Biogas Power Plant

On what scale? (Backyard, Farm or landfill . . . .)

Shan,

If you can achieve your goal with some consistency I will develop a means or burning the gas or liquid.

Mike

You should study the CV of the biogas, the power it can generate, the area required for generation of so and so capacity etc. Biogas power plants are basically for production of power of few hundred KW locally. You cant waste energy in compressing it and exporting to users. It is not viable.

You are absolutely right! I did a literature research jst a few week ago on generation and use of biogas. Besides the energy you need to compress the gas, it need some quiete elaborate cleaning before you can burn it in a power plant. Remember: The "harvested" gas is wet, contains lost of sulphur and other contaminants that will rapidly result in corrosion of equipment which comes into contact with the uncleaned gas, unless the corrosive properties are already considered during design of all apparatus needed.

Regards

nudnik

It is more practicable to transport it to where it is needed in the form of electricity.

Well-run major municipal sewage works are net exporters of electricity. Biogas is used to make process heat and power, with the surplus being exported to the local electrical grid.

Biogas is quite variable in composition, mostly a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. Depending on the micro organism and pH you can get enormous variation in the composition and therefore calorific value. The gas is not liquifiable. Not worth transporting.

Bioramani

here already milk federation -a coperative society is working well for many years .everyday milk is collected at a local station ,then transported it to the processing plant where it is processed and pasturies.the contributers of milk possess only one or two cows.now why we can also collect cow dung by this way ,and with in 4-5 hours can be shifted to a plant.the gas can be used to produce electricity there itself and fed to the grid.this is already existing method .in some rural areas its is working .

but if this gas can be liquified then we can transport ,store and use when needed.even it can used in automobiles.

is there any process by which this gas -i think methane be converted to another form of gas and then liquified.

i had also heard that usa is now producing fuel from organic materials such as corn.and also grassoline too ,is't?

a large scale method of using biogas has a lot of advantages is't?

Gobar gas is about 60% methane , 30% CO2 and the balance others. I am in Bangalore. I had discussions with Prof. A.K.N.Reddy, ASTRA, IISc on this many years back.. In Rajastan isome of the biogas plants produced copious gas that would not burn. Investigation showed that the pH was unsuited to methanobacterium. One can consider a low cost (Lime based) CO2 absorber that would give essentially pure methane from gobar gas. The problem still remains that it cannot be liquefied. There is the option of transporting as compressed gas rather like CNG. As always, it is the cost/benefit that is not satisfactory. Where is the plant? You may mail me at bioramani at gmail . com (Please retype in email format) bioramani

forgive me please ,if am wrong.is this Ramani ,Dr Ramani ,the head of biotechnolgy department ,kerala university ,inida who was thrown out by the communist govt for not surrendering to corrupsion?

Yes, I was the Head of Biomedical Technology Division, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute, Trivandrum, which is a Govt of India Institute. However, the incident you are referring to involved my former chief Dr.Valiathan, former Director of the same institute, when he was heading the State Science and Technology Department of Kerala later. Ramani

Mack Truck has if I recall correctly developed a method of cleaning landfill gas so that it can be compressed and stored for use in diesel trucks powered by compressed natural gas (CNG). Gas produced from manure should be a lot purer than landfill gas.

Why not compress the gas produced by the manure, then use it to power the vehicles that collect the milk and manure? They have to come to the processing plant anyway, so a central refueling system works. If CNG doesn't offer the range needed due to tank size and weight, you can also use a diesel/CNG blend to replace a portion of the petrodiesel, saving money and reducing the carbon footprint.

Forget about producing fuel from corn- it's more efficient to burn the corn in a firebox. You can produce wood chips or pellets from "trash" wood a lot cheaper per BTU, and harvesting woody biomass is much more eco-friendly than the intensive agriculture needed to grow corn.

The gas has to be purified and CO² reduced to a very low ppm value before the methane can be liquefied using liquid nitrogen. There are transport problems but it can be liquefied.

ok so there is no easy economical method for compressing biogas plant.but some have expressed its possible to compress it and liquify.then what is the difficulty in transporting it in sealed containers?lpg is what we are already used in this method.may be its dangerous ,but every fuel oils such as petrol ,all very dangerous .yet we transport it in big quantities.problems will be there for every undertakings ,but how can any thing be successful if we simply drop all ideas just because we have to fing a solution to the problems associated with it. ok let it be.

we can start mini plants which can handle 10 or 20 tonnes of cow dung.produce electricity and fed to the grid.but still it will be better if we can store this gas either by liquifying or by any other method.is it possible to chemically process this to much more efficient gas or fuel oil?just simply .think how good if we can use that in automobiles!

Even Helium can be liquefied. Using liquid nitrogen (which uses a lot of energy in its production) is not an economical solution. Compressing and transporting is certainly an option if the gas can be purified cheaply. I agree that ideas should be generated and considered seriously if AGW has to be tackled. bioramani