought to be able to power most of the Eastern seaboard. Fox News will probably see its main source of revenues move from advertising to selling energy to the utility companies. Ahhhh... finally some good news!
Woo hoo!
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
> Still pretty sh*tty in terms of greenhouse gas emissions so it wouldn't help meet Kyoto targets
On the contrary. First, it would cut HC4-emission, which is an even more effective greenhouse gas and listed in the Kyoto protocol. Second, it could reduce CO2 emissions, as the energy is produced locally and cuts the transport losses.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
The article talks about using a covered lagoon full of shit to collect the methane as the shit breaks down. The article said a well fed cow craps ~120 lbs/day.
How does the shit get to the lagoon?
At 120lbs/day/cow, moving that shit around could require a lot of energy. Are they only using the shit from the barn? Is there someone riding the range looking for shit? Are the cows wearing shit bags like horses in the city do? Are they doing anything to catch the cow farts (100-200 liters/day/cow according to the article)?
Well, I guess it was more than one question...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Since cattle need to drink water, they add to the load on fresh water demands. Cattle consume from 1 (for a 1 month old) to many gallons (for a lactating cow) per day. Ref: Water intake and quality for cattle
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
a use for my powered manure generator.
we get power!!!
MY SECRET DIARIES
So two legislators are talking on the phone:
Legis 1: Whazzup?
Legis 2: Whazzup?
Legis 1: Oh, just legislating shit.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
After reading that, I wonder if the author knows what an ozone depleting gas really is or if she is just spitting out words to fill the article. Carbon Dioxide and methane are both greenhouse gasses, not ozone depleters.
shit a beowulf cluster of those could do....
presmike
not to mention lumber quality. old, natural growth wood is WAAAAY better than that softie southern yellow pine crap and fertilized tree farm trees they're using these days. heh, hard wood. anyway, ask any maintenance man 40+ yrs old and they'll tell you the old stuff was a lot harder and better quality than the tree farm shit these days.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
DO have a cow, man! ;)
Sigs for Nerds. Sigs that Matter.
"He called the shit poop"
There are many pig lagoons in rural NC that are problematic due to the 'factory farms' that are being run by some large corporations. Seems like this might be a good alternative for them while sparing their neighbors from the smell and run-off of their operation.
My next Slashdot post will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
All replies submitted that are jokes about shit should be modded down for redundancy.
/. didnt let me.
UGH!
I tried to post this in all caps to convey my annoyance level, but the genius code behind
feel free to mod this up for insightfulness
Replacing the cow might have its features, though. The cow is actually the indirect consumer of grass; the grass is first consumed by bacteria which convert its cellulose and other things to simpler carbohydrates and proteins (like growing mushrooms on straw) and then the cow digests the results. There isn't anything standing in the way of us growing such bacteria in vats rather than in cows and then feeding the results to e.g. fish, getting closer to the 2:1 feed/meat ratio than the cow's 8:1.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Goes by the name of "gobar gas". "gobar" means "animal shit" in Hindi. Was pretty big in the early eighties when the government planned this as a way of electrifying villages. Still used in places, but guess it does not meet increasing energy demands for pumpsets (irrigation), crop threshers, etc. Electrifying all of rural India is still an unfinished task.
You can make up for this with the difference between wholesale and retail (avoided) cost and other things, though. The analysis isn't trivial.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
from the article:
"This naturally occurring methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 21 times as damaging to the ozone layer as carbon dioxide."
Perhaps, given the topic, it is appropriate that that the article itself contain some bullshit. But that statement is excessive.
Greenhouse gasses DO NOT deplete the ozone layer. A single egregious falsehood within the article undermines the credibility of the entire article; The author has demonstrated that she can not acurately report important facts, therefore all statements made in the article fall into question.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
All those cities producing tons and tons of waste per hour.
By replacing petroleum with manure, cattle ranches can move towards a constructive link in a sustainable ecology, rather than remain a destructive player. Old ranches burn oil, creating Greenhouse emissions of CO2, methane, ozone, etc. And their cattle "emit" Greenhouse methane, hydrogen, etc, after digesting their feed (itself the product of petro fertilizers, pesticides, and maintenance). Of course, a single cow doesn't do much damage, but the global beef/dairy industry contributes significantly. This system drops the petro, and captures the bioemissions, for a double benefit that might redeem the cattle industry from their Greenhouse vandalism. By seeing their California compadres' immediate financial benefits from energy selfsufficiency, even a Texan rancher could get motivated to switch from the Greenhouse criminals gang to the Green posse.
