Environmental Power Corporation Unveils New Anaerobic Digester Technology

[jpak]

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=7987

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Environmental Power Corporation (AMEX:EPG), in collaboration with Dairyland Power Cooperative, is formally commissioning the first of its electricity generating anaerobic digester systems. A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held on June 22, at the Five Star Dairy in Elk Mound, WI, to commemorate this. The ceremony will feature a facility tour and brief remarks by William Berg, president and chief executive officer of Dairyland Power Cooperative, Frank Frassetto, Wisconsin state director for USDA Rural Development, Joseph Cresci, chairman of Environmental Power Corporation, and Agricultural Minister Counselor Steen Thorsted of the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington, DC.

This facility has been designed and constructed by Microgy, Inc., Environmental Power's principal operating subsidiary. The facility is believed by Microgy to produce substantially more electricity from a given quantity of animal and organic wastes than any other anaerobic digester system built for commercial purposes in the United States. The facility is the first installed in the United States utilizing a proven Danish technology licensed exclusively to Microgy for deployment in North America. The system is projected to generate approximately 6.5 million kilowatt hours annually from the waste of about 800 milk cows, an output that is sufficient to supply approximately 600 homes.

Joseph Cresci stated "The commissioning of this system is the first step toward what we believe will be an important role for this superior technology in helping our country cost-effectively meet its growing energy demands while protecting the environment."

In addition to producing renewable energy, anaerobic digesters are recognized as a solution to environmental and regulatory compliance issues related to animal waste disposal. Microgy's system can help farmers reduce ground and surface water pollution and minimize odors while freeing land for increased herd sizes, which is expected to help lower farm operation and maintenance costs. Anaerobic digesters also produce residual byproducts, including compost, bedding materials and pollution management credits that can serve as additional sources of revenue.

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[Massacure]

1. There are 120 million cattle in the United States

So you burned all that cow shit you could provide the United States with 3.329% of its electricity needs.

Or we could always drop a nuke on Arizona to make a huge crater and fill it with salt water from the ocean. Then we dump the cow shit in there and grow algae for biodiesel. A 200 x 200 mile pond would replace all of our crude oil.

[Speck Tater]

3. Uh, the digester does not burn cow shit. (nt)

[Massacure]

4. Well digester's turn cow shit into cow farts, then you burn the cow farts.

Is that a better representation?

[jpak]

5. 120 million cows could supply electricity to 90 million US homes

That's 75% of all US homes.

Anaerobic digestion of sewage produced by the 281 million humans residing in the US could provide the rest.

and that's not counting electricity produced from land-fill methane...

[Name removed]

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[NNadir]

7. Lets do (gasp) some math.

We fully recognize from countless examples that you cannot get into the Greenpeace School of Magical Thermodynamics if you can multiply, add and subtract, but let's pretend for a moment that a graduate of this august school of magical thinking could do these things. Let's calculate how reasonable the claim that the shit from 120 million cows, ignoring for a moment that most all of the cows (beaucoup barrels) are dependent on petroleum for their existence.

According to this link, 127 million cows in Canada produce 137 teragrams (137 million metric tons) of cow manure each year, releasing almost one million tons of methane into the atmosphere in the process: http://res2.agr.gc.ca/publications/ha/2d1c_e.htm (But we will ignore the environmental cost of producing cow shit, because anything proposed by a Greenhouse, whoops I mean Greenpeace, twit is to be assumed to be without environmental cost on the grounds that a Greenpeace twit has proposed it.)

Let's be generous for the benefit of the stupid and suppose that only 70% of the mass of cow shit is water. This means that 30% is biomass, or doing the (gasp) multiplication 0.3*137,000,000 MT = 41,000,000 MT tons of dried cow shit biomass produced annually. Let us also assume, again in complete defiance of reality (because the grasp of solar only Greenpeace twits on reality is so tenuous) that a lump of cow shit magically is processed so that none of the energy is lost in processing (in other words, at 100% efficiency.) Finally, let us assume that dried cow shit has the same energy density as coal, roughly 30,000 kilojoules/kg. It is easy to calculate the energy in the cow shit in the magical case where it is equivalent to coal in energy content: It is 30,000,000*41,000,000,000 kg = 1.23 X 10^18 joules, or 1.23 exajoules.

