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Researchers Make Gasoline From Cow Dung
McDrewbie writes "Yahoo! News has an article about Japanese researchers extracting a small amount of gasoline from 3.5oz of cow dung. The process uses application of high heat and pressure. Hopefully, when more information is released, we can find out how much energy it takes to produce this gasoline and how energy efficient the process is."
Its amazing what scientists can create.
I wonder if we could just connect this directly up to the chairs in SCO's offices and solve the worlds energy problems!
liqbase
So new we have an active refienery in the US.
t ion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymeriza
At least Japan knows how to PR the tech - you never hear about it here - which is just sad.
So not only do they cause mass amounts of methane gas pollution, but now they make gasoline too! Yeehaw!
But the cows kept getting really sick from all the gasoline we were feeding them.
Let's see the oil companies trying to shus this pile of steaming cow dung.
That didn't come out right.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
'Cause with all the BS they're spewing, I think we've solved the world's energy problems.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I bet they put more energy in than they got out.
Slashdot makes articles from cow dung all the time.
You have got to be shitting me.... Does this mean we will be getting our gasoline from Farmer John now? How will this effect the prices of fertilizer (& steak)? Will your friends "piece of crap" run on crap? Will "smokin deh shit" now mean driving your car?
this sounds quite good, but there was a better one in Germany:
Some months ago (last september) one media misunderstood an invention of a german engineer who found a way to recycle certain sorts of refuse to diesel and claimed (BILD claimed, not the engineer...), he would do so with dead cats.
The original "news" seems no longer to be available, but bildblog, a blog specialized in doing meta-news on that particular media (no way to call it "newspaper", it's only just crap...) featured an article on that one:
http://www.bildblog.de/?p=791
Ironically Bush and all other politicians have solved our energy problems. They have enough bullshit to last us a 1000 years!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Even worse, actually. If we tried to use it instead of normal oil, we'd have to cover the entire earth, actually more land, with cattle.
Finding alternative sources for fuel is only one part of the equation. We most of all need ways to reduce our consumption. There is no way to keep production at the level we currently have, so we either have a plan how to use less oil (not only as gas, but think of all the plastic) or we'll be facing VERY expensive oil products soon.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Donald: Jake ain't lyin', though. We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Tom: But we'll never get that fat sound again, not without some more horns. We'll never get Mr. Fabulous.
Jake: Where is he?
Murph: Forget it. Mr Fabulous is the top Maitre D at the Chez Paul. He's pullin' down six bills a week.
Steve: Yeah. And Matt Murphy went up and got himself married.
Could anyone care to tell me exactly what is new here?
I live in Sweden. Our busses (all our busses, a few cars) doesn't run on fossil fuel - they run on human shit. If anybody would care to go and pick up all the cow dung around, I'm sure it could be used in the shit-to-fuel-factory as well.
Up untill recently they did, however, use cows as fuel: they mixed the shit with animal fat from slaughter houses when they made the fuel.
So it wasn't dinosars, so much as dinosaur poop, then?
Cool my car is not only a piece of crap, but it can run on crap too?!
FTA: "In a separate experiment revealing another unusual business potential for cow dung, another group of researchers has successfully extracted an aromatic ingredient of vanilla from cattle dung...The extracted ingredient, vanillin, can be used as fragrance in shampoo and candles"
Great I can't wait till I can buy me a Bottle of Selsun Poo or a 1/2 gallon of Poo Bell Vanillin Ice Cream or even better crap candles!...seriously though...as amazing as all of this is...can this crap run linux?
Ok,I propose a new scientific measure.
bs is the ratio of number of barrels of gasoline it will take to create a barrel of gasoline from bullshit(of the organic variety)
I think the current process will be about 30bs on absolute scale
The thing about these Japanese corporate researchers is, they all think that their shit doesn't stink.
The lack of comments about the technical or economic merits of this is sad. More sad is that the comments that are posted are all jokes. There is plenty of alt. groups and other places to show off your wit & humor!
