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This Idea is total BullSh**

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by DaveinOlyWA, Apr 15, 2006.

  1. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    hehehe... have to admit, i wasnt kidding

    http://techrepublic.com.com/2300-1035-6057...tml?tag=nl.e138

    <h1 style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial; color: black;">Photos: Barnyard energy</h1> Five Star Dairy in Elk Mound, Wisc., installed a thermophilic digester about a year ago. Its 900 cows provide enough manure to generate enough power for about 600 homes.

    Credit: Five Star Dairy



    below is excerpts from a photo essay



    Five Star owner and General Manager Lee Jensen. Five Star sells the biogas produced by the digester to a utility. It will take about 10 years for the revenue from gas sales to pay off the digester, he said, but in the meantime, the farm can cut costs in other ways. The liquids at the end of the process can be used as fertilizer while the solids are comfy cow beds. Neither the liquids nor cow beds smell nearly as bad as the manure did the first time around.



    An aerial shot of Five Star. Yes, the digester is a pretty sizeable building to construct.




    [​IMG]




    Farmers check out the post-digester manure. Five Star says that cows actually prefer to sleep on manure over grass and it blows around less than hay



    Here's a shot of a digester on the Wild Rose Dairy in Wisconsin. This farm sells the biogas generated by the digester to a utility. A large eight-digester project in Texas will produce a billion cubic feet of gas a year when complete.





    Biogas from the manure digester is fed into a generator (the yellow thing), which provides about 700 kilowatts of the electricity required at California's Joseph Gallo Farms, a major cheesemaker. The heat from the generator is then captured and used to run the boiler (the silver thing) that powers the boilers, where cheese is made.

    Credit: Gallo Farms

    [​IMG]




    Guess what's under the tarp? Seven acres of fresh cow manure. Gallo right now has a mesophilic, or ambient temperature, digester. The company, however, is also building a thermophilic one that creates energy by heating manure up to 130 degrees and mixing in the right microbes.



    Moooo! This thermophilic digester at the Five Star Dairy in Wisconsin transforms cow manure and other waste products in 21 days into biogas. The farm doesn't smell nearly as bad after one of these goes in, according to Lee Jensen of the Five Star.





    After the Five Star began to turn manure into gas, it invited farmers from the region to check it out. Because of the costs associated with managing manure, demand is growing.

    Credit: American Images, Marshfield, Wisc.

    [​IMG]
     
  2. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    [obligatory]
    What a load of crap.
    [/obligatory]

    That idea's been around for quite some time. Smart farmers have been recapturing methane gas for decades.
     
  3. galaxee

    galaxee mostly benevolent

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    those kinds of facilities are actually starting to pop up all over wisconsin- but they require a heavy initial investment which is difficult for the average small farmer to come up with. the larger corporations, though, really should consider it.
     
  4. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    there was a side article that states some larger farms spend over a million a year in manure management... so exactly how expensive would it be??
     
  5. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    I knew a man who used to get paid by butchers to haul off Slurry (the inides of animals). He then sold the slurry to processing plants. He was getting paid on both ends!

    With something like this, someone could pick up the manure and sell it to the energy processing plants.

    Hmmm, I wonder how much I can fit in my Prius. Maybe if I fold the seats down...
     
  6. DocVijay

    DocVijay Active Member

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    Poor people in India have been doing something similar for a long time, using hte gas for all their heating and cooking needs. THey jsut build a dome shaped structure about 10 feet across. SOme simple plumbing, and it's done.

    No high startup costs. Just some inginuity.
     
  7. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    good point Doc. wonder if a smaller scale system can be made at the park where dog walkers can drop off deposits verses paying a fine (some people need to be encouraged especially if it involves walking 3 steps out of their way) minimal cost, double benefits. cleaner shoes... whats to lose?


    then again... does dog poo work too?
     
  8. Catskillguy

    Catskillguy New Member

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    I would guess that dog poo is not as good, much less organic matter and more meat based food. Plus I understand that much of what comes out of the farm animal is not fully digested.



    By the way, your Topic line, the clicking on the link gave me quite a chuckle. I thought "you got me!"
     
  9. tleonhar

    tleonhar Senior Member

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    Back in the 70's the people from Mother Earth News had an old pickup converted to run off methane from manure. They built the digester from a 30 gal drum, collected and compressed the methane, then ran the pickup with the gas.
     
