29 October 2010

Anaerobic digestion fuel may run vehicles - Horticulture Week

Pearson revealed at the conference - held last month in Coventry - that the Cheshire-based company, which supplies tomatoes to big retailers like Tesco and Iceland, has already developed the fuel and bought its first vehicle, which it hopes will be up and running by next summer. He said: "We have made the fuel - we are just making sure that it is of a consistent quality."




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Pearson revealed that the family business, which has been growing tomatoes for 40 years, aimed to have its own eco-fuelling point for the vans, whose bio-methane-based fuel means that they will be able to avoid congestion charges.


Biomethane is one of many products of the anaerobic digestion plant that Pearson built at the growing site in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, a couple of years ago.


All of the waste material from the nursery is fed into the digester, helping the company to reduce its annual landfill volumes from 2,500 tonnes before its installation four years ago to 200 tonnes in 2009.


His confidence in the commercial potential of the anaerobic digestion plant has led him to set up another company, Anaerobic Digestion, of which he is managing director. He told growers: "The opportunities are huge but I have to be careful I do not rush out and get too excited about it."


He explained that the company manipulated the anaerobic digestion process to get as many products out of it as possible. It has managed, for example, to make its anaerobic digestion plant "close to unique" by enabling it to produce liquid digestate rather than the sludge-like digestate typically produced by most anaerobic digestion systems.


Pearson said: "There is not one like it in the world. We are exceptionally proud of it. Most anaerobic digestion plants have solid digestate but ours is liquid.


At the moment it's got a bit of a green tint, which I am not happy about, but nevertheless in the time since we started (this process) we have become the only system in the world with a liquid digestate.


"Lots of anaerobic digestion plants in the UK have gone bankrupt because they kept to the European model, which does not fit with the UK experience." He told Grower after the conference that the problem with sludge digestate is that there is "too much of it around - but now we have a tangible and useful product".


Pearson has made a deal with the Sports Turf Research Institute, which, from next year will enable its associations to use the whitish-green liquid as a fertiliser. He said: "It has enzymes in it that do not work on our crops but that work very well on grass."


The grower has worked with several universities, including the University of York and the University of Central Lancashire, to get to this stage. "We have done a lot of work on understanding what happens in the plant at different phases and times. I want to try and understand what happens," he said.


Scientists have helped develop a pre-treatment vessel to better break down the organic plant material.


Pearson explained: "Plants have a natural ability to heal themselves.


When you chop them up they try to heal and the whole lot goes solid. So we overcame that with a pre-treatment."


The plant matter is held in the pre-treatment vessel for 24 hours after being physically reduced by a flail. The vessel is heated and agitated to give the enzyme-breakdown process a boost. Pearson said: "It helps to accelerate the process by dealing with typically difficult-to-digest materials."


Scientists have also analysed the bacteria involved in the digestion process to "maximise the reduction time to help get the best output".


Pearson added: "We have now halved our reduction time from 14 days to seven." He told Grower that he was continuing to work with the scientist because he eventually hopes to produce a fertilizer that can be used on his crops - and find an energy-efficient way of extracting water from the plant so that it can be used to irrigate the tomatoes.


By next season Pearson also hopes to use the CO2 produced during the anaerobic digestion process on his crops. The company also continues to use the heat and power created from the biomethane to run and heat its glasshouses.


View the original article here

Government to encourage anaerobic digestion projects - Guttridge

The government has pledged to encourage farmers to invest in anaerobic digestion projects, it has been revealed.


Junior DEFRA minister Lord Henley said he was in talks with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to help improve Feed-in Tariff rates which are rewarded to those who set up renewable energy programmes.


Speaking at the Northern Farming Conference today (October 15th), he said: "We want to do what we can. That obviously will in due course with DECC mean looking at feed-in tariffs and a whole range of other things.

"We have given a commitment that we will encourage anaerobic digestion."


Lord Henley also claimed the technology can offer farmers a wide range of benefits other than energy production.


In addition to reducing the a

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mount of waste which is sent to the landfill, the bi-product of the anaerobic digestion process can be used as a fertiliser for crops.


Typical Guttridge equipment used in the anaerobic digestion industry includes; elevatorsbucket elevatorsvalves


James Smith ADNFCR-2798-ID-800119793-ADNFCR


View the original article here

28 October 2010

New plant to boost rural-based businesses - Whitehaven News

Published at 09:42, Tuesday, 19 October 2010

BUILDING work to create a £3million environmentally-friendly power plant in Cumbria is now on course to start by the end of the year, the company behind the pioneering scheme has revealed.

Farmgen, which is developing the Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant, believes it could be fully operational and supplying electricity to the national grid by the autumn of 2011.

The company has been unable to carry out any building to date on site, at Dryholme Farm, near Silloth, because of the government environmental stewardship agreement, which existed for the farm under its previous ownership.

The agreement came to an end on September 30, which means construction of the plant can now get under way.

In the past few months, other detailed preparatory work has been carried out on the project. That followed the granting of planning permission for the plant, which will generate 1.2MW of electricity, by Allerdale planners earlier this year.

Farmgen says the plant – which will create enough continuous power for more than 1,000 homes – will provide a significant boost to the rural economy.

It believes other similar AD operations will soon be commonplace across the UK and has already earmarked a number of potential ‘energy farming’ sites across Cumbria.

Work on Dryholme's £3m sister plant in Warton, Lancashire is now well advanced. Building work is nearing completion to create the two large tanks, which will form the centre-piece of the pioneering scheme.

It is on target to start providing renewable energy to power more than 1,000 homes next year.

Farmgen chief operating officer, Ed Cattigan, said: “We are highly delighted with the progress being made at Warton but we have also been doing a lot of detailed work to ensure that we can move Dryholme Farm to the next stage of its development.

“The stewardship agreement that existed for that site has meant we have been unable to carry out building work at Silloth, but that has now run its course and we are ready to move forward. Following the site preparation, we are firmly on course for construction work to start by the end of the year.”

Farmgen has put together an impressive consortium of expert UK-based firms to deliver its first tranche of AD plants. The consortium includes a number of leading members of the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA).

The industry’s latest technology and know-how is being supplied to the project by leading UK process and technology business Monsal. It has been involved in more than 200 AD projects and has the largest team of ‘biogas-to-energy’ technology specialists in the country.

