Natural Gas From the Swamps?

I've never heard of a swamp or bog catching on fire because of gas generation, have you?

It would take a large body of soup to make it worth while. Then, you have to capture it.

After that, to be useful the gas must be compressed, transported, stored and distributed.

Landfills would seem ideal for this, yet I don't think too many of them do it.

Dream on.

Actually, there are quite a number of full, capped landfills where the gas generated from the decomposing garbage is captured and used to generate electricity. I can think of 8 or 10 within a couple of hours drive. The amount of electric capacity is small compared to other power plants (kW rather than MW in many cases), but still adds to the total mix, and tends to be pretty steady (unlike wind or solar).

It's hard to do while the landfill is still open and in use, although they do layer soil to cap it as they go along. Gas released during that time generally just vents to the atmosphere.

Sometimes capped landfills have (or at least had) a gas flare vent where the trapped gas was burned off as it vented out of the ground. Made quite a visible torch.

I wondered at the time if anyone would challenge the landfill statement.

I admit that I was speaking without benefit of personal knowledge.

That's sometimes referred to as speaking from an orifice other than one's mouth. The resulting gas output would smell like the output of the landfill.

I would dispute you dismissal of landfill powered electricity as insignificant. In the UK there are 69 working sites that generate 165Mw in total. That equates to an average of 2,4Mw per site. The largest produces 11.64Mw and the cut off below which it is not economic in UK conditions is about 1Mw. This excludes sites where landfill gas is used for direct heating.

It is common in the UK for clay quarries, where the clay has been extracted for brick making, to be backfilled with domestic landfill waste, topped off with a capping of non-porous clay and methane extracted for firing the brick kilns. One manufacturer with 24 plants in the UK fires most of it's brick using landfill gas and has plans to generate a further 4Mw of electricity of sale with it's surplus gas capacity.

In Moody Alabama, a US company(Jenkins Brick Co) is currently spending $56m on a new plant to make brick and tile using landfill methane.

Hi lyn, There are two huge marshy areas in Siberia where the gas comming comming up has been ignited!

Spencer.

The Door to Hell.

No way of transmitting this energy by bluetooth to somewhere else? Nikola Tesla would certainly have found a way of doing it!

We have some landfill sites here that generate power from the emergent gas.

How do i paste a link?

www.emrc.org.au/landfill-gas-and-power.html

www.landfillgas.com.au

find the small version of this on the CR4 editor bar & follow the directions

Well there you have it!

It has been done, successfully at that. I have seen a couple pond/swamp areas where there are an unusual number of bubbles which could be canidates... But i don't think the amount of energy which can be harvested is any substantial amount. Maybe like was said, could burn a lantern/cook-stove or something similar.

I suppose it's worth some more thought/investigation. Surely someone has a private swamp which is cranking out methane who has some extra time/energy on their hands to set up a small scale gas capture rig of some sort.

I actually saw something on Discovery or some channel, where a scientist was doing exactly what you're talking about.....................collecting the gas from those pond/swamp bubbles. Yep, it is methane, and it does burn.

I think the main problem with your idea is the sheer volume of gas that would have to be collected in order for it to be a viable source of fuel. All of the bubbles collected from a large pond over 24 hours would probably not be enough methane to cook dinner on the stove.

You'd probably get more usable fuel by collecting the farts from a field of cows.

Which is not as far fetched as it sounds.

just to input some more info: sounds amazing, but cattle farts are one of the main causes of the green house effect!

Wow, some day today.

Silver space suits, spending too much money of the military, and now we're catching cow farts.

Time for me to go home. See you guys later!

I think you're overlooking an opportunity here Doorman.

If anyone could successfully build and distribute cow fart catchers, it would be Lyndoor_^® Industries...............................you could include a free space suit with each purchase.

While I apperciate the suggestion, I am not sure such a project will return enough to satisfy our stockholders...

Our Astronaut Fart Catcher, integrated into past generations of space suits, did not really pan out as well as we anticipated. The LynDoor™ 'Sub Ubi' may be the end of the project.

Burps, not farts.

brgds

Snel

Holy Molly! this means I was waisting my time chasing for Methane at the wrong end of the cow!

I just tried to light a burp.......................it didn't burn.

in india, manure is loaded into a concrete cesspool. a sealed, floating lid pressurizes the methane so it can be used for home use.

Yes, but it is not from swamps. It is produced from cow dung and also referred as "Gobar Gas" because cow dung is called "gobar" in Hindi. We can call it a green energy because it does not emit CO2. It meets the requirement of cooking gas in several thousand homes in rural India.

I read an article recently, about Indians that were using garbage disposals to grind up food scraps, pumping to a holding tank, and using the resulting gas to power cook stoves.

Because it like to fish. Don't need all those obstacles in the water snagging and losing my lures on.

The big difference between this source of methane and that generated in human-made reactors is that it is generated by nature itself. There is or should be an urgency to recover methane from these natural sources because: (a) This is an emission that will happen independantly of human activity. and (b) Methane has a carbon emission damage far greater than CO2. I think it could be around 20 times that of CO2.

There is a whole field of technology covering precisely this area: Methane extraction from lakes. There are 3 well-known lakes in Africa of which lake Kivu in DRC is one and Lake Nyos also in Africa is another. There are methane hydrates in the ocean (mentioned in a recent blog on Cr4). Japan is now looking at exploring this resource. I know of a company in SA that has a contraption for capturing such methane gases from the depths. Problem is that these contraptions need to be tested and developed further on order to work successfully & commerciially at the depths where these gas resources are commonly found. One is looking at anything from 100-400 metres deep. There is a contraption as such on lake Kivu on the Ruwanda side.