If the average American home consumes 30 kilowatt hours of electricity a day, and there are 125,000,000 such homes in the US. We have 125,000,000 * 30,000 watts-hours/day * 3600 seconds/hour * 365.24 days/year = 4.93 X 10^18 or 4.93 exajoules per year, electric.

The efficiency of most thermodynamic heat engines, including those that burn cow shit for the magical thinkers in the remedial thermodynamics drinking class at Greenpeace, is roughly 30%. This means that the energy requirement for producing 4.81 exajoules of electrical energy (delivered) is 4.93/0.3 = 16.4 exajoules.

This means that the output of cow shit from 127 million (Canadian) cows is sufficient to provide (again in the magical case where the energy content of cow shit is the same as that of coal) 1.23 X 10^18/16.4 X 10^18*100 = 7.5% of the energy required to produce the yearly electrical energy requirement for 125,000,000 homes.

As for the absurd claim that human feces can make up the missing percentage, I suggest that someone contemplate the volume of shit in one's own toilet bowl and compare it to the volume of a gallon of gasoline. Then contemplate that shit is mostly water.

Here's a problem though: The magical little machine referenced in this thread does not operate at 100% efficiency. Here's another little tiny insignificant problem: It costs energy to collect, transport and process 127,000,000 metric tons of cow shit. Then there is the matter of the fact that cowshit doesn't really contain 30,000 kJ/kg of energy content. Then there's the matter of collecting and transporting the grain used to feed the cow. Then there's the matter of the energy cost of purifying the water polluted in the digestor...

It goes on and on...

Now we know if you belong to Greenpeace, you are required to have contempt for the poor, and so it fine, I suppose, to imagine thousands of third world vilified central American immigrants shoveling cow shit into trucks in order to fuel the magical middle class homes inhabited by magical Greenpeace twits. We will also assume that the cows continually are forced to reside in filthy cruel feeding lots where they are fed petroleum produced grain, so that our central American workers will not have to wander the range while they collect the cow shit from grass fed cows. Believe it or not, the shovelers require food to operate, and they require food to drag their asses to little anaerobic digesters while they slave in the fields collecting cow shit for twit Americans. Now what is required to transport the cow shit to the magic anaerobic cow shit machine? Fuel? And what goes into the digester as a matrix? Water. And where does water come from? Well, in the Greenpeace magic world, it all rains from the sky whenever we need it, but in the real world, at least where most of our cows grow, it is pumped, sometimes from fossil water sources like the Ogalla aquifer (which is being depleted to make cows) expending energy.

Nobody is saying that possible supplies energy provided by processing cow shit should be discarded. As a person who doesn't eat cows in part on the grounds that I am an environmentalist, I certainly would love to have some of the enormous environmental cost of the cattle industry diverted to ameliorate whatever tiny fraction of the global warming crisis that it can relieve in reality, just as I would approve of technologies to raise the efficiency of the retarded Repuke Governor of California's Hummer. This doesn't mean, however, that I think more efficient Hummers are the answer to the crisis occurring now.

Further I do understand that you cannot get into Greenpeace Hogwarts School of Magical Thinking if you can do arithmetic or understand basic science. But let's get real folks. We are in a crisis. Burying our faces in a pile of cow shit and pretending that this is a solution to the very real problem of global climate change is pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. The fucking amount of methane released by cow shit alone (methane being an extremely potent greenhouse gas) should disabuse one immediately of the desirability of this program. If you buy this shit (literally) you will get what you deserve: Poverty and the destruction of the future.

This claim about shit is shit. Pathetic, even for shit, but shit all the same.

[midnight armadillo]

8. Cow shit should be composted anyway

Such power plants could be used to produce electricity for the dairy farm itself, and perhaps a few neighboring homes - forget massive scale implementations of it. Ever buy Diamond brand walnuts? They run their processing plant with their own power plant that burns walnut shells. Industries that can produce their own electricity and heat from their own wastes should be encouraged.

