Discovery of Unlimited Inexpensive Natural Gas Substitute

Re: Discovery of Unlimited Inexpensive Natural Gas Substitut

That is so neat: what goes around comes around.

When I was a lad my Grandfather used to tell me tall tales - at least I assumed they were tall tales - of how during WW II he ran his tractor on wood chips, shavings, and even sawdust. Yep, crazy 'ole Gramps.

I only found out much later on, when I was in college, and taking a gander at the museum in the Engineering School, that Gramps was telling the truth. That is, if he really did have a Biomass Gasifier Unit.

Even stranger, such devices were used to generate gas - methane - at least as early as the mid 1800's. Makes you wonder if this ancient technology hasn't been suppressed by the oil companies.

During WW II these gasifiers had extensive use in agriculture as one would expect a ready source of material (Wood chips, sawdust, other organic material) at hand in rural agricultural areas. You can also use coal, charcoal, and other suitable resources.

I picked up a FEMA publication that is essentially a reprint of the WW II manual on how to make a Gasifier, and how to run your tractor or other carburettor gasoline-powered equipment.

The title is "Construction of a Simplified Wood Gas Generator for Fueling Internal Combustion Engines during a Petroleum Emergency." I was able to download it as a pdf, but the file is over 9 MB so you need a high speed connection.

Much more recently, serious attention has been paid to the enormous problem of pollution from swine farms in the United States and Canada. For example, you can drive south of Winnipeg towards the Minnesota border and your nose hair will curl from the swine effluent.

Instead of putting all that swine effluent into lagoons where it will eventually leak out and contaminate potable water supplies - and really stink up the place in the process - it has been proposed that the swine effluent be put into sealed digesters.

The digesters use anaerobic bacteria to break down the effluent, creating huge quantities of methane. The resultant effluent is an odorless sludge which is suitable as fertilizer. A few test farms in PA use the methane to run microturbine generators, which not only meet the high power demand of the farm operation, but the excess is sold back to the utility.

Surprisingly, the large corporate swine farms are resistant to any form of regulation over their massive effluent flow. A swine operation of 6,000 "units" will produce effluent equivalent to a city of 250,000. Of course, they usually locate in sparsely populated areas where they can exert influence over local decision makers.

The neat thing about the two examples above is that we can take what would be considered a "waste" product and turn it into something useful.

 

Oh, that is cool! Like Mr. Fusion, but slightly larger.

I agree, Jay -- the value of "recycling" just seems to come up more and more frequently.

 

actually that is a great idea. basically a septic tank for the piggy's.

when i was working at a corrugated shipping container factory many many years ago, changes in regulations forced us to build a water conditioning plant that conditioned our waste water into environmentally neutral water where 85% could be recycled at the plant. it used an osmoisis-type of system to efficiently remove the largest part of the solid matter quickly. then the slurry was basically dried until it left a solid, relatively odor-free, cake. (the slurry reeked as bad as any sewer)

we went from a huge water bill and dumping this waste into the stream near the plant (it was causing plantlife to choke out the lake that it fed into. we also later found out that the stream was something we created. we ended up using the dump area to create a pinic area for employees to take breaks at. previously it was a swamp area and overrun by bugs and odor) to having a truck come by once every 2-3 weeks to haul away the solid waste. (all the waste was tossed into a standard size dumpster about 6 ft square)

 

What many companies have yet to figure out is that being environmentally friendly actually saves money in the long run. The wastewater treatment plant for Fort Worth has no electricity bill because they generate all of their power needs from the methane produced by their sludge digester.

Sometimes it's even as simple as selling a waste product (such as used oil or paint thinner) for recycling. What was once a waste product that cost money to dispose of now becomes a revenue generator.

I think a large part of our environmental problems comes from our prosperity. If you are done with it, just throw it out and buy a new one. If things were a lot worse for us economically, you can bet that we'd be coming up with all sorts of ways to recycle and reuse for the sake of thriftiness. Just think of how much recycling and reuse went on during the depression. You never threw anything out because you could use it for something else later.