Biomass plants find power in poop - USA Today article

[JohnWxy]

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2007-02-08-biomass-usat_x.htm

By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
Updated 2/9/2007 4:41 AM ET

Here's the stuff of America's energy future: wood trimmings, cow manure, chicken litter, household trash and landfill gas.

Debris is becoming a hot commodity in some areas as the U.S. power industry seeks to lessen its dependence on fossil fuels amid growing global-warming concerns.

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•Municipal solid waste. The nation's 89 waste-to-energy plants produce enough electricity for 2.3 million homes by burning household trash, most of which is organic. About a dozen new facilities are proposed. With Frederick County, Md., paying $57 a ton to send its trash to out-of-state landfills and power prices soaring, building a waste-to-energy plant would save money in just a few years, says Michael Marschner, county utilities director.

•Landfill gas. About 300 U.S. power plants capture methane spewed by a nearby landfill's decaying organic matter and use it as natural-gas-like fuel. That cuts potential methane pollution. With natural gas prices high, Waste Management is building 10 plants a year at its landfills, 76 of which already have generators.

•Animal waste. Anaerobic digesters are oxygen-deprived tanks that break down cow manure into methane that's sent to power plants or pumped through natural-gas pipelines. Environmental Power (EP) operates digesters at three dairies in Wisconsin and plans four more in Texas and six in California. PG&E is set to buy enough gas from EP to power 50,000 homes.


•Agricultural wastes. Fibrowatt is starting up a Benson, Minn., power plant large enough to serve 60,000 homes. It will burn turkey manure, along with sunflower shells, wood shavings and leftover corn stalks. The company will pay just $2 per ton of manure to state turkey growers. By collecting the manure and related materials daily, Fibrowatt says it's helping turkey growers, who otherwise sell the waste to farmers as fertilizer.

An obvious application of biomass power is for ethanol plants. The agricultural waste can be collected where the corn is harvested. Two companines, Panda Energy and E3 Biofuels are building closed loop ethanol plants which will use anaerobic digesters to convert cattle poop into mehane which replace virtually all of the fossil fuels used to power the plants. (E3 Biofuels Mead Nebraska closed loop plant began operation in Dec of 2006). Fossil fuels used to provide process heat for ethanol production are a significant part of the GHG emisssions of ethanol production. Dramatically reducing fossil fuel inputs to the ethanol production process will very significantly improve the GHG profile of ethanol.

[EVDebs]

1. Not getting enough 'headline' news

Rwanda award for 'sewage' cooking
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4639363.stm

Haiti and Africa along with the US need to get going on this kind of thing !

[Phredicles]

3. Seriously; talk about a renewable resource-

And currently disposal and tratment of same (both from people and livestock) is becoming an enormous problem.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Kind of silly to use methane to produce ethanol

when it can be used directly for fuel as methane, or very easily converted to methanol and used as fuel that way also.

[jaksavage]

4. cow farts for capaccino