Cow shit in any case is very valuable as a fertilizer and composting material, and producing electricity from it is probably not the best thing to do with it in any case. Too much nat gas is wasted on fertilizer production...

I agree 100% that magical thinking buys us nothing but idiocy :-)

[XemaSab]

10. Pacific Lumber

(the Great Satan killers of old growth redwoods) has a cogeneration plant, and they use their wood waste to produce electricity for their plant. They're net producers of electricity.

[jpak]

9. LOL!!!!!!

The subject of this thread is the anaerobic digestion of cow manure to produce methane which is subsequently used to generate electricity.

The biogas system described does NOT burn manure directly.

All the (erroneous) calculations presented in the previous post are therefore irrelevant.

According to Environmental Power Corporation (the company that designed and built the biogas system), manure from 800 milk cows would supply the electrical needs of 600 average US homes (please read the original post of this thread).

Using that proportion (600 homes / 800 cows), manure from 120 million US cows could provide electricity to 90 million US homes.

According to the US Census, there are 120 million households in the US.

90 million homes = 75% of all current US households.

BTW: Combined-cycle electrical power generators have a thermodynamic efficiencies of >45% - quite a bit higher than 30% - and if the "waste" heat generated was used to provide domestic heat and hot water their "efficiency" would be much much higher (60-80%).

Anaerobic digestion of human sewage and livestock waste to produce methane for power production could provide a substantial portion of US electrical demand.

Furthermore, distributed biogas power plants could be used to manage electrical grids that utilize large-scale wind and PV systems (i.e., biogas could be stored and used to produce power when the "sun don't shine" and the "wind don't blow".

Biogas systems would provide additional revenue to small farms, co-ops and municipalities, recycle manure and sewage into fertilizers that have reduced environmental impacts, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide homegrown power for local communities.

Who could be against that????

[Name removed]

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[NNadir]

13. Typical of most breathless accounts of tiny insignificant plants.

I am loathe to point out that this "could be...would...might...may" plant is tiny.

As usual, the power rating is stated in misleading terms by the breathless article. We hear that "The system is projected to generate approximately 6.5 million kilowatt hours..."

Now lets leave aside the marketing blurb from the company providing this magical technology, the "is projected." (In other words lets leave aside that the plant has no history, only promises made by its owners.) Let's look at the power output. How much exactly is 6.5 million kilowatt hours? Well, it is 6.5 billion watt hours, which when multiplied by 3600 seconds/hour gives 23 trillion joules.

There are 31,556,736 seconds in a sidereal year, meaning that the power output if the plant actually operates "as projected" (probably not a safe bet), that the power output of the plant is 2.3X10^13/31,556,736 = 742,000 watts or 742 kilowatts or 0.742 Megawatts, rounded to three digits.

A typical nuclear reactor puts out 1000 MWe. This means that we would need 1,350 of these horse shit, I mean, cow shit plants to equal just one nuclear reactor. We would therefore need 135,000 of these horse shit plants just to provide the same power as US nuclear plants of which about 100 have been operating for decades. Since nuclear energy provides only 20% of US electrical energy, we would need 675,000 horse shit, I mean cow shit, plants of this size to provide the US electrical supply.

Before we start cheering how horse shit, I mean cow shit, has solved the problem of global warming, maybe the breathless solar only cheer leading squad can point out where the other 674,999 horse shit plants have been planned, sited, financed and where they are under construction or already exist. Anyone know where the water for these plants is coming from? Does anyone know or care what will become of that water when it is discharged from the plant? I am sure that every American community is just dying to have cow shit plants, no risk of NIMBY here, eh?

Or do we just have "could, would, might, may?" Is that how we solve the tragic circumstances we now face, the destruction of our atmosphere, the poisoning of our children with heavy metals and ash? We just inform people of what we "could" do, waving our hands like a bunch of polluted drunks?

How unethical! If I proposed such horse shit, I would not be able to look my children in the eye. It is their future which magical thinking will kill.

[suneel112]

14. Remember though...

...Cow shit has no where near as much energy as Bullshit :D
And the best energy source in the whole world is Republican Bullshit :rofl:

[brokensymmetry]

22. Thank you!

Those are some nice calculations. I appreciate your efforts.