My question is the article said metal catalysts are required. How much do they cost? What is the cost of a gallon made this way today (in the lab) and what price do they expect it to cost w/ large scale production?
http://www.hawknest.com/
How?
Well, although we probably have really nifty technologies now and coming up for producing energy from solar, geothermal, tidal, wind, hydro, ocean thermal gradients and even new safer nuclear reactors, we don't really have any effective way of making that energy portable, easily storable or able to be distributed through existing infrastructure. If we can get really cheap and really clean electricity, and use that to produce oil products from purpose-grown organic matter (like algae ponds) and/or organic waste (raw sewage, agricultural waste, cannery waste etc) we might be on a winner. Provided we don't start grinding up coal to make crude oil this way, the whole process should be carbon-neutral and a convenient way of storing energy in a portable liquid form that we already know how to store, ship and use.
A Load of Manure. html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/opinion/04niman
TALK of reducing our dependence on foreign oil through alternative energy sources like biomass is everywhere these days -- even on our president's lips. As a livestock farmer and environmental lawyer, I've paid particular attention to discussion about using manure as "green power." The idea sounds appealing, but power from manure turns out to be a poor source of energy. Unlike solar or wind, it can create more environmental problems than it solves. And it ends up subsidizing large agribusiness. That's why energy from manure should really be considered a form of "brown power."
continued..
Previously, uses for Dung were only as a base for fetilizer and US public policy. It's been proven to be useful for fertilizer, and essential for the corporate whores in government, as a base to justify their unrelenting screwing of the masses.
What a bunch of crap!
"If we tried to use it instead of normal oil, we'd have to cover the entire earth, actually more land, with cattle
Yes, but one of the better side-effects of such large scale cattle farming would porterhouse at about forty cents a pound (U.S.)
(by the way, I just made that price up; there wasn't any real calculation concerning real statistics and/or numbers of any sort involved. It was a joke. Porterhouse is fine cut of beef, and, as such, tends to be a little pricier. Using the logic of "More cattle = more beef = greater supply of porterhouse = lower price", I was able to pull a low number out of my ass. I hope you're all happy, I think I just killed any humor this joke may have had. But, because every time I make a joke on this site somebody feels the need to try to get deep about either the failings-of-man-as-a-whole or the-lies-that-science-is-made-from, I thought I'd try one last attempt at saving them the trouble. It's only a joke. It's only ever a joke. If you comment on a joke, it should either be a comment taking the joke further, or telling the comedian that they aren't funny. One should not respond to a joke on a forum such as this with a deep and mostly unrelated philosophic dialogue about two or three of the words used. That's bad forum ettiquete. Trespassers will be violated, violators will be shot, offer void in texas as I don't believe in texas, and please see official gamepiece for complete rules and restrictions that may apply in my/your/his or her area. If you would like to request the rules and restrictions in French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, or Serbo-Croatian, please send self addressed stamped envelope taped to the front of a postcard with a written request for aforementioned info to the address provided. Thanks for playing.)
~ken
Paul: If you're reading this, pick your shoes up out of the hallway. I keep tripping over them. Slob.
And how much energy are they using to get this gasoline from the cow kaka.
I'm not the guy to do it, but if the catalyst is a metal or combination of metals, it should be easy to deduce the exact combination. I wonder how much gas it would take to heat the 3.5 ounces of bovine scat the proper temperature and hold it until the reaction has ceased? Given the sample nature of the experiment, I doubt that efficiency was even considered. A question, which component of this complex biocompound is responsible, the cellulose from their diet, or the more cow-generated parts? Gasoline, or at least a reasonable analog, has been made from several sources, is this a particularly good raw material, even at zero purchase cost?
India... The next Middle East!
Someday this is efficient enough.
Comp_Lex86, the Netherlands
Seriously. Shouldn't we be looking for something more sensible than this?
eg. Brazil runs most of its cars on sugar cane extract - a carbon-neutral solution.
Then again, Brazil isn't run by millionaires who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually imporoving things.
No sig today...