Other members include Kirk Environmental, a specialist company manufacturing AD tanks, and engineering specialist Agrilek, which operates from Barrow-in-Furness, and has been brought on board to connect the plant to the national grid.

Published by http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk


View the original article here

27 October 2010

Turning waste food into power - Witney Gazette


Where there’s muck there’s brass, they say, and many at Worton Farm, near Cassington, are now hoping the old adage is true. Certainly there is no shortage of muck there — in the pungent form of all that food waste most of us in Oxfordshire are now being told to consign to special bins.


No shortage of money, either, judging by the £9m invested in the county’s first anaerobic digester, officially opened by recycling minister Lord Henley yesterday.




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Formerly known as the Cassington Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Plant, it is run by Oxford Renewable Energy (ORE), a company owned 50-50 by organic recycling company Agrivert, of Radford, near Chipping Norton, and M&M Skips, based at Worton.


Agrivert commercial director Harry Waters said: “Oxfordshire has been at the forefront of pushing ahead and getting this scheme up and going.” He added: “The background to this initiative, nationally, is that the UK must meet targets set by the EU for reducing waste going to landfill. If it misses those targets it will be fined £150 for every tonne above the limit.”


Earlier this year Agrivert bid for and won the 20-year contract with the county council for processing all Oxfordshire’s organic waste, comprising what is technically called “controlled in-vessel compost” — including such nasties as chicken carcasses — and green waste. Already the none-too-fragrant pure food waste (sorted by the householder or commercial entity that produced it) has begun arriving at Worton Farm in lorries from the Vale of the White Horse, South Oxfordshire and Oxford City Councils.


From November 15, more deliveries are scheduled for the three- acre digester site — in the middle of the 120-acres between the A40 and the railway — as food-waste collections get under way in West Oxfordshire, too.


Cherwell’s waste goes to a different site in Ardley where pure food waste and green waste arrive without having been previously separated at source. The environmental case for building digesters such as this sounds convincing.


Mr Waters explained: “When running at full capacity, the digester will produce 4.5 million cubic metres of methane a year — which will be fed into a generator to produce 2.1 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 4,000 homes. The renewable electricity generated is fed into the National Grid and is already producing enough to power 2,100 homes.”


Mr Waters says the costs to Oxfordshire council tax payers are half that of dumping organic waste in landfill. Methane is 23 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and that if the waste were to go to landfill the gas given off as the stuff decomposes, would, in terms of global warming, be the equivalent of 71,000 cars on the road, each driving the UK average mileage a year.


If all goes to plan, Agrivert will build a similar digester on the edge of Benson airfield, near Wallingford.


Under the scheme, local councils bring the waste to the site in their lorries and dump it into a bunker in a closed warehouse, which keeps the smell indoors and away from the nearest neighbours, who are anyway 600 metres distant.


In the bunker, the rubbish is separated from contamination such as the plastic bags in which householders have placed it, some of which are degradable and some not.


The waste is then homogenised and pasteurised (a requirement since the last outbreak of Foot and Mouth) and stored and stirred for 50 days as a sort of sterile soup in the first two of those five huge green tanks now visible to passengers on the Cotswold Line railway.


Then it moves on to the next two tanks for another 25 days for further maturing at different temperatures.


The fifth tank is used to store the end product — something called digestate, which is sold to local farmers as a chemical-free fertiliser.


It seems that every step of the process is potentially profitable. Significantly, when fully up and running, the plant will only employ a grand total of two people on site.


The electricity produced powers the generator on site too, which also produces renewable heat — some of which is used to heat the pasteurisers and the digesters. With the help of a grant from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), more of the heat generated will be used to dry woodchip, seen as a useful fuel of the future, for use, for instance, in boilers to heat schools.


Worton Farm, owned by green industries businessman Guy Pharaon, who is also a shareholder of M&M Skips, is seen is an ideal site: close to Oxford and yet isolated.


The Cassington Anaerobic Digestion Plant is the initiative of company managing director Alexander Maddan, who served in the army in Germany and saw how energy is produced from waste there.


He said: “I was originally interested in producing energy from sewage. Then I learned about energy from food waste.


“The Germans are far ahead of us in this area.”


He added that finding the millions of pounds needed to pay for Agrivert’s half share of the plant had not been easy, even though the venture received a £1.6m grant from the Government agency Wrap (Waste and Resources Action Programme) based in Banbury.


He said: “We were committed to the purchase when the credit crunch struck and our finance disappeared. However we were able to go ahead eventually. But it was challenging.”


Agrivert, a privately owned company, has negotiated contracts in Hertfordshire, Essex, Pembrokeshire and Newcastle as well as Oxfordshire.


It also owns three sites for composting garden waste in Oxfordshire at Chipping Norton, Benson, and Hinton Waldriss.


But the Cassington anaerobic digester is the first to be built on this scale in the UK. It puts Oxfordshire among the leaders in the recycling stakes, with South Oxfordshire now showing the second highest recycling rate for any district in England and Wales.


All the expensive equipment on site, including the two generators worth about £750,000 each, was built in Germany; much of it by the specialist firm Wacherbauer.


Mr Waters said: “It’s true that Britain is way behind Germany, but we have made huge strides in the right direction in the last few years.”


He added: “Our next challenge is to start take food waste from commercial properties such as Oxfordshire schools and hospitals.


“We reckon the waste from 40 schools equals the waste of 65,000 households.”



View the original article here

Understanding Biogas As an Alternative Fuel Choice


Biogas is a mix mainly of methane and carbon dioxide and is produced naturally when organic matter decomposes in the absence of oxygen. Biogas is produces from Land filling and through anaerobic digestion. Depending on place where it is produced, biogas can also be called swamp gas, marsh gas, and landfill gas or digester gas.

Anaerobic digestion is one of the methods through which biogas is produced. Biogas can be produced utilizing anaerobic digesters. Here, the plants can be fed with energy crops such as maize silage or biodegradable wastes including sewage sludge and food waste; whereas, the landfill gas is produced by organic waste decomposing under anaerobic conditions in a landfill. Gober Gas is the other form of biogas generated out of cow dung. This type of biogas is produced mainly in the households of India and Pakistan.