--
make install -not war
This is shitty energy, who's gonna use it?
MODS - Broad claims of superiority without any information to back it up should make you wonder. Syncophant posts should also be treated as trash and pounded downwards.
Damn... looks like it works though.
Nice cycle of raise the karma through bullshit, then spam pr0n and crap.
Maybe you do know something about recycling bullshit?
it really just depends. One, you don't have to use manure, you can use a variety of any biomass that will anerobically digest, which is hmm, all of it. One idea I heard of was from jaque cousteau, his was to use kelp, because of it's incredibly fast growing nature and the make-up of kelp makes it ideal for digesting. It seems industrial hemp would be ideal, too, it's cellulose production per acre/year is amazing, and it doesn't require that much fertiliser, you could get by just plowing under 1/2 the plants every year for that, then re apply the slurry as well. If you could see in meat space how much quite useable burnable gas you get from even a small amount you'd see it's very practical and economic. The deal is, the big energy companies CAN'T send you a bill for it,because you can own it, so no way will this be pushed officially by the government or it's controllers, big industry, that much. They *dig* having you pay forever into their monopoly, both with cash and with mindshare. It's the same with solar, with wind generation, etc.
Second,to get back to some farm savings, although the nitrogen level % remains the same in the manure and water slurry after digestion, it is in a more available form to plants than normal aerobic digestion or composting (farmers just shoot this stuff back on the fields now, with conveyor spreaders or flail spreaders). I have read it is as high as 600% better with anerobic digestion, so you get significant savings on fertilizer (which is a HUGE cost now and going up because artificial fertiliser is made from natural gas), which is what's done with the slurry after it has exhausted methane production potential. And last, it is "relatively" cheap to build these things,and they are incredibly scalable, there's a size and technique to fit any size operation, from joe water buffalo rice farmer on up. There are hundreds of thousands of them around the planet now,of various sizes,just not much in the US, so here it's stayed mostly "experimental",and they have to "study it", etc, that's all, any place else it's just normal, and sunlight is an excellent conversion tool for getting solar energy into various useful products. It's very productive sunlight is,a great energy conversion tool, especially with living plants, and it's the only practical fusion generator we have, and it's "free and open source", the government or industry can't charge you for it directly. They will play act at supporting it, that's about it, it doesn't lend itself to monopoly control, so they spread a lot of economic FUD around it.
Remember, farming has always been profitable and useful,well, from obvious reasons, food is kinda nice, even before modern techniques were invented, so it's quite do-able. Look at giant forests, grow all on their own, no high tech anything needed for them to grow, just water, dirt, sunlight, air, done. They are just huge biological manufacturing plants, quite sophisticated really, and that's all any farm is, a biological factory, and there's various ways to cut costs and remain profitable, ONCE you as joe big farmer STOP being brainwashed by monsanto and the energy companies and the equipment companies and the banks. You have to break that mindset of "dependence" first before you can wrap your brane around "how to do it" better. That first step is just too much for most people to get over. It's not really their fault, it's how they were taught, and what the "approved" techniques are as taught at ag colleges and in industry orgs. There are VERY few independent farmers around, the vast majority are really just coporate sub contractors and have to follow these corporation rules. The guy I work for owns three large farms, he is controlled by his suppliers and marketing org down to an obscene picky little level like you wouldn't believe on how to run his farm, or he can't market, and that's the biggest problems farmers have now, and they get trapped into it, go along, or go broke. Once in and in debt, they are trapped, it's almost like a form of serfdom on a large scale. It's a hard
But in feed lot operations all over the state there are a high density of cattle, where collection of the waste is not only economical it is probably essential.
...given the amount of bullshit I'm handed while I'm producing code, do I count as a manure powered generator?
...recent legislation has made it more widespread.
They've been shoveling bullshit to us for years.
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
I know it was elephant shit, but I'm surprised there haven't been any references to that episode.
You guys look pooped...
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
Coal mining and coal power plants kill people all the time. Coal puts out more radiation then nuclear plants..... Hydroelectric plants destroy habitats and eco systems, catastrophic falure of large dams could potentially claim millions of lives (3gorgesDam) Making solar panels involves mining dangerous chemicals. Gas/oil plants pollute. Wind energy kills tones of birds, and changes weather patterns. Biomass suffers from "thermodynamically difficulty" and depends on subsidies. President's Bush's hydrogen initiative is just laughable. Researching all alternative energy forms should be a world wide priority but in the now, Nuclear power isn't that bad, and it sure isn't dangerous. (not a single death or injury has EVER been caused by it.) Nuclear power just has a negative stigma attached resulting from misguided environmentalists like Ralph Nader who claimed "plutonium is the most toxic substance known to man" (It has never caused a death in the history of man)
Conclusion: Nuclear power is one of the safest and environmentally friendly methods of power generation.
