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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!"
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
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
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.
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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?
That's greenpeace FUD, really. There's not nearly as much CO2 staying in the atmosphere as there should be, and noone knows why not. The best theories are that the oceans (which are most of the planet) sink orders of magnitude more CO2 than all the land-based plants.
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/
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."
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.
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.
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.
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Right but I thought it was interesting drawing a parallel with todays sociopolitical movements and the fictional, post Armageddon, dystopic society portrayed in mad max. The reason they were using pig shit was that oil was scarce. They warred over oil. Also an under class was forced to work to provide for an upper class who did little more than expend the energy in wasteful ways.
What could possibly go wrong?
Another benefit is reducing the animal waste load on local water systems. With those huge factory farms, just dumping it in the river is not an option, and there's only so much you can spread on the fields before it ends up in the drinking water along with e-coli. (The leftovers from generating methane can still be used as fertilizer, but less hazardous than the .. raw .. stuff.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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!
Are you kidding?
Have you ever heard the old adage that a squirrel could walk from Maine to Florida without touching the ground? The reason for this adage is that the entire eastern seaboard of the US used to be a SUPER-dense old-growth forest. That forest has since been nearly obliterated, and very little of the original growth actually remains.
That's the greatest example of deforestation in the US, but there are plenty of others that are worthy of note. Then you can look at other countries (Ireland, UK) that used to be almost entirely covered and have less than 1% of their original forests remaining.
-rt
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
Come to washington some time and gander all the mountains that have been clear cut. We still have a lot of forests left, and they do try to replant them, but that's not always really effective. What I hate is how they leave a narrow strip of trees near the interstates and highways to give the impression of the forrest.
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
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....
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
Many municipal wastewater plants use anaerobic digestion, and methane is the natural byproduct. The research now is trying to increase the amount of hydrogen production as it is more energy efficient and less wasteful.
As for diluting the biomatter anything organic will work and you will get methane. Ask any environmental engineer and we can go on for hours on this wonderful subject.
This is nothing new, only on a smaller scale.
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.