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."

Comments

You what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they put more energy in than they got out.

Same problem as with other "alternative fuels"

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Same problem as with other "alternative fuels"

[Haeleth]

Unfortunately, since energy resources bestow both military and economic advantages to nation states, it is hard to see how consumption cn be reduced in a competitive global environment.

Efficiency, of course.

Consider the U.S. military. It relies to a great extent on oil-derived fuels. The length of time a unit can operate independently is constrained by (a) how much fuel it has, and (b) how quickly it consumes it. Clearly, the more efficient its use of the fuel, the longer it can continue to operate without needing more supplies.

In a case where a unit is cut off from supply lines, that extra endurance could be the difference between defeat or victory. Does that not count as a military advantage?

Re:Same problem as with other "alternative fuels"

[burne]

That silly mis-representation pops up every time. It isn't true.

"Technically you could supply all of the world's energy needs by covering 4% of the world's desert area with photo-voltaic panels," says Martin Green from the Advanced Silicon Photo-voltaics and Photonics research centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

That's 4% of the deserts, not the entiry surface of the earth. If one would use thermal-, tidal- and windenergy as well the amount of land needed would be neglible.

Not efficient yet, but that mightn't be important.

[Mr. Roadkill]

Although the process is not particularly efficient at present, it could be of significant benefit anyway.

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.

Won't all the methane from the cows be worse?

[Joce640k]

The average American soccer mom will need a whole herd of cows in constant "production" to pick the kids up from school. Assuming we can find enough grass to feed them, this much methane will cause the oceans to rice in less than a decade.

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.

Re:Won't all the methane from the cows be worse?

[cbiltcliffe]

Won't all the methane from the cows be worse?

When Europeans firs came to this continent, there were bison all over the place. They're much bigger than the average cow, and fart, belch, and shit a lot more, too.

There was never a problem with global warming, pollution, or any of this stuff until we fell in love with cars. Back in the early days of America, people got around by horse. Horses fart and shit all the time, even when you're not using them to go anywhere. Why didn't we have global warming in 1885?

The reason is, because the "farms are bad because cows fart methane which is causing global warming" is propaganda started by either animal rights groups (for obvious reasons), or the government (so we don't have to give up oil). The fact that this propaganda happens to be beneficial to both groups is probably the only reason it's still around. They're both pushing it, for apparently completely independent reasons, so people think it must be true.

Cow dung can run Japan for 12 minutes

[layer3switch]

0.042 ounces of oil per 3.5 ounces of cow dung
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 .. 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...

Population and Rising Quality of Life

[jscotta44]

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.

there are solutions

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

THIS DOESN'T PUT A DENT IN HOW MUCH GAS WE CONSUME

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
551,155 tons dung * 2000 lb/ton * 16 oz/lb * .042 oz gas produced/3.5 oz dung = 1653,465 gallons of gas produced from 551,155 tons of cow dung.

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