Well, while the technology may be usefull for other things, I doubt gasoling from cow dung will ever become more than a curiosity... for one thing, the efficiencies are so bad it's better to simply burn the dung.
As for a catalyst, one can imagine some sort of conversion enzyme ?
Probably a better to extract energy from dung will be to squeeze out the methane first and then use and ezyme some digestion and conversion steps to convert the cellulose into sugars which can then be fermented into ethanol...
Ciao
wally
Yes it's amazing that we can turn poop into gas, but we can't build engines that can get more gas mileage.
Can I bum a sig?
Two men enter! One man leaves!
It's good to know that we have the technology to create fuel during a Tina Turner ruled, caged-dome-fighting, post-apocalyptic economy.
0.042 ounces of oil per 3.5 ounces of cow dung
.. hmm I don't know... like 12 minutes? Well, at least it's good to know that when oil runs out, cow dung can be used to run the entire Japan for about 12 minutes...
1.2% volume yield
551,155 tons of cow dung produced in Japan annually (according to article)
250,000,000 tons of oil consumption in Japan annually (rough estimate from Wikipedia)
6,614 tons of oil extracted from cow dung annually (1.2% of 551,155 tons)
I am not even sure how much electricity/energy requires to produce 6,614 tons of oil, but it may well be from cow dung oil.
Roughly around 7.4 barrels are equal to 1 ton, therefore 6,614 tons comes out to be about 49,008 barrels of oil. According to Wikipedia and my guess, with about 5,500,000 barrels per day consumption in Japan, that 49,008 barrels of cow dung oil only lasts about
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
... we sometimes put something it its place, to offset its void. Maybe we should start pumping cow dung into the void...
"Hopefully, when more information is released, we can find out how much energy it takes to produce this gasoline and how energy efficient the process is."
and further delay our transition to non-poluting fuels...
"damnit, trolley I want in your signature." - Elburrito
A shitbox, that is. Now I have a way to fuel it.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
During World War II the Germans made Gasoline from coal on a massive scale. That process is well known. Making gasoline from oil is the preferred process because of several reasons: it costs less, it is cleaner - no strip mining, the oil can be pumped out of the ground as a liquid instead.
There are two well known problems with our current technological society: the first is supplying the energy source for it, the second is what do you do with the waste products? Basically no effort has been put into the second problem. That does not mean that the problem can't be solved.
Suppose you genetically engineered a form of chlorophyl which produced hydrocarbons instead of carbohydrates. This would convert water and CO2 into gasoline - burning the fuel would produce water and CO2 again. An area 100Km by 100Km at 20% efficiency would produce enough gasoline to fuel all of the vehicles in the US from solar power (sun light drives the CO2 and water conversion into gasoline) The process would be clean and environmentally friendly.
The problems of technology can be solved by other technology. This may not make the gloom and doomers of the world happy - but it is the way things work. Nothing is perfect, but adequate answers can be found.
"It smells like money, to the Japanese"
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Coincidentally, the New York Times today has an op-ed that argues this is a terrible idea. The main point of the op-ed is that such power generation would encourage environmentally-harmful factory farming, which is the source of all the dung, by essentially subsidizing their dung production. Dung power would have other bad environmental side effects, too.
One of the claims of the abiogenic-oil folks (J F Kenney and Russian colleagues, T Gold) is that no one has proven the mechanism by which buried plant or algae or other organic material turns into oil by being buried at the shallow depths of the "oil window." The conventional narrative on biogenic oil is that organic material gets buried, and at a certain range of depth (about 1-2 miles down), the temperature and pressure is able over time to crack the long-chain molecules in the plant material into oil.
The skeptics of the conventional narrative, the abundant abiogenic-oil quacks, whatever you want to call them, argue that the conversion of long-chain carbohydrates or plant oils into saturated short-chain hydrocarbons just doesn't happen in the oil window just as diamonds don't form in the shallow layers of the crust. They argue that oil can only form at the same depths (pressures and temperatures) as diamonds -- that is deep down in the upper mantle -- and that there are mechanisms by which oil and gas can migrate upward from those extreme depths and not disassociate.