CRAPTASTIC!
your magic can build bridges and open up new pathways, or it can burn down forests and tear the ground asunder. ... that they've grown so dependent on the various agrifare programs perpetuated by the government. I was astounded to see the price of a gallon of milk jump from $3.20 to $4.59 in just three weeks time. Part of this is due to an increase in the guaranteed minimum price per gallon as mandated by the federal government. But reading your comments makes me just shake my head and wonder.
I can't believe there are over 200 posts and nobody's made a Mad Max:Beyond Thunderdome reference yet!
covered-lagoon methane generator, powered by methane billowing off a covered pool of decomposing bovine waste
So let me get this straight. A lagoon full of festering bull shit is "better for the environment" than a nuclear power plant?
Seriously. Even though it's from a natural source, nature never intended for feces to be collected in large pools for the purpose of decomposition. Who knows that kind of mutated E Coli would come from a setup like this.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Outstanding. Now all I need is a DeLorean and a flux capacitor...wonder if that one on eBay ever sold?
Study everything, you'll find something you can use - Jason Bourne
This my not ever see wide spread use. decomposition ponds as described inthe article make lots of methane but much more pollution. manure may be natural but when it decomposes it makes massive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus waste. in the case of pig manure they actually add phosphate to the diet of the animal. when decomposed and freed of the organic poop all these fertilizers readily leach into the ground water and if allowed into the surface run off. this process is of course accelerated buy the fact the the poop is in a liquid state. and most ponds are lined with clay or plastic. this is not a perfect barrier as clay leaks and plastic degrades. concrete would be better but is potentlay very costly. if the basin of the pond leaks it will allow the liquid fertilizers to pass into ground water it make it unusable as drinking water (nitrates in water can poison children quite easily). As surface run off this form of pollution has lead to massive eutrophication damage of rivers and lakes. eutrophication is when it turns water pea green with algae and then all that growth dies, decays and sucks up all the oxygen killing the water body.
Another interesting bit is that at least in the USA many agricultural soils are quite rich in nutrients, such as phosphorus. in places like the midwest were dairy and pig farms are common manure is often liquefied and spread on fields. this is good fertilizer but in the case of pig manure it actually leads to phosphorus overload of the soils. so in Essence we don't need to do this but farmers need to get rid of the manure. this has lead to increased P contamination of water ways as well. id expect that their deodorized doncomposer sludge and water will be no different.
these facts have been know for quite some time. already there is allot of legislation on the books or in the works against liquid manure holding ponds. The elimination of fertilizer runoff into the surface and ground waters is also heavily regulated. i suppose that if done right this can work but it is not as easy or as low cost as it may seem. maybe a centralized facility can buy manure and process it in large scale for methane and be safe and then market the byproducts as assayed fertilizer. but allot of small unlined pond operations randomly spreading sludge and runoff can easily lead to trouble.
*something from "nothing" is great, except when "nothing" it is more than you can pay....
Regarding Net Metering, you asked "Why do we allow laws that strip us of potential income, and benefit companies like PG&E?"
Well, it's actually a bit more complicated than all that. One of the major problems with building a new generator is getting that generator to play nice with the existing transmission/distribution grid. This business of connecting the generator with the grid is called "interconnection." It's not an easy thing to interconnect a generator, and hooking up new green power technologies is especially troublesome. (Wind is the most difficult, with solar being the easiest.)
The federal government has been working on creating new standardized rules for interconnection of small (read: green) generators, but it's an incredibly complicated process that's taking years to complete and isn't even done yet.
So, what does all this have to do with Net Metering, you ask? Well everything.
Net Metering is a state jurisdictional program (meaning each state has its own rules) that avoids the whole interconnection process. While you are still hooking up with the grid, the power flows involved in a Net Metering program are so small in comparison that the process is much quicker and much, much cheaper.
The deal is however, that you cannot export (meaning feed energy into the grid) more power than you consume over the course of the billing period (usually a month).
Take a photovoltaic system - during the day a well built system (and we're not talking people who are entirely off the grid here) may both supply the energy needs of your house and produce some extra energy. That energy is sent out to the grid. Your electric meter essentially runs backwards for that period of time. Then, at night, you resume taking energy from the grid to run your house. At that point your meter is running forward and your bill is increasing. Say over the course of a month you take 1000 kw of electricity of the grid at 8 cents / kw. Usually your bill would be $80. But, over the course of that same month say you pumped 100 kw of energy back into the grid (for a net consumption of 900 kw) - you would receive an $8 credit off of your bill.
