Toyota's New Power Plant Will Create Clean Energy From Manure (usatoday.com)

schwit1 shares a report from Futurism: Japanese automobile giant Toyota is making some exciting moves in the realm of renewable, clean energy. The company is planning to build a power plant in California that turns the methane gas produced by cow manure into water, electricity, and hydrogen. The project, known as the Tri-Gen Project, was unveiled at this year's Los Angeles Auto Show. The plant, which will be located at the Port of Long Beach in California, will be "the world's first commercial-scale 100% renewable power and hydrogen generation plant," writes USA Today. Toyota is expecting the plant to come online in about 2020.

The plant is expected to have the capability to provide enough energy to power 2,350 average homes and enough fuel to operate 1,500 hydrogen-powered vehicles daily. The company is estimating the plant to be able to produce 2.35 MW of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen each day. The facility will also be equipped with one of the largest hydrogen fueling stations in the world. Toyota's North America group vice president for strategic planning, Doug Murtha, says that the company "understand[s] the tremendous potential to reduce emissions and improve society."

Comments

Re:Clean energy?

[RhettLivingston]

The cows exist either way. This will take waste that would normally generate methane, collect that methane, and destroy it instead of releasing it. It has a potential of being a reduction versus the existing system of letting the manure release its methane into the atmosphere. Whether that potential is met would depend on a lot of factors. There is always the danger that the carbon costs of collecting the manure, building the plant, etc. will be greater than the savings. That happens often in these schemes.

Re:Clean energy?

[ShanghaiBill]

The cows exist either way.

True, but they don't exist in Long Beach. The poop will have to be hauled in. This sounds like a publicity stunt rather than a real attempt to help the environment.

This will take waste that would normally generate methane

A cow patty decaying in a field does not generate methane. It only generates methane if it decays in anaerobic conditions.

Re:Well sure

[rmdingler]

"Walter, I love you, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to face the fact you’re a goddamn moron."

You may have heard a rule-of-thumb is that it takes 1.5 to 2 acres to feed a cow calf pair for 12 months.

As a last resort, we can always resort to math:

There were 92 million grazing cattle in the US herd for 2016, sharing a total of just south of 800 million acres of range & pasture land with dairy farms, sheep, goats, and horses. Let's generously say that beef producers occupy 50% of the available free range. 400,000,000 acres/92,000,000 cattle is 4 cow/calf units per acre, one third to one half of the optimal average required for sustained range-only feeding.

Where do you thing they make up the shortfall?

Re:Clean energy?

[PopeRatzo]

True, but they don't exist in Long Beach.

There are about a zillion cattle ranches within 200 miles of Long Beach. Until I moved out here to the Central Coast, I had no idea just how big ranching is here.

If you drive Hwy 101 or Hwy 5 from San Luis Obispo (where I live) to Long Beach, you will see tons of cattle and horses. Don't do the drive today, though, because fires have closed down 101 through Ventura and Hwy 5 through Castalc Junction. I know these things because I'm supposed to catch a plane at LAX tomorrow and ain't nothing moving through there. Not even Amtrak, because the smoke from the fire is so hazardous. I may have to take the Surfliner up to SFO to fly out.

Re:Poop Power

[PopeRatzo]

The port of Long Beach is well known for it's large herds of cattle.

California is the fourth largest cattle-producing state.

Also, there aren't any uranium mines in Long Beach, but I bet you wouldn't have the same objection to a nuclear power plant here.

Re:Well sure

[PopeRatzo]

Where do you thing they make up the shortfall?

Hamburger Helper.

2.35 MW or 2.35MWh ?

[thygate]

will it have a constant production of 2.35MW ? or will it produce 2.35MWh a day ? Huge difference. "The company is estimating the plant to be able to produce 2.35 MW of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen each day." I would expect a unit in Wh in this sentence, a unit of energy, not a unit of power.

Re:Clean energy?

[Dogboy88k]

You are a complete idiot.
Next thing you're going to complain about the number of trees required to support a paper recycling plant.

Biogas

[nospam007]

From Wikipedia.

Germany had 5905 Biogas plants in 2010 .
The electricity supply was approximately 12.8 TWh, which was 12.6% of the total generated renewable electricity then.

I don't see a real difference here, but since I'm not a newbie I can't possibly RTFA.

Re:Biogas

[Solandri]

Biogas is usually generated from landfills. When a landfill is closed, it's capped off with layers impermeable to water (to prevent rain from leaching the contents of the landfill into the soil) and to air (to prevent the smell from disturbing people occupying whatever you build on top of it). A system of pipes and ducts is constructed around the outside which collects the gases produced by the decomposing trash (mostly methane) for use in power generation applications. (Also because methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - you're better off burning it to convert it into CO2, rather than releasing it straight to the atmosphere.)

Plants which convert organic matter like manure directly to biogas are relatively rare. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it has to do with economy of scale. With a landfill, you're collecting gas from a huge volume of material with relatively few pipes. The capping to trap the gases would've been done anyway whether or not you were collecting the gases, so doesn't add to the cost.

Re:Clean energy?

[cbraescu1]

This sounds like a publicity stunt

Are you joking??? Of course this is a publicity stunt. Toyota is in the business of manufacturing cars, not environmental cleansing. As generating hydrogen and electricity this way costs significantly higher than just buying them off the grid (electricity) or splitting water (hydrogen), it is obvious the only reason Toyota is doing it is for the PR reasons - especially in California.

Re:Clean energy?

[drinkypoo]

There are about a zillion cattle ranches within 200 miles of Long Beach. Until I moved out here to the Central Coast, I had no idea just how big ranching is here.

Real live cattle ranches aren't all that helpful for this kind of operation, though. What you need is a feedlot, preferably a really nasty and high-population one. In that case, the shit is highly concentrated, and easy to sluice into tanks or bags or whatever you're collecting the shit in.