From Biomass To Hydrogen Gas

[jpak]

http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_content/2883.htm

BATESVILLE, AR (AP) - It’s not a gasifier. It’s not an incinerator. It’s not a furnace.

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To put it in simpler terms, you can put almost any type of waste or biomass in the Noah biorefinery, and it produces gas that is mostly hydrogen, without pollution of any kind and with very little ash, according to its inventor, Mike Rogers of El Dorado.

That hydrogen gas can be used in place of propane or natural gas or to power a generator that produces electricity. And the ash makes good fertilizer, Rogers said.

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What little ash is left is an almost perfect 3-3-5 to 7 fertilizer, suitable for vegetables, pasture, and other crops, with a phosphorus leach rate less than 7 percent of the leach rate of the original biomass, according to not only Rogers but also agricultural experts at the University of Arkansas and Fayetteville.

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[jpak]

1. This IS cool

Chicken manure is one of the difficult animal wastes to treat and dispose.

The pH and low carbon:nitrogen content of fresh chicken shit/litter makes it difficult (or impossible) to treat anaerobically for biogas production or compost - and it's dicey to use as fertilizer (and it stinks to high heaven too).

This system allows poultry farmers to effectively deal with manure disposal and make money (and fertilizer) at the same time...

[hunter]

2. These sorts of zero reference, zero link, nearly zero information articles irritate me.

That's a lot of words for something easily summarized as: "Some guy says he can make hydrogen out of chicken shit."

A quick search didn't get anything more out of google.

It sounds interesting, but I'd like to know a little more about how this process works. Apparently it has something to do with catalysts or enzymes, thus the concern about metals in the feedstock, but that's all I can glean from it. The claim that ten gallons of manure can produce the same amount of energy as twelve gallons of fuel oil seems wildly optimistic unless they are comparing something like a small diesel engine generator set to an advanced fuel cell of some sort.

Overall the article has the same silly "Scientists Said It Would Never Work!" tone to it of the Weekly World News.