[NickB79]

12. Will there be 120 million cows in the US 15-20 yrs from now?

If either Peak Oil or global warming hits us hard over the next few decades, I doubt farmers will be raising anywhere near that number of cattle. For that matter, I doubt we will be raising much livestock of any sort, be they cattle, hogs, chickens, etc. The number of cattle in the US is far above their natural carrying capacity compared to if they were raised primariy on grazing land. Even the cattle currently grazed on public lands in the West are over their carrying capacity there and are damaging the land and streams.

Use of highly nutritious grains allows us to raise far more cattle per acre of land than through grazing, but if there are disruptions in the ability to grow that grain (such as Peak Oil reducing the amount of diesel fuel and fertilizers available to farmers, or global warming altering weather patterns over the Great Plains), we cannot raise as many cattle. We would have to devote our remaining grain-growing capacity to human consumption, not livestock. You then run into the problem of burning valuable diesel fuel to transport the cow manure to the processing plants (I doubt it would be very efficient to build a mini-generator on each and every dairy farm throughout the US).

It's a fair bet that the average American will not be consuming nearly as much meat or dairy per capita 20 yrs from now as we consume today.

[Coastie for Truth]

2. Interesting technology.

Prof.Claire Kommives in San Jose States has a neat 1 hour seminar on this technology.

[jpak]

15. There are ~100,000 dairy farms in the US

that could support biogas plants.

Using EPC's technology, the nation's dairy farms *alone* could provide power to ~6.75 million US homes (equivalent to ~7 nuclear power plants).

There are ~60 million hogs in the US, most of them (>75%) at large (5000+ hog) factory farms. Anaerobic digestion of hog manure could provide power to another ~7.5 million US homes (equivalent to another ~7 nuclear power plants).

This doesn't include the potential power from cattle feedlot or slaughterhouse wastes...

Anaeobic digestion of the sewage generated by 281 million Americans could generate power for more than 4 million US homes (equivalent to 4 nuclear power plants).

Distributed biogas generator systems could also be used to provide co-generated domestic/process heat and/or hot water as well.

Anaerobic digestion of livestock waste and domestic sewage would solve several environmental problems.

Most municipal sewage treatment plants employ aerobic digestion of raw sewage. These processes produce enormous quantities of sludge that must disposed of (usually by distribution on agricultural/grazing lands), and consume substantial quantities of electricity (for aeration pumps). As anaerobic digesters yield ~10 times less bio-solids than aerobic treatment plants, these systems would significantly reduce the amount of treated sludge towns and cities would have (to pay) to dispose of...

..and they would generate electricity to run these sewage treatment plants and provide power to the grid. The savings to local communities would be substantial.

Large livestock operations produce enormous quantities of manure, most of which is temporally held in retention ponds. As these ponds are partially anaerobic, they emit methane to the atmosphere. These ponds also produce serious odor problems. Anaerobic digestion of manure slurries coupled with secondary aerobic treatment would eliminate methane and odor emissions. In addition, anaerobic digestion would significantly reduce the quantity of bio-solids produced and still provide fertilizer for local farm operations....

...and generate electricity for use on the farm or sale to the grid.

Nuclear power could not solve any of these problems.

One also forgets that nuclear power plants use enormous quantities of water, and that nuclear plant cooling towers employ hypochlorite (i.e., Chlorox) or the banned antifoulant TBT. They alter the chemical and thermal environment of local waters. They are neither "water wise" nor "water friendly".

Nuclear power plants also produce very expensive waste.

The current price tag for Yucca Mountain is $60 billion and climbing.

Nuclear utilities are currently suing the DOE (taxpayers) for an additional $56 billion as the DOE has not disposed of the spent fuel that they produced and they made a profit with...

The total bill for spent fuel disposal is currently ~$100 billion and rising. As the Nuclear Waste Fund is expected to provide only ~$30 billion to this kitty, taxpayers will be liable for ~$70+ billion.

What a scam it is...

[NNadir]

16. Really, so called nuclear waste is expensive? Let's do math...

Let us assume, like we assume all kinds of stupid stuff on this website, that it really will cost $100 billion dollars to deal with so called "nuclear waste."

