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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2016 0:32:16 GMT
Canada is building a poo to fuel factory. There's more urls to related stuff and more info on that page. They are using heat and pressure, not pre-drying the municipal sewage flow. Bad part is they estimate the equivalent fuel as 2 to 3 gallons of biocrude, or about 1.4 gallons of gasoline, per person per year. That's 0.0269 gallons per week, or 0.43 cups per week, or 3.45 ounces, of refined gasoline. I cannot help but think the conversion and processing will take way more energy than the resulting output. I am interested in the plant providing operating real numbers. This low conversion rate is why i (personally) have low hopes for the methane convertors too. However, i also know the process is different enough that i am open to proof of it happening once someone builds a functioning single-person or single-family poo-to-methane system. I do not know how Canada is justifying the facility, unless it's just as "we need to build a sewage treatment plant anyhow", but that excuse won't float on a limited-resource seastead. I think it's worth considering if the seastead can capture other energy sources such as sun (heat) and waves (mechanical actions), and power the poo-to-whatever process that way.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2016 0:39:28 GMT
Well, forking OOPS :
It's a prototype outside the labratory, in an existing sewage treatment plant. Complete funding has not been found. It's subject to being canceled at any time. It's vaporware. I'm peeved.
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Post by jeff on Dec 22, 2016 1:31:35 GMT
Methane from one person, or a small family, plus food waste could contribute up to about 20% of a typical 3rd world cooking fuel requirement, using a Mesophylic (basically comfortable room temp.) Using half of that gas to warm the digester to Thermophylic temps (mammalian body temp.), can double the original 20%, so adds up to 30% of a 3rd world cooking needs.
For my own setup, I expect to have a gas camp-range, electric hotplate, and a microwave.
Perhaps that's not good enough gas, for most, but on the other hand, we don't typically eat the multiple-course meals, around our house.
Using the gas in other ways may make more sense, for others. Perhaps operating a gas refrigerator would make more sense, to some.
The main thing is to treat the wastes, and recover it as fertilizer, with a bonus fuel resource.
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Post by thebastidge on Dec 30, 2016 18:47:39 GMT
This low conversion rate is why i (personally) have low hopes for the methane convertors too. However, i also know the process is different enough that i am open to proof of it happening once someone builds a functioning single-person or single-family poo-to-methane system. It's not a matter of if or when. It has already been done, many thousands of times, and is working on a small farm scale all over the world. It's not theory. The problems crop up when trying to scale it up to municipal levels and beyond. Mostly because of transport costs. When the Hooley digester was put into place, bureaucracy seems to have been a major problem. Between the local PUD not accepting the power generated by it (an arbitrary decision) and the lack of securing actual contracts to provide inputs from the geographically closest farms, they failed to think like a commercial operation, and behaved like a stupid government agency. Also, they think in terms of commoditizing it and scaling huge: 400MW. All the articles about the Hooley digester talk about digesters being too expensive for individual farms to build and maintain- which is incorrect. It's a sound bite that reporters endlessly echo. The electricity generation equipment is too expensive. The digester itself is not expensive at all. If they burn the methane fuel locally, without trying to purify it enough to make transport and gas-fired electricity generators feasible, it reduces the local energy import needs drastically and costs very little. www.potb.org/hooley-digester/www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/in-tillamook-turning-more-cow-poop-into-power/www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/919005blogs.extension.org/andig1/files/2012/12/CS_HoolyDigester.pdfClosing it down: www.tillamookcountypioneer.net/port-of-tillamook-bay-officials-to-shut-down-financially-draining-digester-in-two-months/and what is replacing it: www.farmpower.com/(Note that it is a private entity rather than a public one like the port)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2016 19:04:36 GMT
It's not a matter of if or when. It has already been done, many thousands of times, and is working on a small farm scale all over the world. It's not theory. The problems crop up when trying to scale it up to municipal levels and beyond. Mostly because of transport costs. Ummm, i was talking about scaling it down to single person or single family size, with no farm animals or pets. The simple lack of volume of solids may make it uneconomical, for the investment in machinery (and ongoing energy needs) vs the methane given off.
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Post by thebastidge on Dec 30, 2016 19:24:22 GMT
Almost *nothing* scales down to single person size. That's the biggest reason why most people don't live alone. But in a land based environment, it's very easy to get enough extra feedstock to make a significant amount of methane, even without large farm animals. The average yard debris will do it. It's still a far better solution than gathering firewood.
In a seastead environment, the difference for one person or a small family to do it would be a specific effort to procure the feedstocks vs needing a sink for them.
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Post by jeff on Dec 30, 2016 19:51:36 GMT
I know a professor that has used a personal-scale digester (5-gallon bucket, using his own, personal excrement and 1 cup of ground-up leftover food, daily) and followed it with an aerobics tank (2nd 5 gal bucket with an aquarium pump/air-stone), to produce methane. NOT that is makes mass quantities of biogas, but that it works. IF he used 1/2 the biogas to keep the tank at Thermophilic temps., it would probably double the gas output, and do even better, but, since it's HIS poo, he KNOWS it has no parasites, so he hasn't bothered with any further testing. The final effluent , he says, has an earthy/compost scent.
Since he travels a LOT (I believe he's currently in Israel), it's been an intermittent-use project.
Personally, I am trying to work-up a small household digester to do just that, for the bus. The hard part is going to be incorporating a flush-toilet and solids separator, as well as a method to mix and breakdown the clumps of solids, but I even have an idea on that.
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