Biogas has many advantages over other alternative fuels. One of the main advantages of biogas is that the technology is cheaper and much simpler than those for other biofuels. Recovery of the methane is spontaneous as the gas automatically separates from the substrates. Dilute waste materials can be used as substrate. In the process of making biogas, organic pollutants are removed from the environment and used to generate useful biogas and this actually cleans the environment. Aseptic conditions are not needed for operation. Other advantage of biogas is that it will not produce any unpleasant odours. Electricity can be generated with biogas 24 hours a day. There is reduced risk of explosion as compared to pure methane and any biodegradable matter can be used as substrate for producing biogas.

As it has many advantages, biogas too has few disadvantages as well. One among them is that the product (biogas) value is rather low and this makes it an unattractive commercial activity. This process is not very attractive economically (as compared to other biofuels) on a large industrial scale. Biogas contains some gases as impurities, which are corrosive to the metal parts of internal combustion. Other major disadvantage of biogas is that its yields are lower due to the dilute nature of substrates.

Nevertheless, Biogas can become a great substitute for other conventional energy sources.








Clifton is a qualified mechanical engineer committed to finding alternative fuel sources that can be incorporated into everyday life. Alternative energy sources with reduced environmental effects will need to be discovered and used in order to generate the power requirements our lifestyle currently demands.


26 October 2010

Biogas Methane is the Great Building Block For the New Sustainable World


Biogas methane is the opposite of carbonaceous methane which is methane created from fossil fuels many thousands of years ago. So, in other words it is recently created, biologically produced methane made from renewable organic matter. It is also by definition man-made, made in a biogas plant, and it is the one great future raw material for building a sustainable world from which all others will come, which can still create and consume all the synthetic organic materials we find so essential to our lifestyles in the modern world.

The need to distinguish methane gas derived methane from fossil fuel which also known as natural gas, has brought the term into use, and I think you should know it as it will become more and more important to society as the years go. This will happen as oil, gas and coal extracted from mineral deposits begin to run out. By running out I mean that extracting the remaining fossil fuels will largely become too energy expensive to collect, due to all the easy reserves becoming depleted.

Natural gas comes from the world's mineral reserves, where it has been stored in the ground since its formation from prehistoric living plants and animals. Large quantities of natural gas/methane also seeps out from old oilfields, coal mines and coal measures which wastes a lot of natural gas which as soon as it enters the atmosphere is lost to man's use.

In fact methane which enters the atmosphere is thought to be a very potent cause of greenhouse warming. Methane is something like twenty times more active in absorbing the sun's heat, and causing global warming, than carbon dioxide.

But, believe it or not man can keep creating biogas methane forever as long as he keeps re-growing more crops to produce more biogas methane and uses it by burning it before it escapes, because those crops will suck the carbon dioxide produced by burning back out of the air, and the system remains stable.

Biogas methane is produced in biogas plants, although strictly these are properly called anaerobic digestion plants.

This renewable and sustainable methane is a basic simple organic molecule building block from which engineers and chemists will for thousands of years create all the wonderful organic material based substances we need in our modern lives. Not only can (and will) biogas methane be used to replace oil as the initial feedstock for all our energy needs, if made in big enough quantities it can be used to satisfy all plastic and carbon based materials needs, including for pharmaceutical and transport fuels.








Thinking more about building a digester to produce biogas methane? Steve Last is web master for the fact filled Anaerobic Digestion Community web site where much more biogas methane information is available.

Steve Last is also a regular contributor of dog breed related articles at The Dog Breed Compendium.


25 October 2010

What is Biogas?


It seems like everywhere you look there are more and more fossil fuel alternatives being investigated. From ethanol to air, literally everything has been considered. Biogas is another one of these possibilities. It might be a term that is not familiar to some but it is not all that new of a resource because it is completely natural. Biogas comes from the anaerobic digestion of organic matter. In simple terms, this means that organic waste is compressed in a certain way that creates biogas which can be used as fuel. In fact, it is so natural that it almost makes one wonder why we did not consider using it sooner.

Biogas is created in landfills. When organic matter such as compost or natural waste is buried without oxygen, it starts to create a gas. This is biogas and it can be contained and used to produce energy. A landfill that is properly designed will produce biogas for several years. This gas is released into the earth's atmosphere, so it just makes sense that harnessing it and making use of it would be a better solution. As far as natural resources go, this might be one of the best.

For the most part biogas is made up of carbon dioxide and methane. However, quite often there are also varying quantities of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and various other natural gases. Special wells have to be drilled in order to properly get biogas out of a landfill. It is a much more efficient way of capturing all of the gas. At this time there is a train in Sweden that is currently powered by biogas. The use of sewage and cow waste is the primary fuel source for that train. It has been determined that biogas has virtually no trace of toxic emissions in comparison with fossil fuels.

There are several great benefits to using biogas as fuel. Not only does it produce much needed energy but it also eliminates all of the organic waste in landfills by giving it a purpose. This in turn also improves conditions in landfills regarding insects and the reduction of pathogens. Reducing the amount of methane in the earth's atmosphere is also a good idea which biogas helps with as well. Those that are interested in the benefits of biogas should do the necessary research in order to understand it better. As consumers and members of this earth, we all must do our part to make an educated choice.

There are a handful of disadvantages associated with biogas as well. The actual product value of biogas is incredibly low, which does not necessarily make it economically feasible. The process that is required to obtain biogas can also be quite expensive since special wells must be drilled. There is also reason to believe that some of the gases in biogas are corrosive to metal. This can be a problem because metal is a major component of automobile engines. Weighing the benefits and disadvantages is necessary in order to conclude if biogas will work for you.








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24 October 2010

Home Made Biogas - The Next Big Thing in Energy Cost Saving


With so many people who are keen to save money and are handy at DIY, home made biogas is the next most obvious way after insulation and solar panels:

Feature image for - Home Made Biogas article.

  • Save money on cooking fuel
  • Follow a green and sustainable lifestyle
  • Do it all without sacrificing the convenience and comfort of modern living.

Making biogas at home entails the use of a long forgotten technology (in the west at least) known as anaerobic digestion or AD. The secret of digesting organic waste materials in the absence of oxygen and simply piping the methane biogas produced to a cooking stove, has long been in use in India and China. Such plants have been run using community solid and liquid waste feed materials, and have been around for more than 200 years.

However, the DIY method catching on right now, is now much more advanced than those plants.

