Natural Gas from Cow Poop Used to Save the Environment and Help Farmers

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

Every Spring when I was a kid, we used to empty out the winter's supply of dairy cow manure from the barn, and load it into a manure spreader, to be scattered on the fields as fertilizer after the Spring planting.  I can attest that cow manure produces prodigious amounts of methane AKA Natural Gas.

https://www.capjournal.com/news/california-energy-firm-will-turn-s-d-farm-wastes-into/article_2b094182-4eaa-11ea-9a96-8f624da0b245.html

California energy firm will turn South Dakota farm wastes into usable natural gas

A new industry launching in South Dakota will use manure from dairy farms to generate usable natural gas, creating a new income stream for some South Dakota farmers and reducing greenhouse gas emissions along the way.

California-based renewable energy company Brightmark Energy announced plans on Feb. 5 to capture, refine and sell methane gas rising off the decaying manure produced at three dairy farms in Minnehaha County near Sioux Falls. The project could be the first of many renewable natural gas projects built at South Dakota dairy, and hog farms and is being driven by rising demand for cleaner, more sustainable energy, experts say.

The Brightmark Energy project will collect manure from nearly 12,000 dairy cows at the Boadwine, Pioneer and Mooody County dairy farms. The manure will be placed in large, oxygen-free tanks and, essentially, left to rot. One of the byproducts of rotting manure is methane gas, a major component of the natural gas already piped to thousands of South Dakota homes. Brightmark expects to harvest enough of the gas each year to cover the annual average energy needs of more than 2,400 homes, based on average energy consumption as reported by the Energy Information Administration.

“Basically what we’re doing is, we’re taking the manure and putting it in a process that is highly efficient and environmentally friendly ... so we can use (methane) for heating, cooking, powering cars, etcetera that otherwise would just end up not being utilized and create a greenhouse gas impact,” said Bob Powell, CEO of Brightmark Energy.  ...

 

[NickW + 2,714]

I read somewhere the yield is about 3 Kwh of methane per cow per day. 

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

I love this sort of thing...  Although, more efficient use of resources = demand destruction 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

This isn't new, is it?  Didn't @Jan van Eck say he had proposed both small and large scale mobile platforms to do the same up in the North East?

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

4 minutes ago, Dan Warnick said:

This isn't new, is it?  Didn't @Jan van Eck say he had proposed both small and large scale mobile platforms to do the same up in the North East?

Not new.  EU does this more than the U.S.

Now if only California would show the same intitiative for recycling human poop deposited on city sidewalks, then that would be a big step forward.

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

11 minutes ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Not new.  EU does this more than the U.S.

Now if only California would show the same intitiative for recycling human poop deposited on city sidewalks, then that would be a big step forward.

Oh my friend, they do have a proposal, don't you know?  Provide million $$ homes for the homeless.  Seems utterly as cost effective as many of their other proposals and a great many of their laws, and it's a solution that will relieve the homeless of their other problems instantly!  It's such a good idea it's almost like magic!

Edited February 15, 2020 by Dan Warnick

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

The more things change, the more they stay the same? 

Years ago, an alchemist looking for a way to make gold or figure out eternal life or something found out that urine, once "putrified" made a compound (phosphorus) that glows and spontaneously combusted in air. Naturally this became all the rage and in short order, people figured out how to make all kinds of fun stuff from piss, including explosives and chemicals for tanning among other uses. It turned out that a person could make some coin by collecting and selling their urine. For exceptionally poor people this might be their only income. Then there were those people so poor, "they didn't have a pot to piss in"

And that, as old Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story. 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

44 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

The more things change, the more they stay the same? 

Years ago, an alchemist looking for a way to make gold or figure out eternal life or something found out that urine, once "putrified" made a compound (phosphorus) that glows and spontaneously combusted in air. Naturally this became all the rage and in short order, people figured out how to make all kinds of fun stuff from piss, including explosives and chemicals for tanning among other uses. It turned out that a person could make some coin by collecting and selling their urine. For exceptionally poor people this might be their only income. Then there were those people so poor, "they didn't have a pot to piss in"

And that, as old Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story. 

