Methane Harvesting from Swamp

I beleive its been tried in many places many times but it all comes down to the volume that can be captured Vs the cost to do it. If a large enough volume can be had cheap enough any of your examples can work rather well.

"Not profitable or cost effective,or just not previuosly considered?"

No and yes.

I'm not sure the dumps are making a profit. We have one that the city uses on an Indian reservation nearby.

"I'm not sure the dumps are making a profit."

Landfill in the City of Fargo ND is (was, anyway) making a profit from methane capture at their landfill.

So, it can be done in a landfill. Not a lot of swampland around Fargo, so can't speak to that.

I know there is a company that uses the raw gas from a digster at waste treament plants to run either a diesel or fuel cell.All filtering is done within the apparatus.

Waste plants are buying them, but I am sure there is a matter of scale;a minimum size, to be profitable.

Perhaps this idea is too simple to work,but how about a plastic film that

is supported around the perimeter by floats,that are free to move(within constrained

limits) as the plastic inflates with methane.

The methane could be extracted simply,the way they do at animal waste lagoons,by vacuum pumps.

How much methane under 1 acre of swamp?

I have no idea,but I am sure it is related to the amount of vegetative matter present on the bottom.

The only profit (ha) from harvesting methane is from manure storage from animal wastes. and that's only because of it being government subsidized. In Europe, methane harvesting off of farms is 40 more advanced than in the U.S.

Much cheaper and easier to get it from the garbage dump than from water. Look at the Great Kills landfill in Staten Island, NYC, NY. It is one of the largest in the world and uses methane recovery with concentrators. Many others in the USA.

Good Luck, Old Salt

There is a methane capture right down the road where I work in a earthen covered garbage dump. Where it goes after capture , I have no idea.

It's pretty widespread.

Farmers

Back in 1980 we rebuilt our barn due to fire and were approached by the utility company to put in a Methane recapture unit, of which the utility will manage it for the first 10 years and after which will be turned back over to us. Due to circumstances, we had turned it down.

Electricity is then generated from the methane and then sold back to the utility.

And looking at the dates of these reports, it has rooted

Methane recapture

Fortunately there are a lot of landfills (garbage dumps) available to be utilized as methane sources. Not all are suitable though. Unfortunately it is somewhat expensive to set them up to recover the methane. The recovery wells don't have to be any deeper than the bottom of the landfill but there has to be many of them if it is to be efficient. Since the pressure of the resultant methane is very low or in the range of having to be pumped out, the methane is of a low concentration vs. air and other gases such as H₂S. If there is a suitable use for low concentration methane it is more economical. If concentrators are necessary to boost the methane content in air it becomes more expensive to produce but also becomes a higher price material.

Some of the recovered methane is used for heating, manufacturing, power generation and providing processing heat to sewage plants among others.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/15/nyregion/from-garbage-to-energy-at-fresh-kills.html

http://www.nycgovparks.org/park-features/freshkills-park/about-the-site

Sorry about the name error in my last posting. It is Freshkills and not Great Kills.

I have never been there but have driven by and it looks impressive.

Good Luck, Old Salt

Interesting idea, but, our septic tank does not only produces CH4 methane, the real problem is it also incorporate HS on it. As per residential use and purposes, we have no means separating HS(anaerobic decomposition) and CH4. -- the process might not be cost effective- the device (separator) or in refinery, distillation or cracking device might be expensive

I previously watch a tv documentary on a pig farm, the owner recover the gas from the septic and use it for their house hold, it was a savings though but all metals in their house had a significant corrosion. This is what you will get burning also sulfur on the stove. Sulfur oxides becomes sulfuric acid once in contact with moisture in the air.

If there be a chemical engineering or mechanical engineering students here, a Hydrogen Sulfide separator is good undergrad thesis and for masters too.

That would be a profitable invention.

Collection over digester's here at waste treatment plant. Not sure what the real reason it was done. Was to provide profits or to reduce the environmental odors produced in the area.

