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

Bullshit!

[LiquidCoooled]

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!

oh so they discovered something new

[mgabrys_sf]

So new we have an active refienery in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerizat ion

At least Japan knows how to PR the tech - you never hear about it here - which is just sad.

Re:oh so they discovered something new

[admactanium]

So new we have an active refienery in the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerizat ion

At least Japan knows how to PR the tech - you never hear about it here - which is just sad.

actually there was a story (maybe two) about thermal depolymerization on slashdot years ago. that's where i first read about the technology. it was prompted by an article in discover magazine about their first plant in carthage, MO. it's a pretty good article and i'm surprised we haven't heard more about how the carthage plant has been doing. all i've been able to find about it recently is that they had to do some modifications to the exhaust system because the smell was bothering the residents too much (which is probably quite a feat in a place that produces livestock).

i actually thought the increase in oil prices would probably help this technology along. the only thing anyone has questioned about the process is the cost efficiency of making oil from thermal depolymerization versus the cost of just buying it from opec countries and/or successfully mining it from the oil shale in canada. i think the depolymerization method obviously has a lot more positives in its favor.

i also read that the livestock manufacturers, now understanding that their waste was actually useful and profitable for someone, had decided to charge for their waste product rather than just give it away, which was at least somewhat assumed by the cost analysis of depolymerization to begin with. even though it made sense at the time to assume that rather than paying for people to remove biological waste, they would rather have someone do it for free or even pay them for it, you can never overestimate the greed of corporations. i sure hope the technology continues to develop until it becomes more cost efficient. even if it can only reduce our needs for oil a small percentage, that would be a significant difference in our reliance on opec.

Re:oh so they discovered something new

[therblig]

I never thought I would see my hometown mentioned on Slashdot! The Carthage, MO plant did have an awful odor that made people sick. A Kansas City alternative newspaper wrote an interesting article on that smell. Later, the plant was actually made to shut down until they dealt with the smell. I haven't been back yet, but I have been told that the smell is pretty much gone, now.

Befor this, Carthage never had an issue with a bad smell. The parent post is a little off - it's not a livestock town. It is a big poultry town, and if you got a Butterball turkey, it may have gone through Carthage. However, odor was never a big problem from the poultry plants until they took the turkey remains and tried to turn them into petrolium.

We tried that in Husbandry 104

[BadAnalogyGuy]

But the cows kept getting really sick from all the gasoline we were feeding them.

Oil companies?

[merikari]

Let's see the oil companies trying to shus this pile of steaming cow dung.

That didn't come out right.

Finally, managers can become useful.

[Vengeance]

'Cause with all the BS they're spewing, I think we've solved the world's energy problems.

Not efficient yet

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

TFA is very clear that the process is not efficient at this stage. The hope, apparently, is that the process might be improved over a five year timeframe to be commercially viable. I am skeptical even of that given the temperature and pressure numbers given.

So what?

[pleumann]

Slashdot makes articles from cow dung all the time.

holy shit

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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"

[AaronGTurner]

It is possible to make a number of the products currently made with oil-derived plastics with other things. Cellophane, bakelite, plastics derived from vegetable oils, coal. Alternatively metal, wood, or paper can be used for some products for which plastics are used now. All these need to be looked at in terms of cost-benefit analyses: there is no point in using wood if it takes a huge amount of energy to machine it to replace a plastic part. Design also plays a part, too, in that differences in design may mean less machining required, and so on.

Re:Same problem as with other "alternative fuels"

[replicant108]

"We most of all need ways to reduce our consumption."

I've often heard that stated.

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.

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"

[grumling]

it is hard to see how consumption cn be reduced in a competitive global environment.

Well, in the 1970's, the US did manage to reduce the amount of energy used per person, in a very real way. The problem is that over time, these efficencies led to consumption increases because the prices (real dollars) stayed somewhat stable (due to abundance caused by the increase in efficency), while inflation/increased productivity increased the income of the average American. This led to the massive increase in the size of a house (the McMansion phoneomena, with all the bedrooms, Sub Zero fridges and massive heating systems), cars (SUVs and giant pickups), and most electronic devices going to a standby mode instead of a real shutdown. People say they want to use less energy, but they really, really want more stuff.

There are constant upgrades to electrical power plants, otherwise we wouldn't be able to waste as much as we do and still have basically the same number of base load plants in the country. However, the electrical generation field is a very mature industry. The chance for innovation is very limited within the current structure. At some point the power generators will need to get new plants online, and they'll have to bite the bullet and do it with the existing envriornmental restrictions, because there's just no way, even with the current 1 party rule (in the US), they'll be able to get rid of the restrictions (unless we're at war... Oh, wait... I forgot), or build useful generation plants in less than 1 congressional term.

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.

Re:Same problem as with other "alternative fuels"

[roman_mir]

People will not reduce consumption, the demographics are just too wrong for that. There is a necessity for a global cataclysm, a really bad air-borne desease that wipes out say 70% of the entire population. We can't rely on wars to do this, because to achieve the same numbers we have to go nuclear and what good is that for the environment?

Blues Brothers

[daemonenwind]

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.

What is new?

[ozamosi]

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.

Re:What is new?

[ameline]

Wouldn't it be more efficient to run the vodka straight into the fuel tanks instead of through a bunch of swedes?

(sorry for the flame bait :-)

(BTW congrats on the gold in mens hocky -- your team deserved it -- they played magnificently)

Re: What is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a bioga?

Re:Makes Sense

[jejones]

Great I can't wait till I can buy me a Bottle of Selsun Poo...

Well, at least it won't be sham poo... it'll be real poo!

solution to another eternal dilemma as well

[Fennario]

from TFA:

"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."

The thing about these Japanese corporate researchers is, they all think that their shit doesn't stink.

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.

The NY Times says that's,

[Anonymous Coward]

A Load of Manure
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/opinion/04niman. html

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..

Much cows = Many beefs

[TheGhostOfDerrida]

"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

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?

[Draknor]

Great idea! I think the government should let the markets decide, and stop subsidizing oil companies.

After all, the market has clearly decided that the big oil companies, with their record-breaking profits, are the appropriate market solution to our energy problems. So why is the government interfering with the market and giving away $7 billion to the oil companies?

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

[menkhaura]

I'm Brazilian, living in Brazil. Two points:

Brazil runs most of its cars on sugar cane extract

This "extract" is ethanol, exactly the same substance that makes you go high on booze. It can be produced from almost anything that produces sugar, not only sugar cane.
Besides, most cars down here are run on good old petroleum extract, because alcohol production is somewhat uncertain. However, our gas has 20% alcohol, and every car here has to drink that.

Then again, Brazil isn't run by millionaires who are more interested in increasing their millions than actually imporoving things.

How so very wrong... Granted, we are not quite a Banana Republic, but we are Latin America, and our politicians are not distinguished by putting the People's interests ahead of their own.

Cheers.

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.

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

[sol_geek77]

"Why didn't we have global warming in 1885?"

Probably because we were just leaving a "Little Ice Age" (1300-1800AD). http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/ abruptclimate_15misconceptions.html

One problem that I have about "global warming" is the fact that we only have historical temperature records since around 1860. This is about 60 years after the end of the "Little Ice Age". So for 500 years we were in a "Little Ice Age" and now the last 200 years has temperatures of the Earth warming. So maybe the bison and horses are what snapped the cold spell and we are perpetuating it.

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...

What a load of manure

[rgoldste]

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.

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.

Not quite

[Andy Dodd]

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.

india

[bloosqr]

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"

http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/curriculum/socialstd/gra de7/india/Woman_cooking.html

  "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/C ourses/so191/SouthAsReadings/IndiaEnergySuccess.ht ml

That ain't even the HALF of it!

[NoData]

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."

Re:Bulldoody

[pboulang]

you should do the math sometime.. figure out MAX energy that can be taken out of a gallon of gasoline, and determine how many mpg that should give you with a given vehicle (say, a civic). Now, dtermine efficiency as actual mpg / MAX mpg

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.

Not just for the cows.

[inconceivable]

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.

Re:THIS DOESN'T PUT A DENT IN HOW MUCH GAS WE CONS

[shawb]

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.