Now take the example of Farmer Brown who wants to turn shit into gold (that's the phrase the brochures use - "shit into gold"). Say he (through whatever means) puts 10,000 kw (or 10 MW) onto the system - all of a sudden he likely no longer qualifies for a net metering program and has to take the trouble of actually entering into an interconnection agreement and conducting studies to make sure he's not going to fry some lineman somewhere further down the grid (or more likely, simply overload the local lines and fry a small portion of the grid). Sure, he'd love to use net metering - the utility is required to buy whatever power he produces, the price is set at the retail price for electricity, the price of interconnection is cheap, but he's no longer eligible. So he has to go through the interconnection process, find buyers to buy his energy at wholesale (either by himself, or more likely through what are called "Aggregators"), and he's basically in the energy business with all the regulations and resonsibilities that entails.
But don't feel too sorry for Farmer Brown -- turns out that one of the major expenses in running a dairy farm (who knew) is electricity! Most spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their electric bill every month - so to the extent they can offset even a portion of that through net metering, that there shit really is golden!
This still lets lots of usable carbon out into the
waste stream. Changing World Technologies
(changingworldtech.com) has a more complete
solution, producing separate feeds of diesel oil,
biodiesel, minerals, gas, powdered carbon,
nearly-clean water, etc.
The process has to be tuned for the feedstock,
but the big questions seem to be economic. They
say that recycling all of the US's agriculture
waste could completely replace out-of-ground
petroleum AND return needed minerals to the soil.
i have a compost pile powered garden growing in my backward
They get hot - pretty damn hot, hot enough to kill a lot of "bad" things (just like any other form of decomposition, like a garden compost pile).
Methane Gas Recovery on the Farm
At the above link, you will find the following little tidbit:
Because manure digestion is anaerobic, most weed seeds and pathogens are killed during the process. Pathogens like E.coli, Salmonella, and Cryptosporidium can't survive the high temperature of heated digester. Fecal coliform bacteria numbers in the biosolids are only about one percent of those in fresh and stored manure, lowering the potential for this source of water pollution.
Forget about "mutated e. coli" - read a little before making posts demonstrating your ignorance...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
For really good disposal, contract with Canada to do deep-rock burial in the Canadian Shield. Take a load of almost-spent pebbles while they're still hot, put them in a pointy casing of something like tungsten filled with molten lead (for heat transfer), place against the rock and let go. If it's generating enough heat it will start melting its way downward and will not stop until its heat is depleted - weeks to years. The melted rock will flow around behind it and then solidify, sealing it in place.
Is burial several miles inside unfaulted billion-year-old granite sufficiently safe to satisfy you?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Word of caution: don't breath through your mouth unless you need the extra fiber...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Somebody call the Poopsmith!
Welcome to another edition of THUNDERDOME! :P
Now that we have the menure generators we can finally start WW3 with peace of mind.
They had the goats in a pen elevated off the ground so that they could collect their waste and fertilize stuff with it. Leaves that had fallen off plants were turned into windbreakers. There was even a little symbiotic relationship thing going on between the banana plants and a smaller shrub. EVERYTHING was linked into each other, and according to the farmers there, this kind of farm produced a lot more than the typical kind they've got there, and it requires less work. Now THAT'S engineering.
One of the major problems with lagoons like this in the past was the unbearable smell. It sounds funny, but it loses a lot of the humor when your $70k house becomes completely uninhabitable because of the thousands of pounds of crap festering a few miles away. Anybody know if this particular process will eliminate the stench? Or at least shrink the range?
How about a mini-generator? One that would sit outside your window and power your A/C, or perhaps some servers in your garage? You could power it with dog manure (I have enough to run a city block).
This could be extended to low-power POE devices, mesh networks, you name it.
Such devices could be even labeled EPA PP complaint (Poop Power).
To truly "fix the problem" in that fashion you're going to have to supply not just the 110 megawatts that California's dairy farms can crank out, but the 40,000 megawatts that the entire state consumes. Then you're going to have to address the consumption for transportation, typically drawn from petroleum rather than electricity. This is a problem of a wholly different magnitude and quality, so if you want to make a contribution you need to get an appreciation of what you're dealing with. This means both supplies and consumption.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
When life gives you poop, make poop juice.
