The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: October 31, 2006

138 comments on DrumBeat: October 31, 2006

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JMG on October 31, 2006 - 9:22am

How about a question (moved at that)?

Would biomass gassification of bovine manure potentially be more economically efficient and environmentally sustainable than anaerobic fermentation in those digesters?

RE: Cellulosic Ethanol vs. Biomass Gasification
Posted by Robert Rapier on Thursday October 26, 2006 at 9:20 AM EST
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/10/22/211321/89

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eric blair on October 31, 2006 - 10:13am

I see your bovine and raise you a food.
http://www.ashdenawards.org/media_summary06_india_arti

Its daily consumption is just 1kg of feedstock (such as waste flour, leftover food, spoilt grain, spoilt milk, over-ripe fruit, green leaves and oil cakes) as opposed to the 40kg of cow dung needed for the traditional plants. From this small amount of feedstock it produces 500 litres of gas.

(now, have better web sluths than I come up with a 'how to make this' instructions?)

These people make a claim
http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/yeomans-keyline-system.htm
http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/priority-one.htm
This book describes how we can totally stop Global Warming with its resultant cancerous climate change and restore atmospheric greenhouse gas levels to near pre-industrial level. It shows how this can be done quickly and at negligible costs.

A good way to get killed.
http://www.pterosail.com/

Finally, some battery news (hype?)
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/10/altairnano_test.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/10/new_nanotechnol.php

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JMG on October 31, 2006 - 10:34am

Drilling away :-)

Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
http://www.arti-india.org/

Commercialisation of Improved Biomass Fuels and Cooking Devices in India: Scale Up PROJECT
http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/44/42/

ARTI Biogas Plant: A compact digester for producing biogas from food waste
http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/45/40/

Compact Biogas Plant - details
http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/46/43/

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jim burke on October 31, 2006 - 3:21pm

The battery claims from altair nanotechnology are very exciting, if true.

Why is it that, decade after decade, we are constantly tantalized with wonderful new technologies that are never heard from again? (we have a built in conspiracy generator; TPTB are constantly buying these wonder patents up and destroying them!!!!! DEATH TO TPTB!!!!
:-)

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MillMan on October 31, 2006 - 4:31pm

because the "technologies" are either fabrications or they can't be sold at a profit.

There seems to be a lot of companies out there working on new battery tech. I'm sure someone's product will be more than snake oil and end up having a combination of good power density and life expectancy to really drive electric cars as an option.

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chemE on October 31, 2006 - 7:02pm

Very intriguing. If indeed it is able to process generic biomass waste, including plant waste like switch grass etc, some advantages are immediately obvious:

(1) Only C & H (as CH4 or others) are burned and released to the atmosphere. I know that in tradional (cow-manure) biogas plants solid residue is returned to the fields as fertilizer. Looks like this is possible here also. This means that
(a) No atmospheric pollution
(b) minized depletion of soil nutrients

(2) non-grain waste from food crops for e.g. could be used as feed-stock. Right now if plant waste is returned directly to the soil the microbes that break it up release energy directly to the enviroment, without sending it through a cooking stove first :-)

(3)) Compress the bio-gas and use it in a vehicle. In India, many cars have been modified to run on LPG (cooking gas - the stuff used on gas grills in the States) because of a lower cost/Joule.

(4) Generate electricity in a thermal cycle or directly a Fuel Cell.

The options also appear sustainable.

May come to pass as fossil fuels are taxed or run out.

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eric blair on October 31, 2006 - 9:00pm

odds are there is more in the mix than simple C and H. Sulfur and poss. nitrogen gas. Not a big issue for a cooking flame, but a real show-stopper for an ICE.

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BartB on October 31, 2006 - 12:06pm

The second item of your list sounds to good to be truth. A closer look at chapter 11 - ENERGY SYSTEMS WE USE NOW AND WHAT WE MUST USE TOMORROW shows the neglect of the thermodynamic laws and economic principles. Also not one word is mentioned on EROI issues or growth figures to implement those future renewable energy systems.