It should be simple enough to take organic matter and apply the same squeeze and temperature and pressure as the oil window, mix in what you think is the natural mineral catalyst, and voila, get oil from "oil window" conditions, no? Even if long time is an ingredient, you should be able to get traces of oil for short time? The oil window skeptics argue 1) no one has ever done this, 2) it doesn't happen, and 3) it only happens in industrial processes where you are using metal catalysts.
The skeptics argue that you can't just crack long-chain unsaturated carbohydrates and turn them into short-chain saturated hydrocarbons. The skeptics of the skeptics turn around a say, wrong, it is not plant carbs but an unspecificed something else in organic matter that turns into oil. Anyone have any insight into this?
Are you going to account for increased population? Add to that more people are gaining modern conveniences - everything from cars to electric toasters and light bulbs. Combine the two and even though we may get more and more efficient devices, we are very unlikely to actually reduce energy consumption world-wide. We can slow the need for a short while, but we need and can have even better energy resources. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Go on, think of the fame that will be yours if you succeed.
thats just bullshit
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
What happened is that in doing the cost/benefit analysis of the TDP plant for turkey offal, the analysts were counting on pending U.S. legislation that would ban the use of animal waste as animal feed. (Similar to laws that have been enacted in nearly every other country in order to combat mad cow disease.)
In the end, the law died out (a Bad Thing for U.S. meat consumers - agricultural industry money won out over concerns for public health.), and as a result what was originally going to become biological waste potentially classified as a biohazard which companies would have to PAY to dispose of, the status quo of being able to use animal leftovers as feed for other animals remained. The new oil plant isn't what made people decide to charge for their animal waste, they were ALREADY doing it.
In short, an increase in demand didn't cause the cost effectiveness of the TDP plant in Carthage to fail, but lack of an expected decrease in demand did.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
3.5oz - not going to yeild much petrol, is this for bonsai cars perhaps ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
"hey rocky! watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."
Serenity now, insanity later.
The article quoted rate is 3.5 oz of cow dung for .042 oz of gas. For each ton of cow dung, you'd get .19 gallons of gas, which in the US at this time, would sell at the pump for roughly 40 to 50 cents.
Wonder what the cost (in gas alone) would be to load that ton of dung into your (hopefully large) truck, then drive it to the collection point. And what do you do with the by-product? Once that 1/5th of a gallon is extracted, there is still a ton of "processed" cow dung to haul again. Probably going to exceed 3 gallons of gas in cost.
It's going to have to be a LOT more efficient before this makes sense.
now the US can finally become independant of forign oil...that is, if we open up one of these plants in Washington DC...if my calculations are correct, there is enough bullshit coming out of there to even provide fuel to canada and mexico.
>tg
now that's good shit!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
In india actually dried cow dung is used directly as a fuel in the form of "cow cakes" and is in fact a "traditional fuel"
a de7/india/Woman_cooking.html
C ourses/so191/SouthAsReadings/IndiaEnergySuccess.ht ml
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/socialstd/gr
"Refining" of cow dung has been going on for a long time for even more efficiency is used all the time
Check out this article from 1995 that converts cow dung to methane which is used in power plants and the left over slurry is used a fertilizer..
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/
Mandating higher R insulation values for new construction would help a lot. Stroke of the pen, law of the land. It would be that easy. That's where a simple law combined with pressure from mortgage lenders could do wonders. Next up would be a large partial decentralization of the electrical grid by massive adoption of solar PV panels on roofs. Not every single exact instance of every single roof is all that suitable for solar panels, but there are literally millions and millions that could have them. That and solar thermal water heaters. There are just so many examples out there now where people have gone that route that it has been proven that it is quite viable tech now. Having lived before with total solar PV, I can say it is "ready for the desktop". It's there, it works, and is now cheap enough so that if incorporated into a normal mortgage it is affordable enough.