Many times, these projects are more 'touchy-feely' rather than efficient or practical.

The gas typically has a low BTU content and the volume isn't that great.

A company I used to work for was involved in resolving problems at a waste treatment plant in Albuquerque that was trying to run lean-burn reciprocating engines on sewer gas. They had a lot of down time, and spent far more on cylinder heads than they would have spent on purchasing fuel--but it looked good to the environmentalists. It turned out that one of the biggest culprits was actually chemicals in shaving cream residue.

I don't know if they ever got it resolved, but they were spending taxpayers money so it just had to look good. If it were in the private sector, it would actually have to make economic sense.

CH4, 1 Carbon 4 Hydrogen is quite low heat content as expected and compared to fossil fuel derivatives, however if it is flowing and available free and less logistic and capital, it could be a convenience.

As an aside, have you seen the videos of the "Methane Torches", in the upper areas of melting perm frost? Punch a hole in the Permafrost, light a match, and instant ignition…Lots of that stuff around…..No lack of energy on our Planet….

I wonder if you have a link to that?

I know they use composting toilets in India quite a lot, and use the methane for cooking in many cases. If there is hydrogen sulfide content, then yes, Kulas there will be corrosion of anything metal nearby, not to mention the lungs of the users of that fuel... in the oil patch, they separate the H2S all the time, but they have large reactors to take care of that. For home use, why not just scrub the gas through a bubbler containing iron and caustic soda or soda ash to collect the sulfides? Once in a while this thing might have to be dumped/disposed of and start over.

Link to Arctic methane burning: WIRED, U.K., 23 May 2012; "Arctic researchers burn off methane plumes"… It seems that the Arctic seafloor and permafrost, together, hold and are releasing potentially tremendous amounts of Methane, called torches… Lots of consternation in the GW crowd about this….

Its called methane hydrate. And if these are melting on the sea bed, the gas it releases can sink ships as he goes over these..

The local CAT dealer does a quick service of big capacity trade ins and then with a coat of (green) paint parks them on top of multiple rubbish dumps. It is quite profitable I believe.

There have been land development attempts in Australia, building housing on clay caps over swamps. The major development in Cranbourne, Victoria in Australia had to be stopped until the trapped methane was flared off. It stinks in Cranbourne

The black oozie acid sulfate soil (ASS) swamps can be harvested for iron sulphates and iron sulphides for rechargeable batteries and low cost PV's. See Berkeley R&D. While not quite the same as harvesting methane, the environmental outcomes could be even better.

I'm a Magrav physicist with Magrav Dynamics in tx. We have a system for capturing The CH4 gas and put it in a solid state, methane is everywhere, and anyone can use it anywhere, then you can mix the solid with water at 2gms / liter and spray it on your lawn And garden. You have no odor, and boost plant growth far better than any other way. Personal units to industrial units are almost completed.

Would you mind actually going into just a little more detail about this Magrav Dynamics? Is this some kind of magic magnet? By solid methane, are you referring to the cryogenic solid form of methane, or are you referring to a solution of methane in another solid (ice)? Please do elaborate.

WWe absorb the CH4 through a saltwater solution we integrate a new nanotechnology on a copper plate and a unpolished chromium coated plate we tie the plates together with a multilayered nanomaterial over copper wire. Add a 100 mamp charge to each plate at the other end of both plates for 30 sec every hour at the end of 48 hrs we remove the collected ch4 clean it to remove the salt and reuse the saltwater residential.

The solid form of all the gas's are collected at ambient temperature in the salt solution, washed and can be used wet or dryer out for storage.

HiTek..

The problem with harvesting methane from bio sources is that methane is always found with CO2 and H2S.