"Ethanol can replace petrol in motor vehicles
and that would end the production of greenhouse
gasses from all the cars in the world. We must
make it happen now. Ethanol is actually a cheaper
fuel when oil prices go over $45.00 a barrel.
Virtually all motor vehicles other than those
in Brazil, today run on either petrol, diesel or
LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). And they are all
fossil fuels. To stop Global Warming these fuels
have to be replaced. What is amazing is just how
incredible easy and practical it is to do so."

"Now in Brazil, and in any other efficient sugar
producing country, from a hectare of sugar cane
they can produce 5,500 litres of ethanol per year,
that's 35 barrels of motor fuel. On a per acre basis,
that's 14 barrels or 600 US gallons.
The total world's oil consumption is four billion
tons per year. That's two thirds of a ton of oil per
head of population. It is the equivalent of one car
for every four and a half people on the planet.
There is actually only about half that number of
transport vehicles in the world. The rest of the oil
is used for heating, petrochemical production etc.
What does this all mean? As an exercise, let's
say we drive 16,000 miles per year and get 20
miles to the US gallons, (26,000 kilometres at 12
litres per 100 k). That's about three tons of fuel
per year. Then to grow the ethanol or biodiesel
we would need to allocate two thirds of a hectare,
that's under one and a half acres per motor vehicle
That's 0.13 ha or 0.33 acres per person. That
would require an area of sugar cane farms 2,750
kilometres square or 1,700 miles square. That's
about the size of the Amazon basin and we will
have cancelled our need for petroleum derived
transport fuel."

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eric blair on October 31, 2006 - 12:22pm

I'm a bit more interesed in the claim

Allan calculates that a 1.6% increase of organic matter levels on the world's arable lands (8.5% of the land area) would stabilise atmospheric carbon levels.

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Oilrig medic on October 31, 2006 - 2:15pm

I call BS on the 1kg making 500 liters of gas. 1 mol gas = 22.4 liters right? even if you had a kg of H2 you would only have 11.2 liters gas. So no chemical process can turn 1 kg into 500 liters gas sorry it does not make sense.

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eric blair on October 31, 2006 - 2:30pm

As you 'call bullshit', please feel free to conact these people
http://www.ashdenawards.org/media_summary06_india_arti

And tell them they need to retract their researched award because you believe it is 'bullshit'.

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Oilrig medic on October 31, 2006 - 2:52pm

It has to be a typo or not enough info. The article says 1kg daily makes 500 liters but does not say per day per month etc. So fermentation breaks stuff down. No additions from air like carbon to CO2. Now there is no way 1kg of any material can become 500 liters at STP. High school chem.

So I restate my BS with the caveat of maybe they left out per month after 500 liters or something similar. I am interested to see the device though I would build one for 500 liters per KG just so I could break laws of physics and chemistry in my own home.

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BobCousins on October 31, 2006 - 3:14pm

It is a typo, see here http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/45/52/. That says 500g per 2kg.

Unfortunately pretty much every press release turns useful information into gibberish, so I prefer to get the source.

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Oilrig medic on October 31, 2006 - 3:35pm

Don't get me wrong I compost my organic waste...if I could capture BTU's on the way to fertilizer I would but I think household size fermenters are not feasible. Think about it could you cook your food on your previous scraps? You need more external inputs...yard debri manure etc.

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Leanan on October 31, 2006 - 3:52pm

Notice in the press release that the testimonials have people saying things like, "I get all my neighbors to give me their scraps." Suggesting that one family's waste is not enough.

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Oilrig medic on October 31, 2006 - 4:06pm

Again I think conceptually it is great if we all managed all our waste streams 100% the world would be better off. My point is if someone tells you they can make straw into gold guard your 1st born child. If you are producing that much ort maybe you need to plan your meals better.

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sendoilplease on October 31, 2006 - 11:25pm

That sounds about right Leanan (unless your family owns a cow or several smaller critters maybe - pool your poop?). This is a few years old but makes an interesting point about how practical digesters would be if the corn-stover and wood-pelleters Fuel-Twitch to "Home Grown" biogas all at once:

"37. Digesters can be built in virtually any size, from a small family-sized digester (1-2 m3) producing just enough gas for cooking and lighting to a large community-sized of thousands of m3 producing sufficient gas to generate electricity.