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
This pays off quite a bit. If the engine is 25% efficient (and the digesters produce at least 33% more gas than heating demands require), the engine's output fully displaces electricity produced from other sources. If that electricity would otherwise come from coal, the engine could prevent the emission of more fossil carbon than the carbon in the gas burned by the engine; to the extent that the carbon in the sewage stream is biogenic rather than fossil, this is a win/win/win.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
If you only feed toilet waste (no soap suds etc.) to the digester, you won't have problems on that account. And who knows; if you develop a system that is simple, reliable and inexpensive, you might find it being adopted wholesale to offset domestic energy use and take some of the load off of sewage treatment plants by reducing their burden of organic goo and its biological oxygen demand.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Do they need some fuel?
o .jpg&category=Buildings&date=2004-04-02
http://www.engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=cowpo
Don't forget that the cows also drink water, and the feed may be dry grains and hay pellets. The dry weight of the manure will be less than the dry weight of the feed, but the total weight could easily reflect 50% water content.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
My grandfather has long told me of the dairy in Hereford, Texas running entirely on their own methane (and actually loading it out for others) in the 20's...
-jbn
I wonder if this takes some of the smell out of the lagoons also. A big stink in Iowa has been hog factories and how much they smell. I wonder if this would help the smell. If not, it'd really help the farms save money.
I also wonder how much using the manure in this fashion affects its ability to fertilize. Manure is often used to help fertilize fields, so I wonder if it's methaned out, if it's still a good fertilizer.
...what's to prevent us from putting one of these methane burning tanks in the basement of a large apartment building? Would the dilution by... um... tampons, water, leftover soups, vomit, and such reduce the efficiency too much?
I'll agree with most of your points, except one:
You can't have free-grazing cattle AND use their feces as biomass. It's an either-or compromise.
Penned cattle excrete onto concrete pads. It's a simple enough process to sweep/wash/flush these cow paddies into a holding tank where they can be used for biomass. Free-graze cattle excrete in the fields. It's infeasible to collect this waste, because it is literally scattered over acres of land. Even if it were possible to construct a machine that could pick up the manure at less of a fuel cost than the methane produced, you have the other problem of terrain. Flat, easy to navigate land is, more often than not, reserved for farming. Cattle don't mind hillocks, but farm equipment does.
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
I HATE MANURE!
...remember good 'ol times when IP used to mean Internet Protocol....
At least one LARGE city in the US west sells reclaimed sewage manure to a local company for use in their fertilizer products. I don't know if the fertilizer gets sold to the general public or to a controlled market, but the fertilizer is a well known brand.
So:
Fertilizer(human) to grow the grass to feed the cow to make the manure(cow) to make the electricity to cook the meat and vegetables which are used to make more manure (human). (Did I miss something here other than that the cow also provides milk and meat?)
I've got a few PV panels and the rest of the rig for my solar installation(it's mounted on my RV now since we moved and got a small house), a small wind genny, and two fuel gennys,one a 120 VAC output and one just a 12 VDC. So even if the grid completely poofs I have *some* power available and it's *paid off*, I own it. And I'm at the bottom of the economic food chain in the US income-wise, so if I can do it, almost anyone can to some degree, we just need to get the interest up to a critical threshold, like what happened with computers. Look around now, 20 years ago hardly anyone owned a personal computer, now its ridiculous common. We CAN change if we can bypass big government and big energy FUD that we got to "study it" for another 50 years. We done did studied it since the 60's, time to build a lot of them, IMO. Let's get it on, time to act, not think about acting.
In california it's taking off,look at the example in the article, because they got burned, bad, relying on government and big business to be honest and fair and to watch out for the poor peepuls, phooie, they BURNED the folks out in cal, so you have more awareness there of the importance of backups, and diverse sources.
And de centralised power is better for national security! A few more million points of production spread out over the USA makes it much less likely that if any large plants go out from attack/damage/political & economic shenanigans that it will have as bad an effect. As to selling it, sure! If you have more than what you can use, you SHOULD be able to market it into the grid, or offer it in other ways. The exisitng energy industry has been fighting this for decades now, they do NOT want competition. They got mandated the lock-in generations ago,and they wanted to keep it. It's changing but they fought it constantly and still are whenever they can Now ME if I had a surplus of electricity or burnable gas, I'd use it for more projects/businesses, I wouldn't just sell it, that's just selling off raw materials in a sense, and it's usually a better deal to just keep converting until you have a better, more profitable pr
The microbiology of sewage sludge and Farm Manure
Within this paper, it notes in a table (toward the bottom) that "fecal coliform" bacteria (of which, e. coli is one) tend to live less than 5 days (for tropical climate - higher moisture, 20-30 C, or 68-86 F), and certainly less than 30 days (for temperate climate - lower moisture, 10-15 C, or 50-59 F), in "wet sludge" - both of which are temperature ranges well below that of a properly operating methane digester.
