Poo Power

[mozirry]

I was watching dirty-jobs and there was an entire Dairy Farm that ran on its own home-grown methane fueled electric power plant. It essentially just looked like a giant engine. It required something like 4 500,000 gallon poo tanks to power everything. All the poo was supplied from their own cows.

So, given that a Dairy Farm which operates 24/7 uses probably the same amount of power of a city block (or slightly less?) You would probably need a giant field of these things or a few giant digesters to provide the power.

I rarely ever hear people talk about methane (of which there could be a greatly abundant source) as a viable energy alternative.

Maybe you could use it in tandem with something like solar power?

I know the smell of a pig farm and dairy farm can REEK for miles, but it can't smell much worse then the giant landfills we currently use.

Do any cities in the U.S. use methane power from essentially poo or garbage at a significant level?

 

[BrownTown]

Actually alot of landfills flare methane similar to oil wells (methane is FAR worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas), and quite a few are now collecting the methane and burning it for power. I know around here TVA uses methane from a landfill in Memphis and pipes the gas a few miles to a coal plant where it is burned along with the coal. The methane provides 8MW of power that would otherwise be from coal.

As for global warming, since methane is 25 times as bad as CO2 you can actually do ALOT more good by burning it. There was an interesting study where something like 95% of people think solar is good for the enviroment and only like 50% though burning landfill gas was good for the enviroment. But in reality since landfill gas is about 1/4 the cost of solar and offests 25 times the greenhouse effect it is actually 100 better for global warming than solar and yet every doesn't like it jsut because they think methan = farts . Just goes to show how far off reality and public opinion often are.

 

[wwswimming]

i used to have a neighbor who used to have a rural homestead.

they turned an oil drum upside down, with a flange etc. to attach tubing to.

the upside oil drum was on top of their ... you can guess.

they ran the methane line to the house.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Grand Rapids has a top-notch incinerator and burns most of the city's garbage. This generates quite a bit of power and leftover heat goes as steam to heat buildings in the city.

It burns hot enough and is filtered enough that the exhaust is practically negligible as far as pollution goes and the garbage is reduced many times in volume by the time they get rid of the ash. It's built strong enough to withstand exploding propane tanks in the trash so they don't even need to filter what goes in; city garbage trucks literally back into the storage room and dump the contents. Reeks in there, though!

That's a much better policy in the long run than worrying about extracting energy from the tiny amount of methane produced from landfills.

Also, BT, when you burn methane (CH4) you just end up with 2xH2O and 1xCO2 so burning methane gets rid of it completely preventing any from entering the atmosphere. I think that's what you meant but wasn't sure what this meant - "since methane is 25 times as bad as CO2 you can actually do ALOT more good than burning it."

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
Also, BT, when you burn methane (CH4) you just end up with 2xH2O and 1xCO2 so burning methane gets rid of it completely preventing any from entering the atmosphere. I think that's what you meant but wasn't sure what this meant - "since methane is 25 times as bad as CO2 you can actually do ALOT more good than burning it."

Yep, wrote that wrong, should say "you can actually do ALOT more good by burning it."

What you wrote is my point, burning it DOES produce CO2, but the CO2 is far better for the enviroment then the CH4.

As for inceneration, I think alot of people get the wrong idea about thatl ike you letting lots of noxious fumes into the inviroment, but like you said, if you get it HOT enough then you can break down everything to the most simply compouds, H2O, CO2 etc which are relatively harmless to the enviroment. You are still producing NOx and SOx, and releasing some heavy metals though (from people throwing away computer parts eith lead, or lightbulbs with mercury etc), but scrubbers can reduce 90-95% of those sorts of things (for a considerable cost).

 

[wwswimming]

in Sonoma County, at the landfill in Cotati, there is a compost facility on top of a landfill that's been capped with about a foot of recycled concrete.

it is piped to a generation facility that outputs 2 Megawatts, supplying 800 homes with electricity.

i think the landfill in or near Mira Mesa in San Diego is, or was, contemplating a similar set-up.

not exactly poo power, but still outputting methane.

 

[sjwaste]

EDIT: My post had a stupid tone. Deleted.

 

[Nathelion]

Originally posted by: wwswimming
in Sonoma County, at the landfill in Cotati, there is a compost facility on top of a landfill that's been capped with about a foot of recycled concrete.

it is piped to a generation facility that outputs 2 Megawatts, supplying 800 homes with electricity.

i think the landfill in or near Mira Mesa in San Diego is, or was, contemplating a similar set-up.

not exactly poo power, but still outputting methane.

Now, what would amuse me is if they didn't siphon the gas off... and one day, a worker comes out with a shovel and a cigarette and starts digging