I’m frustrated at one source of energy which is not being used, almost at all, and yet, there is an endless supply — methane. I have passed sewage treatment plants in some medium-to-small cities, and they have ‘flare-off” pipes going! Oil drilling platforms flare off gas and methane, too. My father came close to getting killed while working on a tunnel in Santa Barbara — he had been telling the bosses that there was methane in the tunnel, and so far, they hadn’t given the drillers and blasters so much as a canary for early warning. The tunnel was so hot, the managers rolled ore cars full of cold water back to them, and when someone couldn’t stand the heat, they would jump in the ore cars to cool off! But the tunnel blew anyway — Dad was lucky, as he was walking OUT of the tunnel at the time, carrying a large wooden beam on one shoulder. The explosion knocked him flat, the beam came down and broke his tailbone. He also had a colorful collection of bruises and scratches.
He came home later, looking haunted. I had never seen him like that, and asked. He said “I went back to pull people
out, and their skin came off on my hands!” I noticed he was fanatic about washing his hands, for several months.
So, we know methane is dangerous, but then, so is natural gas. Why not recover it in sewage treatment plants, compress it, and use it? Recently, I saw a news item about melting in the Arctic. A Russian man, living in the
‘taiga’ – that part of land above the Arctic circle, which is huge, saw a sudden hole in the snow. He lit a match, and
it burned a blue flame! If anybody worries about ‘Global Warming’ — they better hope that several quadrillion to
the tenth power of ‘permafrost’ doesn’t melt – because all of it contains methane! So, instead of being injured by it, and worrying because it can damage us, use it. Use it to fire up power plants, homes, hot water heaters (though I
prefer the ‘instant on’ type), making steel, anything we now use natural gas for. Japan, just like any other country,
has to find a way to process and remove sewage, so why not turn a noisome nuisance into a solution? Even for
a country like Japan, as long as it is populated by humans, the supply of methane would be endless! People politely
say that cattle ‘burp’ methane, in order to have a polite conversation — but so do humans!
In my article, entitled ‘We are NOT Running Out of Energy,” I wrote about a pig-factory in one of the Carolina states,
which has ruined the lives of homeowners downwind of that plant. They have put the waste in ‘lagoons.’ Pretty
name for filth. When it rains, they overflow and get onto the land and roads nearby. The companies also pump the
wasted onto adjoining agricultural lands, and now the land is so saturated it is letting the waste percolate down
into the water table. I learned recently, that this is not a problem confined to pork producers; cattle feed lots,
slaughterhouses, dairies, anything where something alive goes in one end, and waste pours out the other.
Because of the awful treatment of animals in factory farms, chicken farms, turkey farms, etc. I have given up eating
any beef, pork or veal. The treatment accorded baby animals is not to be believed!
BUT: if all these places were mandated to use methane conversion, they could become good neighbors instead of
hated industrialists poisoning the land, and by the way, with methane conversion, they could pay all the costs of
electricity, become a self-powered company, and sell the excess to the grid! They could probably get tax rebates
for installing such equipment. And people could stop hating their guts.
Byproduct of methane conversion? Clean, sterile soil, which, if ‘infected’ with earthworms and compost, could go
Cow farts, is methane too, we are wasting fuel and we will need to be forced to do “resource recovery” on everything. When we realize we have no choice. Sounds bizarre doesn’t it. Is this any more weird than hooking up suckers to Cow tities? We already do that, we also do other weird things. Jump out of the box and act like you are from Mars, look at the Earth and weep.
Decades ago, when we lived in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the local sewage pant used methane from sewage as engine fuel to power the plant. They also sold the treated sewage as fertilizer.
A Diesel engine can burn methane. When doing so, Diesel fuel is used as a pilot fuel to cause ignition or to supplement the methane when there is not enough of it to generate the required amount of power; the methane is mixed with air and fed in through the intake manifold. It is a very old idea and it works well. It seems strange that it isn’t more widely used.
A sewage treatment plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, currently sells treated sewage as fertilizer; visit the following link for more information:
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Much of the methane that originates in the biosphere is lost to the atmosphere through decomposition of vegetation, leaks from subterranian sources like coal seams, cow flatulence,and termite conversion of cellulose to energy with a methane biproduct.
So, every bit of methane that we can capture and burn to produce carbon dioxide will produce a less harmful effect on the environment than the burning of other petroleum products that are locked in place and less likely to burp.