Furthermore, its use by those that are developing these the most successful home biogas plants has allowed it to be refined into a highly efficient and modern two stage thermophilic biogas production technique, similar to those used in large scale commercial biogas digestion plants. This DIY system utilizes wastes such as food waste and other high calorific biomass wastes available to householders.
These new home biogas systems are much quicker to produce biogas and more efficient in the quantity they produce per kilogram of organic feedstock produced, when compared with the traditional systems of the east.

They are also cheap to build using mass-produced "off the shelf" plastic tanks. A two stage digester capable of being maintained at the required very warm (thermophilic) temperatures should cost no more than $200 for materials.

What is more, the remaining liquid and fibrous materials which are the material left over after digestion are wonderful as fertilizer and soil improvement media for gardeners and fruit and vegetable growers.

Once you have successfully trialed DIY home made biogas for cooking, there is also a natural progression available for you in the future to go further and introduce electricity production from this biogas source. Quite naturally the industry (given a chance to get on with management and administration duties) will develop more sophisticated and efficient uses for the renewable (some would say "alternative") energy produced by AD.

Those who start now and gain the necessary AD Plant operational skills, by building and operating home made biogas plants, will soon find themselves very much in demand to design and build more plants for their friends and acquaintances.

We would also point out that as governments move forward over the next twenty or so years biogas and anaerobic digestion will become commonplace at all levels, and a huge amount of organic waste (now completely unused) will be utilized every day, for home made biogas production.

Are you thinking more about building a digester to produce home biogas methane? Steve Last is web master for the fact filled Anaerobic Digestion Community web site where much more home made biogas production information is available.

Low Cost Biogas Digesters Bring Big Advantages to Farmers


Biogas digesters are often considered to be something new by those in the developed nations, however, they have been widely used for many years in developing countries, especially India and China, as firewood for cooking becomes scarce. Other countries from Honduran farmers to the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, are able to harness the methane gas created naturally from decomposing manure and other organic materials. Besides producing the fuel gas, these biogas digesters (using the process of anaerobic digestion) have the added potential benefit of producing a high nutrient slurry fertilizer and providing better sanitation on farms.

The win-win process goes even further though because the emission of pollution from the digester is very much lower than without the digester, as well, so they can help to reduce river and groundwater pollution at the same time. A functional biogas digester system applies the science of microbiology and involves the development of renewable energy.

With biogas technology, the farm or community/human waste (called slurry) is stored in specially constructed containers while being digested. Biogas digester systems can accommodate manure handled as a liquid, slurry, or semisolid depending on the type of reactor design used. Biogas digesters take the biodegradable feedstock, and convert it into two useful products: gas and digestate (solid and liquid). Both of these are useful, and this is certain to be one of the main reasons why more and more farmers around the world are beginning to install a biogas digester.

Biogas digesters are usually built underground to protect them from temperature variations and also to prevent accidental damage. They not only perform the necessary actions required to keep the bacteria happy and creating the biogas, but designs suitable for farms and communities have been devised for the developing nations which are able to be replicated using items that are cheap, easy to source, and easy to assemble.

The typical developing nation biogas digester is constructed in a pit which is excavated by a trained labourer with assistance from one or more members of the household or community. A very common design for biogas digesters has a volume of 8m3, some are larger at 10-15m3, and provide enough gas for a two-ring stove and a light.

A biogas digester can function well on human and animal waste. We know of one Anaerobic Digester which is based upon pig farming, and is built below the pigsty. The pigsty is insulated, and the digester produces some heat as well, which helps to keep both the pigs and the biogas digester in the warm conditions both need during cold winter weather.

A biogas digester consists of one or more airtight reservoirs into which a suitable feedstock such as cow dung, human waste, or even abattoir waste, is placed, either in batches or by continuous feed. It is mixed and the solid and liquid digestate is removed on a regular basis. The methane bubbles to the surface, and in the simplest systems, it is stored as a big bubble above the liquid. In more sophisticated systems the methane is stored in separate tanks, for use when needed.

There is an enormous potential for benefit from the increased use of anaerobic digestion in Africa. An AGAMA Energy fact sheet estimates that in South Africa there are 400,000 households with two or more cows and no electricity that could make use of biogas digesters. An article dating back to30 November 2005, in the Rwandan newspaper The New Times states that the Institute for Scientific Research and Technology in Kigali plans to install some 1,500 biogas digesters by 2009 in the imidugudu settlements. These are villages where rural Rwandans were relocated after the genocidal wars of the mid-1990s.

Worldwide, about 16 million households use small-scale biogas digesters, according to Renewables 2005: Global Status Report, a study by the Worldwatch Institute.

It has been reported that in India a domestic biogas digester unit capable of producing energy for an entire family's cooking needs can be installed for between R5 000 and R8 000, that is less than 200 US Dollars. Facilities best suited for biogas digester systems typically have stable year-round manure production, and collect and feed the digester with manure daily.








Thinking more about building a digester? Steve Last is web master for the fact filled Anaerobic Digestion Community web site where much more biogas digester information is available.

Steve Last is also a regular contributor of dog breed related articles at The Dog Breeds Compendium.


23 October 2010

Biogas Technology - A Dynamic Approach To Desertification Challenge In Northern Nigeria


The evidence of climate change is glaring as the days go by. In Northern Nigeria, continually the environment is loosing grounds to desert encroachment. People living in these environment continually get their source of fuel for energy from wood.

The charcoal from wood is a big business in these part of Nigeria. However, people seems to forget that the wood emanates from the trees in the forest. Despite certain regulations concerning the use of woods, the activities of illegal loggers cannot be entirely supervised or curtailed.

The greatest hindrance to the observance of these regulations is the absence of alternative source of fuel as the use of kerosene is quite expensive for rural dwellers and availability is a problem in some area.

The Chinese has long identified the importance of biogas towards meeting the energy needs in rural areas. Biogas is produced through anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic production of biogas does not produce any offensive smell hence it is environmentally friendly, reduces green house effect, greatly increases the fertilizer value of manure and protects water source.

Biogas is generated by the activity of anaerobic bacteria. It is composed of 60% methane, 40% carbondioxide and small amount of hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen and hydrogen.

Biogas can be used for cooking, heating, generating electricity and running a vehicle.

The wonders and opportunities associated with biogas appears to be the best alternative along with solar options towards addressing the effect of desertification activities of people in rural area of Northern Nigeria.

In Northern Nigeria, Livestock rearing is a common practice thus raw material for biogas functionality is readily available.