Lastly, no one is advocating eating of the sludge from a digester...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
This naturally occurring methane is a potent greenhouse gas, estimated to be 21 times as damaging to the ozone layer as carbon dioxide. The environmental benefits of transforming methane to energy are obvious. Even if the captured methane is simply burned off with a flare, the result is more environmentally friendly than letting the gas drift into the atmosphere.
From the article, comes this little blurb- maybe we can reach our Kyoto goals this way. Of course, it's the same technology that India has been using for years for cooking and lighting of rural homes that have no electricity.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
BTW, anybody notice that recycling paper is carbon neutral, but burying it in the ground is a big carbon sink!!!
The USA currently has roughly 900,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity. Let's assume for the sake of argument that we will use this amount of power 24/7/365 and that it's 100% nuclear. The electric consumption is thus ~330 million megawatt-days per year, or ~8 billion megawatt-hours per year. (This is about 2 times 2002 US consumption of 3.858 billion MWH, so it's fine for this analysis.)
Next, let's assume that this energy is generated using HTGRs which operate at 40% thermal efficiency and that they can get 50,000 megawatt-days of heat out of a ton of uranium. This is 20,000 megawatt-days of electricity per ton, so the annual uranium consumption would be 3.3e8/2e4 = 16,500 tons per year. Do this for 500 years, and you'd have 8.25 million tons of spent fuel.
If you assume that the spent fuel winds up in a form which has a bulk density of 2.75 g/cc (slightly less than the average for surface rocks, and a figure that I picked for convenience in calculating) the total volume would be 3 million cubic meters. This would fill a rectangle a mere 500 meters square by 12 meters high - FOR 500 YEARS OF ENERGY PRODUCTION. And by the time the last of it was produced, the first of it would be safe to hold in your hand for hours at a time.
Is it any wonder that I think the whole radwaste problem has been shamelessly overhyped by the political left?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Hydrogen atoms also do not exist on this planet without being bound to another atom (and in nature this atom is never another H atom) -- usually with a rather tight bond that requires a lot of energy to liberate it.
Until you can point out to me where your mythical hydrogen mines are located perhaps you are the one who should save the flip answers for the ignorant rubes who believe your FUD.
WDW is powered by this method. All of the wastes collected from everyone is sent to their waste processing plant. Energy is produced as well as fertilizer. The fertilizer is put into the fountains where water hyacinths are grown. The Hyacinths absorb nutrients from the fertilizer. The Hyacinths are then removed after flowering and put on composte heaps to rot. The composte is used to grow other flowers and the flowers are removed again and composted. This final composte is then recycled into the hay, grass, and grains that is grown for livestock and other purposes.
:-)
The left over soil in the fountains is also cycled through several steps until it finds its way into the farmlands and other areas in WDW.
When WDW's electrical generators went on-line and began taking over the task of providing electricity for all of WDW, the electric company in Orlando Florida sued the Disney Corporation. The suit was thrown out because it wasn't against the law to own and/or operate your own electrical generators.
Just a FYI.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
I don't believe I ever mentioned hydrogen specifically.
If I seem to hesitant to accept answers like yours blindly maybe my faith is shaken by someone who argues against a point I didn't make.
Why would I want to trust my decisions on information gained from that quality of argument?
Any responsible engineer or scientist will tell you that implenting any kind of highly technological solution is a highly complex endeavor.
Much more complex then the pro-nuke hobbyist enthusiasts present it.
We are talking about our economy, our healthy and our enrivonment -- our home.
An energy solution is not a quick and dirty perl script that if it fails there is no harm done.
Steve
I've always had fun thinking about the future of automobiles if such technology were adapted for cars.
Why, we could have toilet seats instead of regular seats! Simply pull the privacy curtain around you, crap in your seat, and you're good to go for another 20 miles!
Could an 18-wheeler with a full load of cattle make a "free" trip to its destination?
Anybody else have any luck in similar investments? If the companies can't turn a profit, then the farmers won't have anybody to buy the systems from.
I was astounded to see the price of a gallon of milk jump from $3.20 to $4.59 in just three weeks time.
Damn, where do you get your milk, the local hippie store? Milk here in Nebraska goes for around $2.25 (sometimes as low as $2, sometimes as high as $2.70).
