When will the world wake up to the potential of poo power?

[sue4e3]

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/16/when-will-the-world-wake-up-to-the-potential-of-poo-power
Ta Quang Nah is a Vietnamese rice farmer, pig breeder, builder and fisherman. But for several months now he has also been running a power station from his home on the Ca Mau peninsula.

All the family’s waste goes straight from their outdoor latrine to join that of their four pigs in an airtight underground chamber, and the methane gas that is naturally let off as the combined excreta decomposes collects in a long polythene bag secured above ground.

Ta Quang Nah was advised by Oxfam how to set up his family biodigester, and when I met him last month he was proudly cooking on his own gas, and saving money by not buying wood or charcoal. His simple operation cost less than $50 to instal, paid itself off in a few months, needs little maintenance and is more than big enough for his family’s needs. Dozens of his neighbours want one too.

Using vegetable or livestock waste to generate biogas is now common and growing fast as cattle farmers and food companies in Europe and the US are encouraged with subsidies to set up anaerobic, or airless, digesters like Ta Quang Nah’s rudimentary one. But using human waste is still largely taboo outside Asia.

[mopinko]

1. pee too.

scarce phosphorous flush all day every day.

i think it is getting pretty common in hawaii. stayed there in a little off the grid b&b. they had composting toilets. no methane capture, tho. much of hawaii does not have sewer connections, and we were told composting toilets were common.
lots of municipal sewage systems do sell the end product to farmers. here in chi they just started mixing it w wood chips, which is a big deal.

it should be u.s. law to make factory farms AT.LEAST capture the methane from all that pig shit. but such a powerful source of chemical power is a crime to waste.

[nationalize the fed]

2. Literally fueled by Bullsh*t

Toyota is Wide Awake when it comes to this

Toyota is taking on the hydrogen fuel-cell car haters — including Elon Musk

In a new ad campaign produced by the agency Droga5 and tagged "Fueled by Everything," Toyota is taking the direct approach. The company is showing, quite literally, how a Mirai can run on bullshit.

The first 3-minute spot, "Fueled by Bullsh*t," was directed by Morgan Spurlock. In it, fuel-cell engineer Scott Blanchet introduces the concept then heads for a dairy farm, where a farmer provides access to a huge pile of cow dung. The engineer loads up, the drives off to introduce us to the hydrogen-extraction process. Essentially, the poop marinates in large pools and generates biogas, which can then have the hydrogen removed. The dairy farmer returns, he and the engineer fuel up a Mirai, and they drive back to farm.

Presto! A fuel-cell car that runs on bullshit! Well, cow shit mostly, but maybe there's a bull in that herd someplace.

It's a cheeky execution that capitalizes on one prominent naysayer's disdain for FCEVs — an understandable disdain, as Musk and Tesla are selling electric cars that require recharging, not refueling....
http://www.businessinsider.com/toyota-is-taking-on-the-hydrogen-car-haters--including-elon-musk-2015-4

[Recoverin_Republican]

3. in Europe this is used much more than here. It's a win-win-win situation since farmers spend money

to deal with waste which releases methane into the atmosphere. Instead of devoting land and spending the money dealing with the waste material as waste, spending money to set up an anaerobic digestor reduces methane released to atmosphere and the methane can be used as a fuel replacing fossil fuel natural gas.

Hog farms produce an enormous amount of waste and so far only a few of these industrial farms are exploring using anaerobic digesters.


What to Do About Pig Poop? North Carolina Fights a Rising Tide
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141028-hog-farms-waste-pollution-methane-north-carolina-environment/

[ljm2002]

4. I used to read about farmers using methane gas...

...'way back in the 70's in Mother Earth magazine.

Great to see people are coming up with practical solutions for this, since most of us aren't going to build our own waste processing system.

K&R

[LouisvilleDem]

5. What happens to the carbon?

I wonder if this practice means that the carbon that would normally get sequestered in the ground ends up getting released as CO2 when you burn the biogas. Anyone know?