Of course the best solution to environmental problems associated with energy production of all kinds is to just conserve a little and remember that “small is beautiful”. Much easier said than done but we are obviously on an unsustainable path of energy consumption that will certainly spell disaster down the road. All we can do is hope to kick the can a little bit further so it doesn’t impact us here and now. A new source of energy will not solve our problems since we have this insatiable appetite for more. Not a happy thought but that’s how I see it. L
You pretty much have to use the methane in some process nearby to where it is captured. The economics of capturing and transporting is so bad that there is no practical way of doing such. That’s one of the reasons for flaring. No good way to do anything with it. Perfectly reasonable to generate electricity, as that is readily transmittable. Given the amount of methane that could be produced at a typical feedlot or dump, this suggests that the technology of micro-generation would benefit from refinement. I’m thinking of maybe 10 megawatts or so on the top side.
Livestock is a whole different problem as far as capture of flatulence goes and that is a serious contributor to the airborne methane problem. As the planet becomes more populated, the practice of feeding livestock the necessary harvest for purposes of creating table meat will become quite the high end luxury. To some degree, this problem might end up being self-regulating.
Considerable energy is used where the flaring is done. Some of that energy could be derived from the methane that is currently being flared. If the methane is not mixed with excessive amounts of unburnable gasses, it could be fed into Diesel engines to generate power. As the amount of methane varies, the amount of Diesel fuel injected into the engines could be varied so that the amount of power output would be constant. That could be done with current technology.
There may be complicating factors that I don’t know about, but it seems to be a reasonable approach to avoid wasting methane by flaring. Although methane is a much more powerful global warming gas than CO2, at least it remains resident in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time.
OK so methane is considered 21 times more damaging to the environment than CO2, but we want to burn it as CNG, LNG or in a generator. You are right, it is a waste to see flaring, and generating energy from it is relatively simple. If the gas volume is high, separating the co2 out is easy and economic, if its’ low volume, then special generators will cope with the biogas impurities and co2. Lucky me, where I work in Pakistan, we have 400,000 (yes, the comma is in the right place!)Buffalo in 4km2 belching in unison but extruding 8,000 tons of dung every day.
Using it to make 160,000m3 per day of biogas is a no brainer in a country with desperate energy shortages, but I still have to look in Europe or US for the funding to make it all happen. Wish me luck and a good supply of thigh high rubber boots-waders in US I believe. No whip necessary by the way!
A pioneer in small methane digester development was Al Rutan. While, sadly, he is no longer with us, his information is still out there on the web.
From the EPA website:
•11.7 million housing units in small communities are served by public sewers; 19.8 million use septic tanks or cesspools, and 917,373 use outhouses or privies.
Imagine if the 19.8 million homes on septic systems had methane digesters instead. Until 7 years ago my house and neighborhood was also not on public sewer. The only problem is septic systems in the ground and uninsulated are too cold to support the bacteria required to do the conversion in the quantity.
All sewage treatment plants could be built as methane digesters and the gas could be used onsite for generating electricity for the treatment process and the exhaust could be scavaged for heat.
I have been to some ranches and have farms in my area. Ranches and farms and feedlots could process the waste for methane also.
There are already landfills harvesting the methane generated there to be used by the landfill itself or nearby process factories.
Both diesel and gasoline engines can burn methane although the spark ignition gasoline engine is better suited for it in my opinion. Adapters are made that bolt between the carburator and manifold so an engine can burn any gas and gasoline and ethanol as required or available. Truly flexfuel. I know people that have installed these kits on their home generators.
I have imagined a farmhouse/ranch house with a methane digester fed by cattle waste to help provide gas for a micro combined heat and power unit along with the propane that most of these farmhouses already have.
Anyway, methane is a gas that should be cultivated and used wherever possible in my opinion.
A link to an Al Rutan article to help those who are interested get started. http://www.scribd.com/doc/93457060/METHANE-How-to-Make-It
Methane is also the chief component in the “natural gas” from underground reserves.
Arlene’s and Franks points are well taken concerning the use of “biogas” – freshly produced methane from modern biological processes such as microbial sewage treatment and the decay in landfills. I understand that Johnson & Johnson uses the energy from methane out of the local landfill to run many of its factory processes. This is laudable. To the extent that these techniques efficiently capture and convert modern ‘waste methane’ into useful energy, and prevent its release into the atmosphere (except as CO2), the ideas are good ones.