Soy milk goes for about twice that, which is still less than your price.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I saw a documentary about something just like this in Michigan or Wisconsin or some place like that. The dairy farmer pushed all the manure into a oblong pit, add a small amount of yeast and water, and let it rot. The methane produced powered the large dairy farm, a couple nearby cities, and a few additional farms. This is a great thing let me tell you. The only downside is that at the moment it's only practical to do this with dairy farms. Let me explain. Dairy cattle (Holstein and Jersey are by far the most common) have to be milked twice daily, usually but depends on the breed, age, and environmental conditions. The cattle are hearded into a dairy barn by human or dog (dogs are excellent for this). Each cow ends up in their own stall head first. Usually the stalls are elevated above the walkway for the farmer and his help. The cattle are fed while the farmer milks his cows. Today this is easily done with milking machines. While the cows are being fed and milked they tend to shit. They tend to shit a lot in fact. Now here's why dairy cattle are the only practical application for harvesting manure. Milking buildings have concrete floors. All the shit ends up on concrete floors rather than in a pasture or feedlot. With a little foresight one could easily engineer a dairy barn that facilitates the collection of manure with machinery. Pure manure ends up in the hopper for methane production rather than a manure/dirt mix like what you'd get if you harvested manure from a feedlot (like the world's largest feedlot in Dodge or Garden City, KS (or it at least was, not sure if it still is). You can easily harvest the crap and nothing but the crap from a concrete pad in a dairy farm. The same can't be said about a feedlot. It would be interesting to see a solution to the problem though. There's no reason for us to not harvest that potential source of energy.
Why not engineer a butt-plug for cows and re-capture all that methane in a big plastic bag? The cows may not be too happy about it but who cares: we eat them anyway.
A disclaimer to those who might award me a Nobel Prize: I can't take credit for this idea - my wife's been telling me for years that men need such gear to capture their farts (and spare womankind).
The only reason this solution appears to save them so much money is because their business *IS* cattle and so they have a FREE source of the raw "combustible" material. If I, for instance, wanted to power my home or non-ranch business with a manure/methane generator, I might very well have to pay someone for regular purchases - and transport - of manure, which might cut substantially into the net savings.
I've never studied nuclear engineering and I have no employment, investment or familial connections to the industry. I still think that nuclear power, managed correctly, can be used safely. My conclusion was shaped in no small part by the anti-nukes mindlessly opposing everything that the industry tried to do, right down to creating a safe disposal site for existing spent fuel as already provided for by law and paid for by the nuclear power industry!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I think this will only happen in the country and not in the city. Look, Canada is using it.
Subzerorz
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(And the word is "bales", not "bails" [which is a verb].)
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Mason Dixon Farms has been using this technology since the late 70s. I saw a presentation on their work and they stated that they sold close to 17% of the electricity they produced back to the local power company. This is the best article I could find on them: American Farm article
and many of the remnants of the independent ranchers totally agree with you. What has happened over the last 30 years in ranching is that the stockyards and big feedlots/packers conglomerates have monopolized marketing to the extent that a lot of ranchers were forced into selling at a loss, or went under. A few who owned their land outright, and more importantly could still market effectively, have done quite well on grass fed beef, but they are in a severe minority now. I prefer grass fed myself, and I also agree on the economics of using grains for the beef critters-it's quite nuts and wasteful..
On a dairy, it's better to have a larger herd, the equipment costs are (I am being quite broad now)almost the same for a 50 cow herd as a 500, so it just makes sense to try and max out there, even if the daily chores are more. It would also lead to schemes such as the methane plant being more cost effective to implement. With free range grass fed ranching, it isn't practical, your methane producing stock (heh) is not all easy to scoop up, it's all over yonder all over the pastures. On a dairy it is highly concentrated and you got to do something with it. Same with the poultry farmers now, MAN, they get a lot. usually now it'scomposted, then spread, it's held in very large barns for a year or so, various EPA regs and so on to control runoff. I think that's reasonable, although I'd like to see them use more methane production as well, and in fact, that's where a lot of the large methane plants are now.
heh, one of my jobs on a dairy once, head poop scooper in the free stall barn. man, that's a lotta stuff! I used a bobcat to scoop to an underground chain driven dealie that moved it outside and directly into a HUGE spreader wagon. That's exactly why I built that example small digester I was talking about in my post. Saw all that methane gas going to waste, thought it would save joe farmer some cash, maybe get me a raise...maybe.
Nope. too hippy of an idea....