Isaac Akogu is a Pharmacist and a Conversation Map Expert Trainer who commits over 40hours a week towards diabetes care, counselling, information, education and advocacy for subsidized drugs and treatment for orphans and widows in North Central Nigeria. http://www.diabetesguidenig.blogspot.com


Biogas and Biomethane Gains Wider Acceptance


Biogas is a wonderfully flexible and renewable form of energy and it can be used as a building block to make not only a wide variety of liquid fuels, but also organic chemicals and even plastics.

The biogas digestion (anaerobic digestion) process can be installed and run at the household level with simple training and support, and it can also be developed in huge projects to anaerobic make community and district anaerobic digestion plants. These can take up to 100,000 tons per year of organic waste and create methane from it.

When the methane produced is cleaned and compressed it is called biomethane, and can be pumped into the district grids which nowadays deliver us natural gas from fossil fuels.

A household biogas plant consists of a tank (at its simplest just an underground brick pit) where manure (human sanitary waste) and other organic materials are mixed with water and allowed to ferment.

A farm biogas plant does the same but in a larger reactor and usually takes the farm animal slurries, but can also in some Scandinavian plants also use silage. The silage is stored for use to feed farm biogas plants during the long cold winters, when other feed organic feed materials may be in short supply. The farm anaerobic digestion (AD) plant can in this way strengthen the ability of farm businesses to withstand bad weather and poor years when crops are poor, and its adoption in large numbers will therefore improve the resilience of the agricultural sector.

Let us not forget either that greater biogas production and the use of it will result in a reduction in greenhouse emissions and sizeable plants can make reductions of the order of 50,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalents annually.

An AD plant always contains two main components: a digester (or fermentation tank) and a gas holder. The digester in the most common types of plant is a rectangular-shaped or cylindrical leakproof vessel with an inlet into which the fermentable mixture is introduced in the form of a liquid slurry.

China is an example of a nation where the government has introduced a biogas program. More and more governments are realizing that biogas production brings benefits not only the ecological system, but it also benefits rural populations. India and Nepal are also well known for their digesters.

The benefits are many and include it being an alternative energy source, methane is very useful for cooking, improving rural sanitation, reducing firewood consumption, relieving the rural women's burden, providing a liquid fertilizer for the fields, and proving a sludge which can improve soil quality, plus more. What is more, each farmer my be able to obtain a cash income from this as well.

The actual results of bio-gas programmes have shown these real benefits improving rural life in so many ways.

In one example the biogas digester attached to toilets provides cooking gas for a 600-student school and vocational-training program the foundation runs. In the past, non-governmental organizations were the only ones offering these ideas but that is rapidly changing as the good word gets around.

After the fermentation has been completed in an AD plant, the biogas leaves from the top of the digester at a low pressure, sufficient to overcome the losses provide enough pressure to push the gas through a gas burner, and similarly through some power generation motors, without any compressor to raise pressure.

The countries in Europe are now beginning to sit up and take stock of successes in China and other nations, and are introducing new legislation to encourage the uptake of AD technology. These laws will be explained and discussed extensively at both the plenary sessions and in the workshops in a surprisingly large number of conferences this year.








Steve Last is an anaerobic digestion expert, and web master. You will find much more about this fascinating subject at his Biogas Digester web site. But for a simple Biogas Calculator follow the link earlier in this sentence.


22 October 2010

The Benefits of Biogas


The use of many of these modern fuel trends is nothing less than confusing for many consumers. Half of these terms have never been heard and the rest are defunct before we have even gotten used to them. Biogas may be another of these terms that most consumers require better understanding on. Biogas is actually one of the best ideas currently being tossed around. Not only does it provide a fuel alternative, it makes use of those nasty landfills as well.

Biogas comes from completely organic matter. It is a product created by the anaerobic digestion of organic matter such as vegetables and animal waste. It is a process that is done in a landfill without any oxygen. Oxygen must be eliminated from this process for the biogas to emit. Organic matter is sealed in the landfill away from oxygen and the result is the biogas.

Other countries have already put biogas to use in their economy. There is a particular train in Sweden that has been running on biogas for some time now. It's simply more efficient and earth friendly, which of course is the key factor. The Swedish train uses cow manure as the source of biogas it runs on. It can be quite fascinating what can be done with waste material.

It is important to be realistic when it comes to the use of biogas. There are only so many ways that you can save money. The cost of collecting the cow manure is something to be considered as well as the transportation and preparation of it for landfill biogas production.

The flip side of looking at costs though also shows that it will produce jobs. Some economies could greatly benefit from the jobs that would result from the production of biogas. It will help people on a personal level as well as society on a whole economical level.

Producing biogas is also a fabulous way to cut down on some of the waste that is sitting in our landfills. Organic materials in landfills contribute to a large percent of the space they take up, not to mention the bacterial factors that come with all of that waste sitting there.

The use of biogas can safely and efficiently reduce the amount of methane emissions currently being pumped out into the earth's atmosphere. Methane is one of the biggest environmental hazards that need to be reduced and eventually eliminated.

We all have choices to make regarding what we do to help the world around us. If you're doing your part to make a change and you want to switch fuel, check to see what a realistic option is where you live. Different places will have different fuel laws as well as available outlets. Look up everything from government requirements on green cars to ethanol fuel stations. Being informed is necessary so that you know what kind of difference you are making. A blind choice may not be the best one. Clarity is essential for your peace of mind and the protection of your invested money.








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21 October 2010

Digestion Technology Developments For Cheaper Renewable Fuel


A very popular idea currently gaining publicity is a very old concept: methane digestion. The methane given off during the decomposition of the manure is captured and burned, providing either heat or power, for electrical generation. These promise a minor revolution in small and medium scale energy generation from methane, with a scale smaller than wind turbines, but still significant in terms of national adjustments to high oil prices.

However, the digestion process has been criticized for being inefficient and unstable in operation. But, the technology of anaerobic digestion has been largely ignored until the last run on oil prices about 5 years ago (about 2003), when for the first time for as long as anyone can remember the oil price exceeded the production cost for fuel produced as methane by digestion.

Five years has been scarcely long enough for more than some half a dozen to one dozen AD plants to be designed, constructed and commissioned, in the UK for example. These should be considered to be a first generation of a new breed of reactors using this technology. This is a bit like the people who criticized the motor car for being slow while the law (in the UK certainly) required all automobiles to be preceded by a man holding a flag to warn pedestrians.

