Vermont Dairy Farm Turns Methane Into Money

Thats a great idea who's time has come I followed developement of landfill gass burning but it was less than economic with the price of fuel at $1 a gallon .Methane is a great untapped resource .I'm curious ,landfill gasses had very corrosive elements that damaged generators .Is manure gas different ? I wonder how many hours the old Cat has and will be expected to endure.

Why can't the puplic utilities do the same thing? Methane is a greenhouse gas, and the stainless steel used in gas turbines is fairly resistant to corrosion. Or burn the gas in boilers to power steam turbines. Most municipalities I know of have some type of waste disposal that is burned in boilers and generate electricity from the heat.

Manure gas is very different from landfill gas in that it has a stable and predictable composition. Landfills are full of heavy metals and other non bio-degradable materials, which produce some pretty corrosive witches brews. H2S is the main corrosive ingredient in manure digester biogas and I believe that if you can keep it below 1000 ppm, your Cat will handle it. There are some simple, cost effective ways to reduce the H2S in your biogas.

Thanks for your reply Thats very interesting news .I never considered the obvious contaminents in landfill gasses .I was amazed at the actual output in usable energy of the farm .I would imagine a great interest in the future for simular projects .I bet there is a lot of misinformation that once the word is out will silence the skeptics .I must admit I was a skeptic but the more I learn and the higher fuel prices climb the better alternate energy sounds best of luck to you efforts .I have a huge supply of wood chips and would love to put them to use in an economical energy conversion other than burning well see what developes in that emerging technology .any good ideas ?

Have you thought about gasification? It's a proven process to produce wood gas. There were vehicles in Finland in WWII running on wood gas from onboard gasification systems. There have been significant advances since then. In fact, knowing the Finns, they're probably developing a wood gas cell phone right now.

I've looked at a few concepts and the work to produce battery cells run on methane seems very promising .Apparently most methane is currenly produced from byproduct gases of the petro industry .The trick to extraction from wood is currently too cost intensive .I think the breakthrough will come from genetic modification of "bugs " like the ones that eat oil .Its an interesting research There's a guy from u Amherst George Huber who wrote a great paper outlining all the attempts at production being published in the american chemical society magazine he sent me an advance copy If your curious I can forward it .I bet someone out there has done there own homegrown experiments like pissing on a pile of chips and found the answer .In fact what would happen if the dairy farm manuer generator threw in some wood chips what would happen ? Are you associated with them?

The anaerobic digester is a giant stomach, basically an extension of the cow's intestines. If your cow can survive on a diet of wood chips, then so will your digester. Otherwise, the lignin content will prove to be too much and your cow or digester will expire. Please visit our website at eecenergy.ca to see our system. We've been in operation for a few years and are now doing some experimentation with various organic feedstocks. We're essentially trying to bypass the cow's four stomachs.