We actually *got* to the future. Solar power is the ONLY practical "fusion" power we have to use now. With manufacturing plants closing for other devices in the US, seems silly to me to not take advantage of the labor and building potential we have to switch some industries around. As it stands, Japan and Germany are now the world leaders, and soon China, all have gone to mass production with plans to increase those levels. There's no reason the US couldn't do it other than inertia.
There is no single "one" replacement technique for all the various ways we use now for energy, but there are existing enough ways that taken in total-if adopted on mass scale-would go a pretty long way to helping out. Wind power has already hit primetime even in the commercial wholesale side of things, and long ago hit it practical levels for a lot of rural and suburban folks. Solar is there now as well. It also has a neat property of being a peak source which also cooincidently happens to exactly match "peak demand" in the hotter areas of the US where Air Conditioning is critical. More insulation and more points of power production taken as an aggregate is a helluva good way to address current and future energy demands. As a large scale supplement and addition to the traditional sources we have now it is "there", it's mature and viable technology. Energy payback for construction is down to a couple or three years, after that it starts to become pretty useful, and with current warranties and expected useful spans of PV panels measured in decades, (matching mortgages as well) by the time they need to be replaced the tech will be there so it is even more practical.
Plans were announced to build a high volume refinery near Crawford, TX.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
I think this story is.... ...c'mon, you know it's coming.... ....bullshit.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
There actually exists one easy way to reduce the energy needed to transport goods, I think an ordinary train will use about roughly 1/5 to 1/10 the amount of energy used by a lorry or truck. Comparing a train with cars will probably make an even bigger difference and trains could travel at much higher speeds.
I've been working some numbers here from the article linked to this which says that every 35 oz of cow poop comes to 0.42 oz of gas. Japan produces about 551,155 TONS of cow shit every YEAR. .042 oz gas produced/3.5 oz dung = 1653,465 gallons of gas produced from 551,155 tons of cow dung.
551,155 tons dung * 2000 lb/ton * 16 oz/lb *
In 2005, the US consumed an average gasoline consumption of 320,500,000 gallons per DAY.
we've compared years to days here, and it still doesn't even come close to making a difference. unfourtaniatly, cow shit cannot solve our problems
In other news, Bush declared India the most likely hiding place of Osama, and the US began to gear up for operation "Hindu Freedom".
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Its amazing what scientists can create.
Oh the ass dump to gas pump tech is nothin. Did you RTFA?! There was far more disturbing technology at the end. Check this out, clart :
In a separate experiment revealing another unusual business potential for cow dung, another group of researchers has successfully extracted an aromatic ingredient of vanilla from cattle dung, said Miki Tsuruta, a Sekisui Chemical Co. spokeswoman. The extracted ingredient, vanillin, can be used as fragrance in shampoo and candles, she said.
Wow. Brings a whole new meaning to "tastes like shit."
Put a heifer in your tank
Drop a floater in your tank
Move over Tony, here comes Clarabelle
Biodeisel? No. Shit, Sherlock!
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
If this can be made to work with BS, maybe Fox News might have some productive value after all.
Suppose you genetically engineered a form of chlorophyl which produced hydrocarbons instead of carbohydrates.
SOme plants which produce hydrocarbons are called "oilseeds". Some Algae do it also. As for the waste - its CO2 and if ppl don't notice plants use it for food.
As for the presumed negative effects of CO2... well - the paleoclimate record shows that CO2 more than 13x higher than now did not cause global warming during the Ordovician... and in fact did not prevent the planet from plunging into an ice age. So about the only effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually beneficial because it increases crop yeilds.
I'm glad these guys finally got their shit together!
Now, you understand that 100% efficiency just isn't possible in any realy world environment. But what level of efficiency does it take to piss you off, and what level to make you applaud?
Until you've done that, you're really just flapping your gums (tapping your fingers?) and not participating.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
I call bullshit!
that's RUBBISH!
dammit, that's not funny. i managed to screw up a crap joke.
---- I was woken up this morning by a face full of fur. Damn cat thought my head made a good pillow.