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

14 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

I love this sort of thing...  Although, more efficient use of resources = demand destruction 

  As long as it is voluntary due to better options it is great with me.

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

14 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

This isn't new, is it?  Didn't @Jan van Eck say he had proposed both small and large scale mobile platforms to do the same up in the North East?

I advocate biogas nearly every time I talk about natural gas. The main upside is that it has sizzle when talking to greenies. Using manure for crops is just as beneficial. Natural gas already is used for making most of the ammonia nitrate used for fertilizer. 

The residual matter after methane release is still used as fertilizer so that is a benefit, especially if used onsite for people who do not have cooking gas, propane, or biomass to burn. In some areas people still use dried cow patties. Cowboys formerly used them at times. 

Here is my biogas topic.  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N-TLMeHsKYBCirxS0vbqMGHpU2SmyLuCc7bqp8eYXVM/edit

Edited February 16, 2020 by ronwagn

[ronwagn + 6,290]

13 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

Oh my friend, they do have a proposal, don't you know?  Provide million $$ homes for the homeless.  Seems utterly as cost effective as many of their other proposals and a great many of their laws, and it's a solution that will relieve the homeless of their other problems instantly!  It's such a good idea it's almost like magic!

That task would require judges enforcing century old legal and cultural standards of public health and decency. Good luck with that. The law schools are turning out lawyers who are taught the opposite. These are the same types that said holding psychiatric patients in institutions was all bad. There is some truth in that, but they went way too far. 

Solving homelessness would also require new communities built for them away from the cities they are destroying. They would have to be provided with suitable housing, food, work, counseling, supervision, etc. Those who couldn't conform to the regime would have to fare for themselves. Those who succeeded could get a job and graduate to a regular job until self sufficient. 

 

[Zhong Lu + 845]

Wondering if it's time to go long on natural gas.  The sentiment has gotten so negative....  

[ronwagn + 6,290]

14 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Not new.  EU does this more than the U.S.

Now if only California would show the same intitiative for recycling human poop deposited on city sidewalks, then that would be a big step forward.

When I was stationed in Germany we had a vineyard behind the barracks. The locals would fertilize with their " honey bucket" carts which held hundreds of gallons of wet poop. I don't know how much of it was human though. It is fine for plants that grow above ground but in California and elsewhere you often have dairy manure dust blown onto ground crops like spinach or lettuce. Cattle are fed antibiotics and some deadly strains work their way into human food, sometimes sickening many and killing some. 

[Rob Kramer + 696]

@tom are you saying the farm you worked on did that once a year or that's when you personally would be the one doing it? .... I worked on a dairy farm also and cleaned the pens every week. For a better description the main isles had a conveyor so that was where the full grown dairy cows would poop and the pens were for the young cows that stayed indoors . I can still remember when you lift a pile that's not moved all week the hay/pee/ poo stinkbomb that comes out lol... I think it made me a germaphobe. 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

We cleaned the barn once a year in the spring.  The cows would stay in the barn all winter.  Every morning we tossed down 10 or so bales of straw and scattered the straw all over the barn floor, taking care to cover up whatever cow manure piles we could see.

In the Spring, after everything thawed out, the barn would be cleaned out.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Perhaps if we spread this manure in the House of Representative we might be able to grow a single, functioning brain!

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

4 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Perhaps if we spread this manure in the House of Representative we might be able to grow a single, functioning brain!

 

Don't cover up little Jerry!

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

This has primarily been an implement for dairy farms, but we're starting to see feed lots give it a try too. A friend of mine wants to build his own lot at some point (he's 19 right now and works at one until he's got the experience), and he mentioned using a methane digester + pipeline to collect energy from the waste before piping it to fields nearby. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

19 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Wondering if it's time to go long on natural gas.  The sentiment has gotten so negative....  

Well, maybe when you finally recognize that oversupply is a problem you can start making those decisions.