However, the use of subterranean “hydrocarbon gas” methane still dumps ancient carbon into the modern atmosphere, and that use should be avoided wherever the release is preventable. Fracking must be likewise prevented.
We must work to keep all the fossil hydrocarbons beneath the ground as much as possible, and we must begin to make use of what still remains of the most inexpensive fossil energy to manufacture, transport and deploy its replacement systems on a massive scale. Once those replacement systems are online, we need to stop the use of fossil fuels. Simple as that.
Our modern sun pours 6000 times the energy we need down on us every single day. We need to plug in.
PS – According to a report prepared by IT Power for the Australian Solar Institute, “Global installed capacity of CSP is growing rapidly and is predicted to reach 2GW in 2013, led by Spain and the US. Concentrating solar thermal (CST) plants dominate, typically using standard steam turbines and often integrating thermal energy storage.”
Further, “Australia has just over 50GW in electricity generation capacity from all sources. This study finds that, it would be technically feasible to add up to 15 GW of CSP capacity, with only modest grid extensions. Hybrid systems within existing fossil-fuel plants, and smaller plants for off-grid mines and towns, are important near term applications for CSP systems. Future ‘nation-building’ grid extensions would unlock more of Australia’s world-leading solar resource, which vastly exceeds all predictable energy demand.”
Steam turbine and diesel generator manufacturers in bangalore, India. gas generator, steam turbine manufacturers and diesel generator manufacturers with lot of fuel flexibility.
Cow farts, is methane too, we are wasting fuel and we will need to be forced to do “resource recovery” on everything. When we realize we have no choice. Sounds bizarre doesn’t it. Is this any more weird than hooking up suckers to Cow tities? We already do that, we also do other weird things. Jump out of the box and act like you are from Mars, look at the Earth and weep.
Decades ago, when we lived in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the local sewage pant used methane from sewage as engine fuel to power the plant. They also sold the treated sewage as fertilizer.
A Diesel engine can burn methane. When doing so, Diesel fuel is used as a pilot fuel to cause ignition or to supplement the methane when there is not enough of it to generate the required amount of power; the methane is mixed with air and fed in through the intake manifold. It is a very old idea and it works well. It seems strange that it isn’t more widely used.
A sewage treatment plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, currently sells treated sewage as fertilizer; visit the following link for more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite
So, that is not a new idea. It seems strange that it has not been more widely implemented.
Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Much of the methane that originates in the biosphere is lost to the atmosphere through decomposition of vegetation, leaks from subterranian sources like coal seams, cow flatulence,and termite conversion of cellulose to energy with a methane biproduct.
So, every bit of methane that we can capture and burn to produce carbon dioxide will produce a less harmful effect on the environment than the burning of other petroleum products that are locked in place and less likely to burp.
Of course the best solution to environmental problems associated with energy production of all kinds is to just conserve a little and remember that “small is beautiful”. Much easier said than done but we are obviously on an unsustainable path of energy consumption that will certainly spell disaster down the road. All we can do is hope to kick the can a little bit further so it doesn’t impact us here and now. A new source of energy will not solve our problems since we have this insatiable appetite for more. Not a happy thought but that’s how I see it. L
You pretty much have to use the methane in some process nearby to where it is captured. The economics of capturing and transporting is so bad that there is no practical way of doing such. That’s one of the reasons for flaring. No good way to do anything with it. Perfectly reasonable to generate electricity, as that is readily transmittable. Given the amount of methane that could be produced at a typical feedlot or dump, this suggests that the technology of micro-generation would benefit from refinement. I’m thinking of maybe 10 megawatts or so on the top side.
Livestock is a whole different problem as far as capture of flatulence goes and that is a serious contributor to the airborne methane problem. As the planet becomes more populated, the practice of feeding livestock the necessary harvest for purposes of creating table meat will become quite the high end luxury. To some degree, this problem might end up being self-regulating.
But is all that flaring really necessary?
Considerable energy is used where the flaring is done. Some of that energy could be derived from the methane that is currently being flared. If the methane is not mixed with excessive amounts of unburnable gasses, it could be fed into Diesel engines to generate power. As the amount of methane varies, the amount of Diesel fuel injected into the engines could be varied so that the amount of power output would be constant. That could be done with current technology.
There may be complicating factors that I don’t know about, but it seems to be a reasonable approach to avoid wasting methane by flaring. Although methane is a much more powerful global warming gas than CO2, at least it remains resident in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time.
