By Dave Harcourt •
September 20, 2009
Dairy farm anaerobic lagoons without covers
The first large scale biogas plant linked to a beef feedlot, could make a more significant contribution to renewable energy in South Africa than the planned 3.8 MW of electricity, by advancing the technology in South Africa.
The Business
Independent power producer (IPP) Lesedi Biogas Project (LBP) is planning to build one of the world’s largest open-air feedlot manure-to-power plants, in Heidelberg, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Such plants use the anaerobic fermentation (bacterial fermentation of organic waste, with little or no oxygen present) to produce a methane rich gas which can be used to produce electricity or burn for heat.
The plant will be situated at the Karan Beef feedlot, which will supply the manure from its feedlot to the LBP. This would initially amount to 110,000 tons per year of manure, which would allow the production of 3,8 MW of base-load power reaching 6,2 MW of peak power.
By Steve Savage •
July 28, 2009
My earlier blog about greenhouse gas emissions from composting generated a lot of good discussion so I am writing to respond.
- Yes, composting is certainly better than some outcomes like food scraps going into a garbage dump which does not do anything to capture the methane
- Yes, an anaerobic digester would be a very good thing to use for most waste streams. A recent example
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By Steve Savage •
July 27, 2009
Composting is a really green thing to do, right? I’ve always thought so since my Grandfather taught me to do it in the early sixties. Large-scale composting is getting to be quite the rage. The City of San Francisco attracted a great deal of attention with it’s mandatory food scrap recycling program and lots of local wineries are bragging about their use of that compost to fertilize their vineyards.
I just read today about how the Langley Parish Council in England is setting up a village compost and “set an example to small villages as the UK strives to battle climate change.” Unfortunately, I recently learned that they and San Francisco and the Napa wineries might actually be doing is contributing to climate change.
Climate change science often ends up challenging things we think we know.
Inconvenience
The idea of composting is to provide plenty of moisture and oxygen so that microbes will digest the easily available organic matter and generate a great deal of metabolic heat in the process. What is left at the end is a sterilized source of more resistant organic matter that can enrich a soil.
Composting
of wastes is done with very good intentions, but there is the inconvenient truth that even a very well run large-scale compost operation emits some methane.
But if you stop to think about it, as much as you intend to have oxygen available to the whole pile (aerobic conditions), there are definitely going to be micro-sites that are going to lack oxygen (anaerobic conditions) particularly when there is huge oxygen demand during the peak of the process. That is where methane gets made.
Soil is one of a gardener’s most important resources, and preserving its health and vitality one of our most crucial responsibilities. Nourish the soil sustainably and you’ll be rewarded with healthier plants and bountiful harvests for years to come.
I was reading National Geographic the other day, and came across an article on soil called “Our Good Earth.” The article discusses the problems facing soils all over the planet, and made me realize just how precious healthy soil really is. We’re losing topsoil rapidly as we consume more and more land to house and feed the ballooning human population. It can take nature over a thousand years to produce just one inch of soil, but erosion, compaction, and contamination can wipe it away much faster. This precious resource, the means to sustain and feed us and the entire planet, is often just treated like dirt. It’s time that changed. And it can start in your very own backyard.
By Tina Casey •
March 7, 2009
When it comes to methane gas emissions and the impact on global warming, one’s thoughts naturally turn to the barrage of untreated manure unleashed by factory farms. Methane is also an issue for small farms, especially the growing number of start-ups with little spare cash to invest in equipment. To the rescue: a new breakthrough in biogas treatment that promises to pour some much needed cold water on methane emissions from factory farms, while giving the small-farm sector a chance to have their cake and eat it, too.
By Amy Bell •
February 11, 2009
Gooey melted cheese on pizza, a glass of cold milk with freshly baked cookies, ice cream on a hot summer day… who hasn’t at one time or another enjoyed something made from milk?
Dairy products are part of most American diets on a daily basis, but what is the health and environmental impact of this high demand for milk?
The production of much of the milk in this country is done in large scale-operations, some having thousands of cows.
That’s a lot of manure to be dealt with, this reduces the air quality (especially for people living near the dairy operation), and consistently finds its way into our rivers, streams, and groundwater.
By Dave Harcourt •
February 8, 2009
The biogas process, which produces fuel from animal and human waste, is prompting many supposedly amusing posts that could have a negative effect. Googling “biogas and poop” gives 12 800 hits including The Power of Poop, California Cow Poop Power and Turning Cow Poop into Car Power. This is counter productive as it distracts from the potential that biogas holds for both developing and developed countries.
Besides the comical slant of the titles, it is surprising that biogas is often presented as something amazing & unknown although it has been around for hundreds of years, is used in tens of millions of rural household and is a significant contributor to Europe’s renewable energy production.
Biogas - Amazing Natural Technology
The fermentation of organic material such as biomass, manure, sewage, farm waste, municipal waste, green waste and energy crops in the absence of air produces biogas. The same anaerobic fermentation produces swamp, marsh and landfill methane.
By Alex Felsinger •
November 20, 2008
By Becky Striepe •
October 28, 2008
[image credit: Jelle at Flickr under a Creative Commons license]
Researchers at Michigan State University are working on technology that could help small farms transform animal waste from pollutant to fuel. Through funding from both public and anonymous, private sources, MSU is planning an Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center. The Center will test methods for efficiently using bacteria to turn animal waste into biogas, which farms can in turn use in place of fossil fuels for things like electricity and heat. The aim is to make this an affordable option for small- to mid-sized farms. This technology simultaneously addresses two issues that farmers face: farm waste management and increased energy prices.
By Alex Felsinger •
September 24, 2008
A Government Accountability Office report explains that one facility can produce up to 1.6 million tons of manure each year, which causes 1.5 times more pollution to water and air than a city like Philadelphia.
By Simran Sethi •
September 4, 2008
Sarah Smarsh and Simran Sethi are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things. They will be posting previews on Green Options before launching the posts on Huffington Post Here’s a peek at pork.
It’s lunchtime, baby. Panda Garden. Porky goodness. Mooshu style.
The “other white meat” in your takeout container falls behind beef and chicken in American consumption, but we do pig out on pig—on average, each of us consumes 51 pounds of Wilbur annually. That translates to big impact on our water and air.
Due to the high variety of bacteria, worms and other undesirables in pig flesh, and because of the quick-spread disease potential of crowded pig farms, heavy doses of antibiotics are administered routinely. Those same drugs end up in your body via waste streaming into our water supply, and via that Mooshu pork to go. Other side dishes you might not have ordered include growth hormones to encourage meat-heavy livestock and vaccines injected to avoid profit-damaging disease.