Medical Waste: 65% oilt ion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymeriza
Free the fat to fuel America...
You'll never get a net increase in energy. With all of the heat and pressure that was used in making the gasoline, this process would have to violate the Second Law of Termodynamics to become usefull.
http://www.google.com/search?q=(.042+fluid+ounces% 2F3.5+ounces)*551%2C155+tons+in+gallons
It takes approximately 666 pounds of cow dung to produce 1 gallon of gasoline.
That being said, Jaqan has 551,155 tons of dung. That works out to 1,656,321 gallons of gasoline.
But here's the question. It takes a lot of energy to extract this from the cow dung. Where will that come from? Burning some methane perhaps?
Someone go out and invent the cow toilet so we can harness this!! (I don't want to be the one in the fields picking up the chips)
San Francisco is doing something similar soon except it's not gasoline. Collecting dog waste to create methane gas.
Dog waste not, want not
... now the Marines have to liberate them as well and spread democracy and freedom to the cow pastures. Next thing you know, the first suicide cow bomber will go down in the annals of history, and those bastards the politicians will have another great enemy to define and use.
Stop drinking milk you terrorist lovers!
Oh well...Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
Funny this article came up. The University of Illinois is doing something similar with pig manure... Check it out at http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news3557.htm l
The article isn't very detailed, but it is interesting.
The job of a scientist is to discover what nature intended. The job of an engineer is to politely disagree.
"Researchers Make Gasoline From Cow Dung"
BULLSHIT.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
ok so a little bit of burnable fuel comes form a pile of dung. So it sounds like we need to make massive amounts of dung quickly. We will need to genetically engineer larger faster pooping cows. Or at least a large stomach that could digest raw material without an actual animal. The anus alone will need to be like 10 feet in diameter. The dung produced will be processed into fuel and fertilizer. We could make the opening of the stomach-unit a giant inescapable pit. So all the republicans, or democrats,and later both could be rounded up and tossed in. They would turn into gasoline that would run my car. Since reblicans and democrats tend to reproduce quickly, we would have a ready supply of materials to make our fuel poop.
total = (500,000 x 10^6 g of shit) * (1.4 x 10^-3 liters of gas) / (100 g of shit)
o line_per_capita.html)
total = 7,000,000 liters of gasoline
total = 1,849,204.36 US gallons
Per capita consumption 464 gallons per year
(http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gas
Americans = (1,849,204.36 US gallons) / (464 gallons)
Americans = 3,985.3
4000 people would benefit. Woohoo!!! Energy Independence! USA! USA! USA! USA!
We're not even factoring the gasoline needed to make the process work or to ship the shit/gasoline in and out of the plant. The problem with most policies makers even business people is that they don't do "back of the envelope calculations" before passing laws or making decision, especially with science related stuff.
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
When the Europeans first arrived, there were many, many more trees, which the colonists, statesman, and citizens cut down for their log cabins, ships, farms, and roads.
t aly.htm
Did the colonists know that they were devistating the environment? probably not. Did they do so? Yes. Prior to that, a similar thing happened in Europe. It probably was not in a great single "death to trees" movement, but you can bet your ass that forests were levelled by Europeans in order to discover the New World, whether you credit the discovery to Columbus, Leifur Eiriksson, or the people who had already been hunting, gathering, living, and writing developing an oral history for generations before the European white man came and yelled "savage!" without looking in a mirror (which he should have done).
Yeah, I'm white. What my ancestors did really sucked.
Italy discovered by Indians
http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/indi
cw
The reason cows, bison, or any other ruminants have no effect on global warming is because ruminants eat grass. Therefore all the carbon released by their digestive process came from plants which captured the carbon from the atmosphere.
A cow or horse could emit 10 times the carbon that a car does (I'm not saying it does) and it wouldn't matter. The reason fossil fuels cause greenhouse problems is because we're taking millions upon millions of years of stored carbon and releasing it in the matter of a couple centuries.
Wow wait till they can make gasoline outta farts! We'll never run outta energy as long as theres beans!