OK so methane is considered 21 times more damaging to the environment than CO2, but we want to burn it as CNG, LNG or in a generator. You are right, it is a waste to see flaring, and generating energy from it is relatively simple. If the gas volume is high, separating the co2 out is easy and economic, if its’ low volume, then special generators will cope with the biogas impurities and co2. Lucky me, where I work in Pakistan, we have 400,000 (yes, the comma is in the right place!)Buffalo in 4km2 belching in unison but extruding 8,000 tons of dung every day.
Using it to make 160,000m3 per day of biogas is a no brainer in a country with desperate energy shortages, but I still have to look in Europe or US for the funding to make it all happen. Wish me luck and a good supply of thigh high rubber boots-waders in US I believe. No whip necessary by the way!
A pioneer in small methane digester development was Al Rutan. While, sadly, he is no longer with us, his information is still out there on the web.
From the EPA website:
•11.7 million housing units in small communities are served by public sewers; 19.8 million use septic tanks or cesspools, and 917,373 use outhouses or privies.
Imagine if the 19.8 million homes on septic systems had methane digesters instead. Until 7 years ago my house and neighborhood was also not on public sewer. The only problem is septic systems in the ground and uninsulated are too cold to support the bacteria required to do the conversion in the quantity.
All sewage treatment plants could be built as methane digesters and the gas could be used onsite for generating electricity for the treatment process and the exhaust could be scavaged for heat.
I have been to some ranches and have farms in my area. Ranches and farms and feedlots could process the waste for methane also.
There are already landfills harvesting the methane generated there to be used by the landfill itself or nearby process factories.
Both diesel and gasoline engines can burn methane although the spark ignition gasoline engine is better suited for it in my opinion. Adapters are made that bolt between the carburator and manifold so an engine can burn any gas and gasoline and ethanol as required or available. Truly flexfuel. I know people that have installed these kits on their home generators.
I have imagined a farmhouse/ranch house with a methane digester fed by cattle waste to help provide gas for a micro combined heat and power unit along with the propane that most of these farmhouses already have.
Anyway, methane is a gas that should be cultivated and used wherever possible in my opinion.
A link to an Al Rutan article to help those who are interested get started.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/93457060/METHANE-How-to-Make-It
Methane is also the chief component in the “natural gas” from underground reserves.
Arlene’s and Franks points are well taken concerning the use of “biogas” – freshly produced methane from modern biological processes such as microbial sewage treatment and the decay in landfills. I understand that Johnson & Johnson uses the energy from methane out of the local landfill to run many of its factory processes. This is laudable. To the extent that these techniques efficiently capture and convert modern ‘waste methane’ into useful energy, and prevent its release into the atmosphere (except as CO2), the ideas are good ones.
However, the use of subterranean “hydrocarbon gas” methane still dumps ancient carbon into the modern atmosphere, and that use should be avoided wherever the release is preventable. Fracking must be likewise prevented.
We must work to keep all the fossil hydrocarbons beneath the ground as much as possible, and we must begin to make use of what still remains of the most inexpensive fossil energy to manufacture, transport and deploy its replacement systems on a massive scale. Once those replacement systems are online, we need to stop the use of fossil fuels. Simple as that.
Our modern sun pours 6000 times the energy we need down on us every single day. We need to plug in.
PS – According to a report prepared by IT Power for the Australian Solar Institute, “Global installed capacity of CSP is growing rapidly and is predicted to reach 2GW in 2013, led by Spain and the US. Concentrating solar thermal (CST) plants dominate, typically using standard steam turbines and often integrating thermal energy storage.”
Further, “Australia has just over 50GW in electricity generation capacity from all sources. This study finds that, it would be technically feasible to add up to 15 GW of CSP capacity, with only modest grid extensions. Hybrid systems within existing fossil-fuel plants, and smaller plants for off-grid mines and towns, are important near term applications for CSP systems. Future ‘nation-building’ grid extensions would unlock more of Australia’s world-leading solar resource, which vastly exceeds all predictable energy demand.”
This report is found here:
http://www.australiansolarinstitute.com.au/SiteFile…
We here in the US badly need to advance in this space.
Here’s an interesting link about distributed small scale PV in Australia:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2012/05/australia-out-installs-germany-again
Steam turbine and diesel generator manufacturers in bangalore, India. gas generator, steam turbine manufacturers and diesel generator manufacturers with lot of fuel flexibility.