Many did criticize the automobile at that time, but do you want to do so for digestion, as I think that you will be looking as silly as those flag wavers were just ten years later, when the motor car became an established mode of transport.

There are many ways in which the efficiency of Anaerobic Digestion bio-reactors are being improved, and the first is by using sophisticated ultrasonic technology to break up the particles and so allow breakdown of a bigger proportion of the organic content.

In some of the other processes being developed the excess liquor from the process is used to re-wet incoming biowaste as it contains useful bacterial populations. This method can produce a faster reaction then the original start-up.

It is important because on-farm Digester (Anaerobic Digestion) projects can provide needed services to farmers; develop local, renewable electrical generation; enhance environmental quality; and generate income for the community.

Other researchers have identified the fact that if you have fluctuating temperatures, then you will not be able to establish an optimum microbial population. The digester stirring system must be efficient and operational at all times to ensure that the cold, newly introduced sludge, is mixed with the warm older solids and the bacteria. This sounds easy but in a large tank with a fairly viscous sludge mass it can be surprisingly onerous on the mixing technology.

Anaerobic digestion consists of a series of reactions which are catalyzed by a mixed group of bacteria and through which organic matter is converted in a step-wise fashion to methane and carbon dioxide. Polymers such as cellulose, hemicellulose, pectin, and starch are hydrolyzed to oligomers or monomers, which are then metabolized by fermentative bacteria with the production of hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and volatile organic acids such as acetate, propionate, and butyrate. Clearly, this is a complex reaction which e can be greatly improved by better knowledge gained by further academic study which can now take place given the raised awareness and importance of this technique. This will most likely yet result in big advances in how man designs and runs its new digesters.

In the developing world another angle for them is selling carbon credits from the renewable energy created by anaerobic digestion on the worldwide market. Those credits should be a source of income for as well as providing a way to readily obtain seed capital for these projects from the banks.

However, the process also produces a solid and a liquid digestate in the slurry. The use of the process would not be sustainable without an environmentally safe method of disposal, and better still preferably a 'beneficial use' of the output from digestion.

The market for the digestion processing outputs is still undeveloped just about everywhere. However, there are some positive signs reported that the outputs will be genuinely useful, and indeed a source for additional revenue for the operators of these plants.

The adoption of manure digesters at animal operations is much more advanced in Europe than in the U.S. But, there are many successful AD plants in operation throughout the U.S.

Northern Concrete has one such installation and has reported on its digestion process. They have said that the feedstock (animal byproduct) goes into a holding area until it is ready to enter the digester. It sits in the digester for 22 days and is released as useful by-products like methane and a grassy sawdust-like product that can be used as fertilizer, animal bedding or after further processing for floor boards.

There is certainly other evidence of progress in selling AD outputs. Another operator (Pro-Gro Mixes of Tualatin, Ore.) is thought to have contracted to market the solids material or digested fiber to the wholesale nursery and landscape industries, reportedly. It is understood to be selling between 1,000 to 3,000 yards of digested fiber, under the FiberLife brand, per month in the Willamette Valley.

There is also potential for the methane to be burnt in efficient turbines, rather than today's ubiquitous reciprocating engines. Here the heat from turbine exhaust is used to maintain the optimum digester temperature and sustain bio-gas production. The resultant bio-gas is collected from one such system and cleaned, then used to fire the turbines. The results have reportedly been way above expectations, with a significant increase in production, higher yield and fewer rejects being recorded. The digester in question is thought to qualify as a small-power production facility, which means it follows a funding schedule, enabling projects to gain rapid approval.








Digestion can be considered for a wide variety of agricultural and industrial and commercial sites. From agricultural community scale Digesters to supermarkets with waste food, to municipal authorities with organic waste in their collected waste streams. All should now be considering the installation of digestion of one type of another. For more information visit the Digestion web site.


Will Biogas Power Your Car in the Future?


There are several different types of alternative fuels available for powering vehicles these days and there are more being developed all of the time. Alternative fuels generally cause less pollution and emit fewer greenhouse gases into the environment. Many of them are also cheaper to produce and refine than conventional gasoline and other forms of petroleum. One of these alternative fuels is the non-fossil fuel known as biogas.

This form of fuel is made from the anaerobic digestion of organic matter. It is produced in many landfill sites where organic matter such garden waste and food are present. It can also be made from manure, sewage, and green waste. These components are buried and then compressed in a dark oxygen-free atmosphere. In fact, biogas is still often formed and released into the environment of the earth years after a landfill site is filled in.

Biogas consists mainly of carbon dioxide and methane. However, it may also contain traces of hydrogen, hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen, and possibly even oxygen. If it is processed properly, biogas can be used as a substitute or alternative to natural gas. This means it can be used as an effective fuel for electricity, heating, and cooking, etc.

To collect biogas, the landfill sites need to have gas wells drilled into them. Years ago, the gas was just burnt off. However, more landfills are now being used to collect the substance and the gas is being used as a form of power generation around the world. Some of the landfills have erected dedicated anaerobic digesters which enable them to produce larger quantities of the methane-rich gas at a faster rate, which also cuts down on the amount of waste that needs to be buried in the landfill site.

Another benefit of biogas is the fact that it can be utilized to power various types of vehicles. For example, there is a train in Sweden that is fuelled by biogas which is produced from cow waste and sewage, which contains a lot of methane. The gas is pretty good when it comes to the amount of pollution released as it gives off only one-twentieth of the carbon dioxide that diesel produces. Biogas contains no particulate emissions also only generates one-fifth as much nitrous oxide emissions as diesel.

This bodes well for the future if biogas can be produced, refined and utilized to fuel vehicles across the planet. It is also a renewable fuel therefore it can qualify for certain types of energy subsidies on some regions of the globe. Biogas is being used in various parts of Europe, especially Sweden, to power vehicles such as cars, buses, and trucks and several refuelling stations have been built.

The UK and Germany are two of the leading nations when it comes to the production of biogas. These countries have developed farms and landfills and have constructed several biogas plants as a way to produce it. While biogas is being generated at a decent rate, the majority of it is used for purposes other than fuel for vehicles. However, this may change in the years to come.








