Methane Burning from Anaerobic Lagoons

Well the word is that there are nasties in the gas. I asked a bit about this within a few days ago. Word is that common stoves will corrode because of high CO2, and water. Word is also all problems are understood and not hard to really design for. I did not address or anticipate mixing coal with methane gas, so I suspect you must ask if there are plants using natural gas and coal together, and then modify back to allow for the different densities and btus.

P.S. It is reported to me that in North Carolina, which has a great number of pigs, the pig shit gas is now burned raw to power electric generators. You might check with North Carolina State University Engineering Department for information about how to use biogas.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.govHAC/landfill/PDFs/Landfill_2001_ch5.pdf

http://www.epa.gov/lmop/res/pdf/boilers.pdf

You are likely to have a small percentage of H2S in your gas. This can be corrosive to Cu as well as many other materials. Ordinary steel holds up fairly well.

CH4 should burn alright with coal, but the dilution of the CO2 will increase the lower flammability limit as well as the upper limit, ie it reduces the range of fuel/air mixtures at which you can operate.

I can't think of any cheap/simple way of removing the CO2 except possibly scrubbing if you have plenty of water available. You then have low pH water to dispose of.

Modified diesel engines (gas engines) are sometimes run directly on this gas in sewage plants. There doesn't appear to have been many problems with this.

(Sometime in the future, it may be a proposition to dissolve CO2 in water, use the enriched water to grow algae and use the algae to either produce oil or a stock food supplement (all attempts at human food have so far been nutritious but yuck!). This is still in the research stage and probably won't be commercially viable for quite a while.)

For higher efficiency, you may also consider a CHP ( Combined Heat and Power ) Microturbine Generator,where you get Electricity and Hot Water at the same time. details pls check http://www.microturbine.com

from

William@

MultiTech

Are You sure that significant quantities of Methane could be collected?

I suggest that Your company try to contact Mr. Hariharan at http://www.agro-biogenics.com/Contact.htm) as they intend to produce Bio-plastic and composites from agricultural waste by collecting Methane or Bio-gas.

You can burn Methane together with coal, depending on how coal is prepared before burning. You can also make liquid methane for using in cars for fuel or for cooking...

Only problem is some SO2 (NOT CO2 which is product of combustion and inactive chemically) but surely there is technology to remove it.

What You need is AGRO BIOGENIC technology and system by which You harvest that what is producing Methane in Lagoons, as it would be expensive to make cover over whole lagoon, and in separate basin things could be kept under control.

You can get AGRO BIOGENIC technology for free, provided You pay 25% of profit or savings made in period of 10 years. Once that You sign such contract, they could check conditions at this lagoons and eventually recommend some type of water plants that grow fast and could be used as renewable resource for periodic harvesting and producing more Methane or Bio-gas.......

You can of course pay for technology in full, in one time payment, and then have 100% of benefits all the time........

There are dozens of wastewater plants doing this now. We are looking to do this at the plant we are currnetly designing. If you get in touch with a "good" environmental engineering firm, they should be able to give you all of the information you want.

Recovery will be expensive if lagoons are any significant size . Better you treat the waste as generated & recover the methane or oxidize creating useful (?)heat/power before dumping . Are the lagoons used to settle any carry over solids? A good system can possibly do away with the need for lagoons . We burned wood waste on a grate & overfired with Natural gas but variable quality methane ???