The technical viability of biogas technology has been repeatedly proven in many field tests and demonstration projects, but numerous problems arose as soon as mass dissemination was attempted, particularly with regard to availability of digester feedstock (animal manure and water), as well as the high investment cost (US$300-500 for 1-2 m3) ".

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:wHweFyb2GKcJ:www.uneca.org/estnet/ECA_Meetings/CSD3/RETs_Paper.d oc+household+africa+size+fermenters+natural+gas+fertilizer&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6

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fleam on October 31, 2006 - 8:19pm

eric blair here's the problem I have with that biogas thingie. Supposedly all these nice Indian folk are coming up with all kinds of waste food to put into it and make it run?

Well, look, I was a kid in the 1970s. I know how much waste food comes from a poor household, and the answer is: Damn near None. I mean, we threw Nothing away! Spoiled milk? It never got a chance to spoil! Same for all the other food goodies, you gotta be kidding me, we threw like NOTHING out, and we still weren't as poor as these Indians. The idea that Indians, or us in a few decades, are going to have enough to throw away as presetn-day middle-class Americans is just silly. Look up the occasional pieces written by people who've gone to live in India or come from India to here - nothing is wasted there and present-day Americans' waste is obscene.

That article sounds like a come-on for investment someone's set up, kinda like the "free energy for life" hoax that's gone around the US, you send 'em a buncha money and they sell you their free-energy device and the "rights" to install 'em around your 'hood....

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eric blair on October 31, 2006 - 8:58pm

If I went to their office for r 100 ruppies I could get a CD. For 200 ruppies, they'd mail me the CD.

Rather cheap...and if I can use the 800 lbs of organic waste stream (used brewing grain) I already have.....

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Kalpa on October 31, 2006 - 10:35am

As I said in a post yesterday (with recommended links to Sweden, Iowa, and Vietnam), sustainable natural gas should be part of our renewable energy solutions going forward and are just as free as wind and solar. Another beauty of using human or animal manure methane is that it can be added directly to the natural gas grid infrastructure already in place and it doesn't contain the toxins found in garbage dump biogas. Sweden is perhaps in the lead using such technology. They also use compressed biogas to run taxis and buses. Pig manure produces more methane than bovine manure and the process eliminates the disgusting hog manure odor as well. Electricity is being generated at a number of rural sights using these biogases. This should be part of small, local energy solutions, such as the Vietnamese farmers who having been cooking with pig manure methane for decades. Of course, there is a limited amount of manure to be used, as compared to huge amounts of plant material fermentation potential. And, I'm not advocating these large hog and cattle operations which make these systems possible.

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Starship Trooper on October 31, 2006 - 10:46am

Here in NC, the energy from the farm question has been elevated. With all these hog and turkey farms concentrated in the eastern part of the state(NC is no 2 in both hog and turkey production), there is some work being done to see how we convert from the way we have been doing things to something that's a lot more holistic.

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joule on October 31, 2006 - 12:19pm

Starship Trooper -

I have some familiarity with the environmental problems created by the concentration of poultry and hog operations in North Carolina and elsewhere (such as Delaware, where there is a huge concentration of poultry farms downstate).

It is a perfect example of some of the harmful displacements caused by large-scale factory farming. Massive amounts of grains are imported from other regions to feed the animals, but the waste from those animals remains within the region. While this waste is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, its quantity is so large that it is often more than the local farmers can comfortably handle. Hence, it is often applied to the land in excess amounts and results in groundwater and surface water contamination. (I understand that eastern North Carolina is particularly vulnerable in this regard as it has very sandy, highly permeable soil.)

And it has been generally uneconomical to transport feedlot wastes long distances to the point of origin where the grains were originally grown. However, there has been some success in drying and pelletizing poultry wastes and thereby extending the economical distribution radius.

I really see no way out of this problem other than to go back to a more diversified, more balanced, and less concentrated form or agriculture.