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20 October 2010

Biogas Digesters Are Becoming Useful For Fuel


Biogas is a gas that is created whenever animal and plant wastes degrade. Bacteria ferment the waste under anaerobic, or oxygen-free, conditions. The result of this fermentation includes carbon dioxide and methane.

Methane is created in landfills, where the buried waste rots and produces this gas. Often, methane is permitted to escape into the atmosphere. However, it can easily be collected and piped to local industries where it could be available for burning to release heat along with other energy options.

Biogas could also be produced under more controlled conditions in pits in the ground or in tanks called biogas digesters. All types of human and animal waste can be put into these digesters. The rotting mass releases gases, such as methane, that can be piped away and burned as a fuel for heating and cooking.

This exciting energy source is becoming a major fuel source in many developing countries, where practically all rural families or villages can make use of a biogas digester to generate fuel. Biogas digesters are used on farms to dispose of animal wastes. The gas can be further used to power a generator to produce electricity. The intensive farming that is found in Denmark and the Netherlands generates large amounts of animal waste, which needs careful disposal. It is fermented in digesters to produce biogas, while the residue is used as crop fertilizer.

Elsewhere, household wastes, livestock waste, and poultry waste are burned in specially modified power stations, rather than used to make biogas. These power stations have to meet strict emission controls to prevent the release of toxic chemicals.

Of course, one additional benefit of burning off the methane from these waster sources is that it will help reduce greenhouse gases significantly.








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19 October 2010

The Importance of Biogas Digesters For All Our Futures


Biogas digesters hold a high level of importance for all our futures as the only way to turn the tide on global emissions from a huge range of waste organic materials. Society is blinded by the opportunities of solar energy, wave and wind power, but so far has failed to see that unless the rising quantities of argnic waste we produce are disposed of without decomposing to produce methane a huge problem remains. As a result of that failure a very large and growing greenhouse gas emission load will remain and we can never become truly sustainable, as things are now, and future generations are doomed.

We are now using our natural gas (carbonaceous fuel) resources up at a huge rate. These were formed from the fossilized remains of plants and animals in a process that took millions of years.

Such resources do not "grow back" in a time scale that is meaningful for humans. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that was created eons ago by the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials. It is often found in association with oil and coal. It will deplete without an adequate replacement other than biogas, so we had better get on with it and improve our ability to produce biogas and sngas (from gasification) - its only real replacement other than converting other carbonaceous fuels into gas fuels!

Cooking is best with with clean-burning gas, rather than smoky wood. Introducing gas cooking improves respiratory health and reduces the pressure on local fuelwood. In contrast, cooking on open fires emits gases that endanger people's health and contributes unnecessarily to global warming.

The German government saw the potential for biogas a number of years ago and introduced incentives to encourage biogas and biofuel production. German technology companies has a head start over the US, and the UK. Based on their experience, acquired over a number of years in partnership with their German customers, they have built a formidable record in biogas digestion.

The US should welcome these experts into the US. They do say that they want to share their expertise in other markets.

According to reports available on the internet they already have numerous projects and installations completed in Russia, Thailand, England, France, Spain and Turkey, and this they consider to be just the beginning.

It is stated in a recent report available on the worldwide web, that biogas even offers the possibility of stepping towards energy security for rural and even peri-urban communities in some areas. However, the converse is certainly true, and there is no energy security for any nation now in depending on imports of natural gas, whereas literally home-grown biogas is right on our doorstep, and as secure a supply as can be imagined.








There are two great sites where you can find out more about this developing alternative energy source and those are the electricity from methane digester web page and the biogas digestion web site. Take a look now!


Biogas Methane Explained


Biogas methane is methane created from biologically created organic matter. The important thing to remember is that the term has entered common usage through the need to distinguish biogas derived methane from fossil fuel methane. Fossil fuel derived methane is known as 'natural gas'. Natural gas comes from mineral reserves, where it has been stored in the ground since its formation from living plants and animals hundreds of thousands of years ago. Natural gas/methane also comes sometimes from coal mines and coal measures which emit it.

So, in other words, biogas methane means 'green', 'renewable' methane, as opposed to natural gas which when burnt contributes to the greenhouse effect.

In addition to the biogas methane energy sources usually talked about, there are others which are not mineral gas created and these are either natural and un-natural in their origins, as follows:-

1. Gas being created naturally all the time in peat bogs and organic marine silts;

2. Methane produced in the stomachs of animals by the digestion of their foods (eg ruminants);

3. Biogas being created in farm slurry tanks etc, while farmers hold it waiting for dry weather when they can spread the manure/slurry on to their fields;

4. Landfill gas which is simply biogas created in landfills where the conditions are anaerobic.

If any sources of methane are emitted and rise from ground level into the atmosphere they are thought to be very potent causes of greenhouse warming. In fact, methane is about 20 times more active in absorbing the sun's heat, and causing global warming, than carbon dioxide.

Anaerobic decomposition in all these cases, produces methane biogas. At the same time it produces, carbon dioxide, some hydrogen, and other gases in traces. AD also produces a little heat, and a final product with a higher nitrogen content than is produced by aerobic fermentation.

The biogas production process which is usually inferred when people talk about biomethane is Anaerobic Digestion. This is a process which consists of feeding biomass to a large digester, in which methane-producing bacteria, under airless conditions, convert it into the energy-rich biogas.

The action of mixing and heating with the digester allows the bacteria to come into contact with the feedstock material, which provides food for the bacteria to multiply and convert the complex organic compounds into much simpler mostly soluble compounds. For example, sugars and starches, which then react in further stages giving off methane gas, which comprises about two thirds of biogas. The gas, a mixture of methane and CO2, is used for direct combustion in cooking or lighting applications, or to power combustion engines for motive power or electricity generation.

Methane (CH4) biogas technology is a renewable energy technology that uses various forms of biomass (animal dung, crop waste) and converts it into a useful energy source in the form of a gas (about 70% methane), via anaerobic microbial digestion. Methanogens are organisms that make methane via a unique metabolic pathway with unique enzymes. This produces a mixture of gases, primarily methane and carbon dioxide, and a nutrient-rich slurry. The CH4 rises into the gas holder where it is contained by a water seal. When the mixture of methane and air (oxygen) burn a blue flame is emitted, producing large amount of heat energy.

Methane biogas can be used for all the purposes in which natural gas is used, and can be used as the renewable equivalent of LNG as well.