I looked at the literature briefly a few years ago. The whole subject is complex as it involves so many fields of Science & Technology. Areas of knowledge on topics such as microbiology, volcanoes, chemical engineering, oceanography, non-conventional gas exploration, structural engineering, specialzed diving, etc.

It's very scarey as to what kind of underwater welding might be needed given that there is a great deal of methane around. In the case of the lakes the source of the methane is connected to rotting vegetation that now lies well below the water surface, more than 300 metres below. The region itself is prone to the occasional release of methane into the atmosphere as and when a gas build-up is released.

I would think the lake Kivu sample would be an excellent practice ground for such technologies and the R&D that is needed. Up to now, the problem has always been funding. One of the few sources of possible funding, up to now, has been from governments or from the world bank.

I am not sure what the exact source (and mechanism of the reaction) is of methane derived from the ocean. And also whether these are finite or renewable resources. My great interest in such an endevour would be the nature of the "Hazard & Operability Study" that would be done wrt the engineering plans on such an underwater process.

Hi BJ forgive my ignorance but I have always had the understanding that methane gas was CH4 and was more greener than burning other carbon based fuels.

Some clarity Joe Sparky,

I was comparing the two options of (a) Extracting the methane gas from the lakes or swamps and using commercially to (b) just leaving it alone to and allowing nature to do whatever it chooses to do with it. In both cases you would estimate the CO2 equivalent. Leaving it alone would be the worse case scenario as nature would burp CH4 (methane gas) into the atmosphere each time the lake/swamp releases gas. In the other option, the methane could be used (1) as in combustion or as in (2) in the production of synthetic fuels of higher hydrocarbon chains. In both these, CO2 would be the emission gas which will be much better than releasing Methane to the atmosphere. We must remember that nature itself also has emissions that are nasties. There are many points of emission in nature (rotting vegetation, even some live plants, volcanoes, underwater sources, etc. )

Your misunderstanding Sparky is that in most cases, nature will not burn the Methane and it will be released into the atmosphere as methane gas (CH4). It is only when there is ignition or an explosion when the gas will burn (and not necessarily to completion either as this will not be under controlled conditions). Again, Methane gas, as is, is always 10-20 times worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2. It is correct that CO2 is the biggest in terms of tons released to the atmosphere but it's potency on a kg per kg bases is nowhere near to that of CH4, NOx, and some of the Refrigerants that have since been black-listed, etc.

When we work out a country's Carbon Foot Print, we add up all of the CO2 Emissions in tonnes per year. But we must also add in the effect of all of the other greenhouse gases, albeit in lesser quantities. Each of these on their own (and un-combusted) have "CO2 Equivalent" Usually more than 1.0 of CO2 equivalent.

When you run a plant and have excess CH4 or Hydrocarbon you want to get rid of, you have the option to (a) Flare it or (b) just release it to atmosphere (if you were a real baddie). Nature itself does not have such options. Whatever happens does so spontaneously. We, on the other hand, have the option of intervening and correcting what happens in nature (in this case release of Methane into the atmosphere. Problem is the we will only do things that are economically viable.

There is also release of methane from Cattle and from their dung. There is also release of methane from municipal waste dumps. In most cases the methane does not burn before it is released. This is the point.

There's plenty of it coming out the vent pipe from my septic system but I never thought about capturing it (for very long)...and why hasn't LynDoor industries come up with a home bathroom fan/vent/capture system yet???

Tom Consulting,

Try to estimate the volume flow rate of the emission. It may be very small. Nevertheless, it may be that you can use this emission stream to at least generate some heat. Youm might even be able to derive some payback or rebates from your national electricity Company or from the government.

You might even be able to develop some expertise or a novel contraption out of this exercise! Good luck to you.

Not log ago I, as now, live in a rual area with a deep canyon to the back of my house, which I visit quit often and bubbles plenty come from gas deposits and while giving thought to seeing if they would burn, did not, because it might blow up the whole damn canyon..a few years later we burned our trash in a barrel [when it wasn't illegal], I took the sunday paper to the trash it was about full and lit a match and turned away and it went 'woof' I turned around to say what are you 'woofing' at, in the country you talk to things, dogs, cats, cars, and trash cans, it keeps you intouch with the real world, anyway the damn thing blewup and set me on fire head to toe. I spent several weeks in the burn center. The gas had accumulated in the bottom of the barrel and it just took my spark to set it off..Methane they said....Yes they are using Cow chips and land fill gas to burn for energy..They have a lot of open waste pit hog operation here and are slowly considering puting domes over those...

A bubble here, a bubble ther, not much until you multiply it by many acres of surface area.

A simple way to capture it for test purposes would be a sheet of plastic, with floating anchors at each corner(suppose a gallon jug, 1/4 full of water, for instance, or perhaps frame the entire sheet with pvc plastic pipe,to give a seal around edges), and supported in the center by plastic bottles.The pipe seems like a better idea on second thought

Methane would accumulate under the plastic, and cause the sheet to rise in the center, where an extraction pump inlet could be located.Float switches could limit the extraction to a certain level, to prevent sucking of water into the pump.The pump would then wait for another cycle to begin again.

Someone has to be willing to give this a try.Who knows, it may be more feasible than the pessimists think?

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/5695/methanation-in-missouri/