Can cow poop be used to make methane fuel?
Giant feed lot operations in the midwest produce a $hitlaod of $hit from cows and steer every year. it is all dumped into underground lagoons. Can this be turned into a alternate source of energy. And would it be cost effictive?
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May 17th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Yes, the scenerio depicted in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" was true in theory. Any organic material like food or poop can be used to generate methane.
If given sufficient oxygen, bacteria will oxidize hydorcarbons like sugars, proteins and fats to carbon dioxide and water. But if there is not enough oxygen (like under the mud of a swamp, in a landfill, or a septic tank) then the bacteria power themselves off the "food" and produce methane.
Can you heat your house off your septic tank. No. You might make 1% of your energy needs and it wouldn’t be worth the bother.
Can anyone make useful energy by generating methane from waste? Yes. A lot of landfills extract methane and run engines on it and produce eletricity. Often they are forced to in order to reduce methane emisssions or explosive hazards but they do produce tens or hundred of kilowatts at a large landfill.
Cow poop to methane? The only place cows are concentrated are at a feedlot. Their focus is on making skinny range cattle into fattened cattle for slaughter in a few weeks. They want to get rid of the manure quickly and devote their attention to the core business. Energy prices would have to rise a lot to interest them in the process.
Hog, chicken, turkey and other CAFOs (concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) are denser, stinkier sources of poop. The winning play there might be that sequestering away the manure to make methane also cuts down the smell A LOT and that keeps the neighbors happy. But until enough states and countries ban current-practice CAFOs, most will go with what they’ve always done, IMO.
-David
Kenai, Alaska
May 18th, 2010 at 11:35 am
The fact is that many large farms up and down the country and in other places like Africa and India already create electricity from methane gas recovered from animal and human waste. There is one very large set up in Canada and another in Northern England. The trick is to remove the carbon dioxide to enable the methane to burn. This process makes sense and all large sewage farms should use it. I gets rid of the methane a hot house gas and it enables the production of clean compost.