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airdale on October 31, 2006 - 8:53pm

The reason they(Murphy Farms et al choose Eastern NC was because the folks there were poor and could not fight them.

The Neuse river was devastated. I lived there for some years and it was downright dreadful and ignorant what they did to that area. It didn't get near Wake County, the richest in NC and where I lived because no one would have stood for it.

Right now they are searching for more land to spoil. They are unrelenting. All this so one man raising 50,000 pigs can get rich while 50,000 people have to live in the stench.

Finally as I heard later the outcry became too much and laws were passed. Thats why they are looking for new areas to infect. Scumbag cheesedicks they are , one and all.

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Kalpa on October 31, 2006 - 10:46am

JMG
Just read your ARTI site above--very interesting. A quote:

This fact is seen in the current practice of using low calorie inputs like cattle dung, distillery effluent, municipal solid waste or sewerage, in biogas plants, which makes methane generation highly inefficient. To rectify this skewed approach, in around 2003, Dr. Anand Karve (President of ARTI) developed a compact biogas system that uses starchy or sugary feedstock. Just 2 kg of such feedstock produces about 500 g of methane, and the reaction is completed with 24 hours. The conventional biogas systems, using cattle dung, sewerage, etc. use about 40 kg feedstock to produce the same quantity of methane, and require about 40 days to complete the reaction. Thus, from the point of view of conversion of feedstock into methane, the system developed by Dr. Anand Karve is 20 times as efficient as the conventional system, and from the point of view of reaction time, it is 40 times as efficient. Thus, overall, the new system is 800 times as efficient as the conventional biogas system.

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Brother Kornhoer on October 31, 2006 - 12:57pm

Don't mix your input/output mass efficiency and your time efficiency.

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Robert Rapier on October 31, 2006 - 10:36am

The problem with gasification of manure is that it is so wet. You are going to consume a lot of energy getting water out. Furthermore, since the fermentation product is easy to remove methane as opposed to water soluble ethanol, it probably makes more sense in this case to do the fermentation.

If the manure is already dried (sun-dried, preferably) then it may be better to gasify it. The conversion would certainly be higher than in a fermentation.

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joule on October 31, 2006 - 10:52am

JMG -

I'm not sure I could give you a definite YES-or-NO answer, but here are some considerations that I think are important.

First off, cattle feedlot waste is wet, quite a bit wetter than the fresh-from-the-cow manure. The main reason is that water is used as a transport medium to move the manure from the stalls to a collection basin. The waste also contains large amounts of urine. While feedlot waste is far more concentrated than domestic sewage, it is still wet.

To gasify organic matter you have to heat it up to the point where pyrolysis reactions take place. If a lot of water is present, you are going to expend a great deal of energy in boiling off the water. If a feedlot were to set up a more dry system of waste collection, then that would lessen this problem.

Second, one must keep in mind that the orginal primary purpose of the anaerobic digestion of feedlot waste was not to produce gas but rather to render a highly noxious and odoriferous material less so and thereby make it more suitable for land disposal. The production of digester gas has generally been a secondary benefit.

Also, in the anaerobic digestion process, not all of the biodegrable organic matter is converted into methane. Some of it (typically 1/3) is oxidized into CO2. So, a portion of the potential energy content of the waste is lost to CO2.

Another consideration is that for an anaerobic digester to function at a sufficiently high rate it needs to be maintained at a certain temperature (85 to 105 degrees F if operating in the 'mesophilic' range, or 120 to 140 degrees F if operating in the 'thermophilic' range.) As such, in many applications some of the digester gas is used for heating the digester itself and is therefore unavailable for other uses.

So, it would appear to me that if (and it's a big IF) you could get the bovine manure to the gasifier in a fairly dry (or at least not too wet, state), then the gasifier might be more efficient in producing combustible gas. If not, then the digester would probably win out. Where that moisture content breakpoint is, I haven't a clue.

I suppose you could insert a drying step ahead of the gasifier, but that itself would consume energy, in addition to being a tremendous potential odor problem.

While I haven't really answered your question, I hope this at least adds some perspective to the question.

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