All of the so called "nuclear waste" has accumulated over 40 years. Of course, the cost of disposal has been driven up by stupid drivel from people who don't understand the first thing about nuclear energy, by people who can't - when you ask them - produce a single person anywhere who has ever been actually injured by the storage of nuclear waste.

US nuclear capacity has been running at 600 billion kilowatt hours annually for about 15 years. 600 billion kilowatt hours is equal to 2.1 X 10^18 (2.1 exajoules) per year. Counting only the time since nuclear power production leveled off, we thus have that US nuclear reactors produced 3.2 X 10^19 joules of energy (32 exajoules) since 1990 alone.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html

One gallon of gasoline has about 121 MJ (121 X 10^J) of energy. Thus the energy produced by nuclear power plants is the equivalent of 268 billion gallons of gasoline. This represents a $0.37/gallon surcharge on the cost of nuclear power, if the same power were produced by burning gasoline.

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

However, the power rating for the nuclear power plants is delivered power, not the energy required for production. Since gasoline engines run at about 30% (ignoring the stupid comments were going to hear about combined cycles "could be, might be, may be, etc), the actual cost of so called "nuclear waste," FULLY LOADED, meaning the cost of the fuel, the waste, etc, etc still comes in at less than the equivalent of $0.15/gallon.

We will of course, as usual, ignore the costs of global climate change, the big elephant that anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists sweep under the rug with some dumb statement about how the cost of PV power is coming down from extraordinarily prohibitive to merely very prohibitive.

Now, this may sound prohibitive to someone who can't add and subtract, but to thinking people, this is a bargain:

Note that there is no known method to dispose of the wastes generated by gasoline, the most important of which is carbon dioxide, for any amount of money. None (that would be zero) of the health costs of air pollution is paid by the people who cause it (that would be people who burn gasoline and promote coal).

I note in passing that while the stupid sit around and whine insipidly about so called "nuclear waste," 200 billion dollars has been spent at the rate of 100 billion dollars a year filling our syringes with oil in Iraq, at the cost of 10's of thousands of human lives. And we haven't even got to Nigeria, never mind the tens of thousands of acres of land that have been permanently destroyed by events like those as Prince Edward Sound, off the coast of France, Santa Barbara, not to mention what has happened in Ecuador, and Venezuela, not to mention our atmosphere.

Now maybe the equivalent of 0.40/gallon is too much to pay for absolutely clean air for uneducated mathematically illiterate Greenpeace twits who belong to the middle class and who are completely indifferent to the rest of humanity, but to most people, it would be a bargain.

Nuclear energy is the only form of energy wherein a solution to waste is feasible, and mind you, Yucca Mountain relies completely on technology that is too primitive for words.

Of course the only way to represent nuclear energy as dangerous, expensive, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum is to pretend that nuclear energy exists in isolation. It doesn't. Fossil fuels are destroying the world right now, and all the stupid hype about 1 megawatt biomass (air polluting and water polluting) power plants will do zero (as in nothing as in zip as in nada) to arrest this tragedy.

Ignorance is the cause of the disaster. Ignorance is the cause of Resistance to nuclear energy.

Once again, when compared to its alternatives, nuclear energy is safer, cleaner and cheaper.

There is a solution, btw, to the disgusting, unethical and unsustainable environmental impact of animal husbandry: It's called vegetarianism. I've never been to one, since I am an environmentalist, but I'll bet they serve hamburgers at Greenpeace meetings, which is why Greenpeace meetings are at best hypocritical nonsense. Let's be clear: Without oil, there aren't going to be very many slaughterhouses, or cruel cow and pig pens. Meat is oil. Every cow is the equivalent of 5,200 gallons of water and 284 gallons of oil. When the Ogallala water reserve, now being pumped at 13 trillion gallons per year to feed the hamburger anti-environmental crowd is depleted, there isn't going to be much cow shit to go around.

http://www.earthsave.org/environment/foodchoices.htm

The cow shit/horse shit fantasy, like all of the (dumb) solutions proposed by anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists is an elaborate shell game. It won't work, which is why it isn't being done already. They may as well go back to telling us about the wonders of solar hydrogen.