Not a geek just looking for one.
Bring one to Washington D.C., as we need one here badly!! This stuff is getting mighty deep around these parts.
True, Japan may only produce about half a million tons of cow manure, but the United States Produces somewhere on the order of five hundred million tons of cow manure a year. Multiply the amount of gas by 1000, and you get 1,653,465,000 gallons of gas per year. That's about 4 million gallons of gas per day, so maybe 1% of our gasoline could be supplied by cow manure. That's not including other fuels that can likely be extracted. Couple this with potential in-situ operations where the manure is converted to energy directly on the farm and you end up with reduced fuel for delivery, although most likely slightly reduced efficiency so we'll call that a wash.
Not that 1% of our fuel seems like a very big deal, but in order to replace petroleum as our primary fuel we are going to have to squeeze every bit of energy out of alternative sources and greatly increase efficiency if we want to maintain our standard of living. Thermal depolymerization may just be one of the pieces in the puzzle of keeping everything running. And the process can be run on many materials besdides just cow manure: first there are many other animals in the united states that create wastes (including people) that could be treated in a similar method, as well as offal from slaughterhouses, used fryer and industrial vegetable oil, possibly waste paper and construction lumber, grain silage... the list goes on and on. Combine the energy from that with some wind power, some solar power, some geothermal power, some hydropower, some biodiesel (where crops would be grown specifically for making into fuel, as opposed to using wastes from existing processes) and a good bit of nuclear power and we can hopefully put a serious dent into our petroleum usage. Efficiency increases through technology and plain old reduction in energy wasteful lifestyle choices will eventually have to fill in the gaps.
There is not going to be one magic bullet that fills our energy needs, we are going to have to develop and use many different sources to fuel future societies and waste reclaimation is one step in the whole issue. We will have to develop and test many different methods to find the right solution for the right application.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
I'm off to Canberra with a shovel!
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Hooray! our energy problems are solved! no longer are we doomed to rely on fossil fuels for our cars!
The process uses application of high heat and pressure.
now, people, where does this heat and pressure come from? I'm willing to bet a substantial amount comes in the form of electricity, about half of which comes from coal fired furnaces.
Will people stop screwing around with retarded, impracticle, inefficient bullshit things like this and get to growing algae for diesel already?
...I got nothing.
Woo Hoo! My taxes are finally going down for good!
Make love, not reality television.
Well now, I ask you. We really needed this. Seriously.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Ok so we can make gas from shit but who wants shitty gas that's smells like shit as well?
:D
;)
Imagine all the cars driving down the road expelling shitty exhaust fumes! The whole nation would smell like shit!
Is this the legacy we want for our children a world that smells like shit?
And here it comes
Won't somebody think about the noses for god's sake think about the noses!!
Aww man somebody let one rip in here! Im outta this shitty place
Coward? Coward! Thems fighten words!!
Discover Magazine had an article about two years ago about this exact thing. A plant was put near a Butterball Turkey factory, and turned turkey offal into gasoline. It basically went something like this: 1. Stuff is put into a 1000 HP or so blender. 2. Stuff is heated to about 500 F 3. The waste is then put into a flashing chamber, where the pressure and temp drop suddenly, so as to remove 95% of the water. 4. It is reheated to 900 F 5. It is cooled and filtered, which ends up becoming about: 70% water 20% gasoline 5% kerosene some napthalene some other hydrocarbons basic metals and minerals Over all this process is 90 to 95% efficient, meaning if you drop a 175 pound person into the system, it will take about 9lbs of person to fuel the whole process. Also, it can be fueled by anything with the basic elements, H,C, and O. Turkey offal, cow dung, garbage, medical waste, plastic, and even people ;)
Now suddenly, the process is reappearing two years later? I don't mean to speculate, but you could probably thank some wealthy oil baron for it not arriving sooner.
This process could fully eliminate the need for E85, diesel cars running off of vegetable oil, and Hydrogen fuel cells.