  10. Begreen

    Begreen Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocVijay @ Apr 15 2006, 09:31 AM) [snapback]240182[/snapback]</div>
    The majority of poor people in India use the poop itself for fuel and heating (and as a building material in some cases). It's the better off farming communities that have a methane digester. Everywhere one goes in India, one will see large (about 12" diameter) patties drying out or stacked. Women take the ubiquitous cow patties and shape them and set them out to dry. The horrendous smog in big Indian cities is not only from vehicles and electric plants, it's from burning dung.
     
  11. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Apr 15 2006, 08:59 AM) [snapback]240163[/snapback]</div>
    On dairy farms you need about 500 head of cattle to make it financially worthwhile. Vermont has a "poo-power" program where utility customers can purchase electricity generated from digesters such as these. I think it's a pretty popular thing there.

    Here in CO there are a few. There's a large pig farm out east that uses one and a few entrepenuers here in the Denver area have gotten funding to build a couple. They run on dairy waste, poo, and slops from an ice cream factory.

    New Belgium Brewing, up in Fort Collins, CO (and makers of Fat Tire) uses a digester powered by Brewer's yeast. They're saving a ton of money, not so much becasue of the electricity savings (the digester supplies about 65% of their power needs) but because their water treatment costs have plummeted. Appearently the city of Fort Collins was charging them a lot of money to treat the waste water.
     
  12. hycamguy07

    hycamguy07 New Member

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    Wow, that would be cool if they found a way to run cars off of manure.. The down side would be in rush hour traffic it would smell like every one was farting... :D
     
  13. tleonhar

    tleonhar Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ Apr 15 2006, 03:01 PM) [snapback]240244[/snapback]</div>


    :lol: :lol:

    HMMMM, maybe there's an idea there, "Hey, I can get 50 miles per taco, and a bowl of bean soup will get me all the way to Rapic City :p
     
  14. fshagan

    fshagan Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocVijay @ Apr 15 2006, 09:31 AM) [snapback]240182[/snapback]</div>
    Did they check with their state's Environmental Protection department? Has a study been done to measure the effect of the effluent seeping into the soil under the dome on the groundwater? What about the potential release of methane to the atomosphere, and how will that impact the greenhouse gas issue? Once those issues are addressed, did they go to the local code agency and pull the proper permits? Did the plumbing fittings and pipe meet the appropriate ASME or IAMPO standards, and was it installed in a workmanlike manner by authorized personnel?

    Its not so easy here. At least part of the high start up costs are the engineering and agency approvals the companies selling the equipment have already done.
     
  15. DocVijay

    DocVijay Active Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Begreen @ Apr 15 2006, 02:17 PM) [snapback]240222[/snapback]</div>
    Yes I know that, but we weren't talking about the many uses of poop, only it's conversion to a gas that's used for fuel.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Apr 15 2006, 11:59 PM) [snapback]240398[/snapback]</div>
    I seriously hope you are joking.
     
  16. fshagan

    fshagan Senior Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DocVijay @ Apr 16 2006, 06:54 AM) [snapback]240476[/snapback]</div>
    In California, a farmer could not create his own bio-mass methane generator without going through a code approval process. That includes consideration of ground water contamination because of the nitrites (or nitrates, can never keep them apart). And safety devices to make sure he doesn't build a giant fart-bomb.

    (And no, I'm not joking).
     
  17. hycamguy07

    hycamguy07 New Member

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    Cool a giant Fart Bomb! instead of a boom you would hear a big phffffssssssttttt followed by a green mushroom cloud. LOL :D


    Look at the county land fills they have pipes that let the methane escape /also ignite and burn the methane off...

    I woonder why they have not tried to use it as an alt vehicle fuel source.??
     
  18. pocketpenguin

    pocketpenguin New Member

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  19. tripp

    tripp Which it's a 'ybrid, ain't it?

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ Apr 16 2006, 02:30 PM) [snapback]240561[/snapback]</div>
    Landfill energy projects are sprouting up all over the place. SC has several of them. Most of them are small, 3-10 MW as far as I've read. I did run across one, in SC I think, that was 36 MW. A lot of the larger Dairy farms are exploring methane to energy. In texas there's an outfit that is collecting manure from feedlots, converting it to methane and pumping it straight into the NG pipeline system. They produce a fair amount of the stuff. In addition, they sell the remains of the manure as fertilizer.