[jpak]

17. LOL!!!!

If the cost of disposing spent fuel is "such a bargain", then the nuclear industry should pay for it themselves.

(but we know they won't)

Furthermore, the nuclear industry should pay the full cost of disposing depleted UF6 (from U enrichment plants)....

(but we know they won't)

...and the remaining US enrichment facilities should be RE-privatized and allowed to sink or swim without taxpayer subsidies....

(but we know it won't happen)

...and the nuclear industry - not the taxpayers - should fund the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, and pay the claims of uranium workers that suffered sickness and death as the result of their exposure to radiation and beryllium at US uranium enrichment plants....

(but we know it won't happen)

...and the nuclear industry - not the taxpayers - should pay the full cost of decommissioning US uranium mines...

(but we know they won't do it)

Such a bargain???

I think not.

Finally, if new nuclear power plants were "such a bargain" then US utilities would be building them - but they're not.

Instead, individuals and corporations are building PV arrays, wind farms and biogas plants as these are the only truly sustainable energy alternatives that exist - now or in the future.

[NNadir]

19. Nuclear utilities in the US are not building power stations because

they face stupidity from a very stupid American public. This is the US, which with George W. Bush as President, has to represent one of the most stupid publics on the planet. A coalition of groups, one more stupid than the other and both so stupid that comparisions are almost meaningless, are conspiring to keep the US the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases through the use of coal, oil and natural gas. One group mutters stupidity about "the hydrogen economy," and the other mutters stupidity about PV, cow shit and human fecal matter.

Both groups are out to lunch.

As I point out frequently here, over 20 gigawatts, that's giga, as in billion, of nuclear power under under construction in intelligent countries, 42 gigawatts are on order or planned, and over 58 gigawatts are proposed.

Now, I hear all sorts of cheering and general stupidity whenever a horseshit plant is proposed with an energy rating of a few kilo, as in thousand, watts.


I note that the LOL here is not accompanied by calculations. This is about what I expect. This is because there is no calculation possible to challenge the number, 0.37/gallon gasoline equivalent for the 100 billion dollar figure for the disposal cost of so called "nuclear waste." So the best my opponents can do is to try to shout me down by issuing a bunch of unsupported vague nonsensical generalities.

They must be Republicans.

Who pays by the way the cost of the CO2, carcinogen, CO, NOx cost of the gasoline about which anti-nuclear anti-environmentalists are indifferent? Is that a "bargain," killing people, destroying the atmosphere?

My children's lungs, my children's future, that's who.

There is no technical solution to any of the pollutants caused by gasoline and coal pollution, no matter whether the government or users or some other party pays.

None. All the stupid LOL's in the world cannot change this reality.

[jpak]

20. LOL!!!!

Now I have heard everything.

It is not illegal to build a new nuclear plant anywhere in the US.

Greenpeace twits are NOT preventing US utilities from building them.

High capital and operating costs are the ONLY reasons no nuclear power plants have been ordered by US utilities since 1973.

"A coalition of groups, one more stupid than the other and both so stupid that compassion's are almost meaningless, are conspiring to keep the US the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases through the use of coal, oil and natural gas."

<cue Vonage theme song>

on edit: http://www.vonage.com/commercials.php?refer_id=po7o952pa12t27vp1aoa

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Vogon_Glory]

18. A Useful Technology--Even Leaving Power Generation Aside

I can't help but wonder if this technology could prove useful for reducing water pollution even setting the power-generating possibilities to one side. Dairy farms and cattle feed lots aren't the only potential sources for massive water pollution. There are also massive lagoons of pig manure that could be tapped as feedstock for this process in Arkansas and other areas where they raise hogs. If farmers and also feed-lot operators could be convinced that cleaning up animal waste could actually be profitable, they might actually be inclined to do it. As matters stand now, they're dragging their feet and the Banana Republicans overseeing the regulators certainly aren't going to make them clean up their act.

I like the idea of one problem helping to solve another--lagoons of pig offal helping to power the electric grid. Also, I might be pro-nuclear, but I don't think that "Friendly Mr. Atom" is going to solve all of our power-generating needs.