Thanks for your time,
MUOhioKnight
I always knew I was driving a shitbox, this just proves it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I assume this story is based on the above link, for those too lazy to copy and paste http://www.changingworldtech.com. They have been turning all organic waste into Crude oil which obviously can be refined into gasoline. We really should be supporting our home grown technology. BTW I don't work for them, I have just been following their story since the beginning and watching the moron bio-diesal people complain about it since its a far more efficient process that fuels itself.
Cattle produce large quantities of methane via belching and farting. Methane is 20 times WORSE as a greenhouse gas than CO2. If you want to prevent global warming, stop eating beef. The concept of using cow manure as fuel is clearly insane as it won't save you a penny and will be more damaging to the environment than fossil fuels. You want to save money then buy a smaller car and car-pool.
The average American soccer mom will need a whole herd of cows in constant "production" to pick the kids up from school.
Well, considering how many Big Macs American soccer moms and their offspring will consume over their lifetimes, I'm guessing that there are already enough "constantly producing" cows being raised to meet that demand. It only makes sense to try to capture unused energy from the very large amount of waste products produced to fill the demand for beef.
Assuming we can find enough grass to feed them
Well, most beef cattle are finished in feedlots and fed grain for at least some of their lives, so they don't need big green rolling hills their entire lives...and have you ever been to North Dakota or southern Saskatchewan and Alberta? Ain't exactly a shortage of grass OR space for free range cows.
this much methane will cause the oceans to rice in less than a decade.
Well from your post I'd say you've at least heard the term "carbon neutral" before...that is what this process is. The methane produced by cows is a carbon source that is offset by the grass eaten by cows, which is a carbon sink. Furthermore, we would probably not need to produce much more methane than we do now for beef production--we'd simply be trappoing unspent stored energy from livestock waste.
This isn't "natural gas" methane--the reason that stuff is supposed to be so bad for our climate is becasue it is released from a source that has been trapped away from our ecosystem for millions of years...it is a carbon source trapped by a carbon sink that is long gone and thus upsets our current ecosystem's balance.
Seriously. Shouldn't we be looking for something more sensible than this?
We currently drill deep into the crust under the ocean floor in the Gulf of Mexico using gigantic platforms that have to weather lethally strong hurricanes every year. We also dig up huge pits of tar in the far north and produce huge amounts of steam...in arctic conditions...to melt that tar and separate the sediment from the usable oil. To meet the rest of our demands, we ship tankers of the stuff from dangerous foreign countries that are run by crackpots and/or are havens for terrorists who'd love to see us all dead.
Somehow, I can't see how extracting useful hydrocarbons from piles of crap in a pasture would be any less sensible than the above-mentioned methods of getting fuel.
Brazil runs most of its cars on sugar cane extract - a carbon-neutral solution.
Two points here:
1. Brazil runs a LOT of cars on sugar cane, but by far the most fuel consumption is still conventional petroleum products (somewhere areound 75% IIRC)
2. Using sugar cane to make ethanol fuel is NO MORE "CARBON NEUTRAL" than making it from cow dung. Using sugar cane, or corn, or soybeans or potatoes or any other plant to make ethanol fuel is probably more efficient--after all, much of the stored energy in the cows' feed goes to growing the cow. However, we are growing cows for food and hides anyways so we might as well use their waste too...and the process should (in theory) have no more disruption on the world's carbon cycle than plant-based fuels.
Then again, Brazil isn't run by millionaires who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually imporoving things.
Wow...I'm blown away...you REALLY don't know much about global politics do you. Historically speaking, "run by millionares who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually improving things" has been EXACTLY what the Brazillian government was, though I believe there have been efforts to improve there in recent years. It's pretty much a basic fact about south and central America--nations in that region are either corrupt, pseudo-democracies headed by obscenely rich men of low moral standards, or totalitarian dictatorships run by "communist" military generals.
Manufacturing fuel is, universally, a bad idea. It invariably takes more energy to make the fuel than you get back out of it, thus dooming the whole process. Only fuels which occur naturally have ever been (or will ever be) viable.