I have worked on several landfill gas projects - both electric generation and synthetic natural gas production types. Some things to note:

- Methane does not come from the landfill gas field under pressure. It must be sucked out by large expensive, high horsepower machines. Air is always drawn in from the landfill gas field. The methane concentration is typically between 40-55%

http://www.dem.ri.gov/programs/benviron/waste/central/lfgfact.pdf

- Removal of the H2S is relatively easy. Removal of the CO2 is expensive......both in terms of CAPEX and OPEX There are compounds called NMOCs that aggressively corrode and clog machinery. Maintenance on these plants can be a nightmare

The best thing to do with all of these low-btu gasses is to feed them to diesel-type generators and generate a very modest amount of electricity.

http://www.catgaspower.com/landfills.aspx

Over 100 of these landfill gas generator plants exist in the USA

Why not use lime to capture the acid gases (at least on a small scale, this seems as a no-brainer)? I understand if you want to take care of all the methane a place like NYC could generate, you would be faced with enormous CAPEX, etc. I did see an article the other day about a new method of capturing CO2, that does not include the use of amine towers, etc. It looks promising, and uses electrochemical redox of copper, and selective complexation to drive off the CO2.

One better than that is the Allam cycle, but it requires an upstream PSA oxygen plant to produce all the pure oxygen needed for the semi-closed SCC Brayton cycle. In this Allam cycle, the leftover water vapor and CO2 are cooled off enough to condense the water, and re-compress most of the CO2 for the repeated use in the cycle, however, the carbon content of the fuel (methane) is shipped out on what is essentially a food-grade CO2 pipeline.

when I have a design for you that you can try in a small area in the field, if you email me. when I have it done I will send it to you

TThe unit for land fills is what I'm going g to try and get together in a design for underground use just because its a good idea

We use nanomaterial with a nickel or zink plate to collect Co2

Salt water will absorb CO2,but I do not know how much.

Stealth diesel submarines use salt water to scrub the exhaust of CO2.

They run their engines underwater using a mix of Argon and Oxygen.

The Argon is recovered using the scrubbing method mentioned.

They only have to carry enough oxygen for combustion,the Argon is recycled.

Anyway,back to CO2 removal:I am sure there are many ways of separating out the

CO2,but ice-cold salt water sounds pretty cheap to me.

I'm familiar with the co2 capture because it's what we do also usI

The copper plate method is what we use to capture the Co2 in conjunction with another metal the copper plate in conjunction with another type of metal will capture the ch4,we also do CH3. H2S.among other gasses and place them in a dryable state, the uses are wide spread from agricultural to space applications. It's proven to be the cheapest way to capture, use and store. And they are Captured at ambient temperature.

Is this based on a chemical reaction? Physical adsorption or absorption? Please explain with complete chemistry expected. Something does not appear to be "adding up" about this... How much capacity of methane (CH₄) are you able to "capture" and "release"? Please use units of lbs. methane per sq. ft. area of plates, or Kg/m² of the plates. How big are these plates?

IIt is a method of capturing the gas's from the environment that it's in. It doesn't have to be plates, it can be a tube or rod tho the thinner the copper plate used that the nano material is integrated onto the better the surface area and quality of plates determines the amount of increased production however if a few mv of voltage is induced for very short intervals the amount of surface area can be reduced the external power source for the system is also made with a superconducting nanomaterial so you never have to have a battery or any other source the superconducting material will last about 20 years. The collection method both a galvanic and enviromental gravitational field manipulation.

I'm not sure if this can be considered of topic, but it is a discussion of how to collect environmental gas's. If others would like I can make a discussion on this. Just let me know.

I am offering you the extended courtesy of referencing any publish scientific papers on this, patents, patent applications, technology concept papers, or other suitable documentation.

Anti-gravity?? Really? Don't you mean application of a force (magnetic or electric field) counter to the gravitational vector?

You claim to have room temperature super-conducting nanomaterial? I would suspect you would have already received the Nobel Prize for such an accomplishment if achieved. Have proof?

Please provide a link to the paper.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429203/room-temperature-superconductivity-found-in-graphite-grains/

If magrev is talking about this, the effect exists only after soaking in water, then baking at 100 C, and exists apparently only at the intergranular boundaries?

Look up vapor method of creating nano material

I think that has no balls!