Back to ranching, it's very close to being akin to desktop dominance with the big packers. In fact I'd say it's a worse monopoly than with MS. There are few alternatives, you go with the packers and sell your beef, or struggle spend half your time developing a market rather than ranching. the independnets hate it, but they are enscrewed in it. There's some effort going on now with the independents to get some sort of anti trust relief, but it's a struggle for them, as you can imagine.
And as to land valuation, etc, there's a vital interst there that goes beyond current day to day economics. Food isn't a luxury. To me, it is more important to have widely diverse and localized points of production in "food", same as I mentioned for energy. In a crisis, or say something happens, transportation gets borked, fuel costs skyrocket from some new war, etc(man, if that ain't happening now, sheesh), you are gonna want *real close by* food production. It'll come in handy. The average US grocery store has around 3 days food before they are tapped. In a crisis, you don't want to rely totally on stuff being able to get shipped in from thousands of miles away, not all of it anyway, and with what might get in, you sure ain't gonna wanna pay them prices.
I don't think you can place an adequate $ price on that, that can address the main issue there.. That's why I think nations as a rule should first always make sure they are completely indpendent on food and fresh water and energy supply and a nice bare minimum manufacturing, it is just too critical for national security to ignore or to "farm" it out to another nation, even if it involves protectionism to some degree. Human necessities SHOULD be protected, other products, just "wants" and luxuries, sure, let the market determine what gets done where, no problems there much from my POV as long as the tariffs are equitable.
We do it quite successfully in Australia. Big wind farms, single prop rural, even residential solar.
- It emits less radioactive material than the tramp uranium, thorium, radium, radon and polonium found in coal and released by combustion.
- It emits no acid-rain forming gases at all.
- It emits no smog-forming gases at all.
- It emits no greenhouse gases at all.
- The volume of waste produced is so small that we can afford to use extraordinary means to isolate it from the environment for aeons, unlike the lead, mercury and other toxic materials in coal ash.
It is exactly that painting - by the opposition - that forced me to the conclusion that the anti-nukes were largely ignorant and/or dishonest advocates of a bankrupt position. Take the opposition to a central nuclear waste repository in the USA. It is based on the claim (unproven) that there will be detrimental health effects on generations far in the future (100,000 or more years) if they drink the groundwater in the region very close to the repository, and that transporting the waste is too dangerous. Yet they disingenuously claim that leaving the waste where it is, in dry-cask storage, is also too dangerous! There is no consideration of what is better, they just oppose everything.Regarding the scare claims about the dangers of transportation, the antis raise images of a cask falling off a bridge (they've been drop-tested), being caught in a fire (they have been fire-tested), or being blasted by terrorists with anti-tank weaponry. The claim is that this last could lead to "a Chernobyl", when they know full well that cold ceramic fuel could never behave the way the hot RMBK core did. The worst that could happen is that a few radioactive particles escape from the damaged cask and are found by crews using scintillation counters and cleaned up.
Their last and biggest scare tactic is that "reactors make plutonium, which makes BOMBS!" Never mind that bomb-grade plutonium is a very different isotopic mix from what you get out of a power reactor, and that nobody (not even Kim Jong Il or Saddam Hussein) was dumb enough to try to reprocess LWR fuel for its plutonium for military purposes; to the political action types who are trying to sway the opinion of an ignorant public, it is all the same stuff. (Note that if it were even remotely feasible to use spent PWR fuel to make bombs, the proliferators would not bother using dedicated reactors, gas centrifuges or other suspicious methods instead. The fact that regimes which are trying to keep their efforts hidden do not even try to use that "stealth" source of plutonium says a lot about how good the stuff is for making bombs; it is no good at all.)
I've got facts to back up my opinions, and data from the real world enemies of anti-proliferation to support me. Yet the anti-nukes persist with their anti-factual claims. Am I justified in calling them liars, or are they just stupid?Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The price I mentioned is what you get it for in most major area grocery stores. I suppose the price also has something to do with an absolutely rediculous pricing scheme that is dependant on your geographic location (I heard about this once on the news). Put the two together and you've got a commodity that is not only overpriced, but priced unfairly to boot.
Landfills put out methane, for the same reason (anaerobic digestion). Small steam, electricity, or dual-purpose (co-generation) plants are often located near closed landfills to take advantage of the cheap energy source.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Never mind that bomb-grade plutonium is a very different isotopic mix from what you get out of a power reactor
Do you (or anyone else) know what the isotopic ratios for Pu out of a fast breeder reactor are? I've never seen this published.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
See, there really ARE environmentalists for nuclear power!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist