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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!"
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.
...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?
..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!!!!
Oh wait... (or is it "moo wait..."?)
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 don't know if I believe this article... something smells kind of funny about it.
buh-du-bum-ching
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!
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Erick
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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.
Without forrest like we used to have...
Many forests around the world have been significantly depleted, but the myth of deforestation in the U.S. is just that, a myth. There hasn't been a significant decrease in plantlife except in very urban areas, like New York.
Also, on a world wide scale, much of the plantlife that handles the CO2 issue is in the ocean. I don't remember the number, but something like 70% of the CO2 converting plants live in the ocean. I think that's the bigger issue.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
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.
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....
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.
I read recently that there's enough old growth forest in the US to make a band as wide as texas from NY to Seattle.
Much of it is in undesirable areas (mountains etc) or protected parks so it's pretty much safe.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"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.
I know you're just trying to be funny, but I thought I'd point out there's a reason why this is being done for dairy cows instead of beef cattle. Dairy cows tend to shit in a barn while they're being milked. This creates a lot of waste in a small area, that we typically just hoss out the back. Of course, there's no reason you couldn't hoss it into a container, and then dump that somewhere else where it could be better used.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
My ancestors didn't fight for millions of years to get to the top of the food chain for me to be a vegetarian.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Sorry to disappoint some but the human stuff is at least in the USA very often used for methane production. Many municipal Sewerage Treament plants do this already. Decatur Alabama has done so for years and runs many city cars on it. Florence Alabama drilled their landfill and did same.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
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.
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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?
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...
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They still use it as fertilizer. While it's sitting in the lagoon decomposing, they capture the methane (instead of letting it outgas into the atmosphere). Then they take the good stuff out of the lagoon and spread it.
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
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.
Yeah. I once spent about 15 minutes researching an implausible-sounding statistic related to this that someone had quoted from Rush. When he isn't just plain lying, he uses statistics carefully crafted to give misimpressions. In particular...
:-(
:-)
He had a statistic about the amount of forested area in the US actually increasing by some significant percentage over a period of a few decades. In trying to figure out any way that this might actually be true, I realized that the decades in question covered the time when Alaska became a state. A brief check of an Almanac showed that Alaska accounted for the claimed growth and quite a lot more. Factoring that in, it was clear that the same statistic showed a pretty alarming rate of destruction.
Guess we just need to annex Brazil to keep the trend going.
After that? Mars maybe? Can we somehow count Mars as all forested?
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!
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