Methane biogas has in the past been more expensive to produce that simply drilling for natural gas and pumping vast quantities of natural gas to our homes and industries. The biomethane needs "scrubbing" before it is clean enough to use in normal natural gas burning equipment. If it is not scrubbed, or not scrubbed adequately it will cause corrosion.

Methane biogas is about to become much more important as an energy source than it has been in the past, due to the ever rising cost of natural gas.








Thinking more about building a digester? Steve Last is web master for the fact filled Anaerobic Digestion Community web site where much more methane biogas and digester information is available.

Steve Last is also a regular contributor of dog breed related articles at The Dog Breeds Compendium.


18 October 2010

Biogas in India - Current Status and Future Possibilities


Biogas is primarily methane that is generated from an anaerobic digestion of organic wastes by microorganisms. It is a relatively simple and economical method to produce a fuel from waste.

While technically biogas can be produced from any type of organic material, most times, biogas is produced from organic waste. This waste could comprise agricultural and crop waste, human waste and animal waste (cow dung for instance). With a calorific value of about 5000 KCal / m3, biogas is an excellent fuel for heating purposes as well as for generating electricity.

It is estimated that India can produce power of about 17,000 MW using biogas. This is over 10% of the total electricity installed capacity in India.

The advantages of biogas-based energy generation are as follows:

1. It is based on renewable sources

2. It can provide distributed energy generation, thereby providing much-needed energy for remote locations and villages.

3. In many cases, it provides a beneficial way of disposing organic waste

Biogas in households and communities

Biogas production has been quite dominant in India at household and community levels (especially in rural areas) than on large scales. In villages especially, thousands of small biogas plants use the cattle waste (especially cow dung) and provide biogas used for home heating and cooking. It is estimated that over 2 million such biogas plants have been installed all over India.

Such use of biogas systems in agrarian communities can increase agricultural productivity. This is because producing heat using biogas is more efficient than producing it using combustion, and hence more agricultural and animal waste can be returned to the land by farmers as organic fertilizer. Moreover, the slurry that is returned after methanogenesis is superior in terms of its nutrient content and can be used as a soil conditioner and plant nutrient (fertilizer).

Biogas for electricity production

The use of biogas for electricity generation in India is more recent, but this trend is accelerating. In many cities across India, sewage treatment centers and organic waste treatment plants (those treating organic municipal solid waste, for instance) already use anaerobic digesters to generate biogas and electricity. Some of the industries that generate significant amounts of solid or liquid organic waste also have installed digesters and gas engines for electricity production. Many of these require sizable investments, but it is estimated that they have a good return on investment as the main feedstock that they use is essentially free.

Biogas in the Indian industry

Use of digesters at industrial complexes (to treat the waste generated at the factory) is also increasing. For the factories and businesses concerned, this is an excellent avenue to dispose of waste in a cost effective manner while at the same time generate heat and/or electricity. Industries that have an especially high potential for using anaerobic digestion include cattle and poultry industry, sugar, breweries, pulp and paper, leather, and the fruits & vegetables industry. As pointed out earlier, some of these industries are already producing electricity from biogas, and this trend is likely to grow further in future.

Many Indian industries, in their quest for becoming more environment conscious, are turning to biogas one of their energy sources. In Sep 2009, for instance, PepsiCo India, a division of PepsiCo installed a biogas plant at its Pune-based Frito-Lay manufacturing unit. It's the first plant within Frito-Lay's global operations to use biogas. Companies such as Sintex Industries have introduced novel biogas digesters for the small users of this renewable energy resource.

Future prospects for biogas in India

With the Indian government keen on utilizing renewable resources for energy production, it is likely that there will be a greater thrust and higher incentives for concepts such as biogas production from waste. An increasing awareness among the public regarding sustainable use of resources will only enhance the production and use of biogas. It can hence be expected that biogas will have a significant growth in India at all levels of usage (household, municipality and industry) for both heat generation and electricity production.

It is also possible to earn carbon credits for biogas-based power or heat generation in India. For instance, in Apr 2008, Andhyodaya, a non-government agency working in the field of promoting water management and non-conventional energy and social development distributed the first installment of the biogas carbon credit to farmers in the state of Kerala. Andhyodaya had helped construct 15,000 biogas plants in the state and earned carbon credits. This trend is likely to grow further.

Both the central and the state governments in India have recognized the significance of biomass-based energy in the context of development of the rural population. It is also heartening to note that steps are already being taken in this regard. For instance, in Feb 2010, the Haryana Government has formulated a Rs. 85 crore project for setting up 50,000 family size biogas plants to harness the potential of generating biogas for cooking and (remnants as) organic manure in the fields.

More such investments and efforts are on the horizon.

In sum, India has significant potential for generating heat and electricity from waste in the form of biogas. While only a portion of the potential has been tapped, it is likely that more investments in this direction could accelerate exploitation of this source in future.








EAI Consulting - Market Entry Strategy for Indian Renewable Energy

http://www.eai.in/ref/services/ime_consulting.html


17 October 2010

8 Uses For Biogas


There are a very wide range of uses for biogas. It can be used both as a fuel and as a raw material for the production of a wide range of most if not all organic compounds, depending on the sequence of reactions and degree of polymerization carried out.

Here is a list of the main uses for biogas:

1. For direct combustion at its point of production for heat

2. For direct combustion at its point of production in an (reciprocating) engine for the production of electrical power

3. For both 1. and 2. above, simultaneously which means that far more of the power is usefully used, because an engine will never be 100% efficient and always produce heat as hot water as a by-product. Biogas use projects, which provide both power and heat, are generally called CHP schemes (Combined Heat and Power).

4. As in 2. or 3. above but using a turbine or microturbine, instead of an "engine"

5. For use as a substitute for CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) for use at the point of production, potentially to run vehicles after use of readily available conversion kits on standard petrol driven vehicles. The biogas will require scrubbing or other cleaning before this can be done but such equipment is readily available.

6. Once CNG is produced, this can also be on a technical basis pumped into a regional natural gas mains distribution system. However, at the time of writing the operator of the natural gas mains may not permit this as a matter of policy. In many nations moves will be made over the next few years to (at government level) allow distributed biogas sources to replace natural gas, subject to stringent quality control on the biogas introduced into the public gas mains

7. Biogas can be used to produce bio-diesel after first processing as in 5., and then carrying out a sequence of reactions. A very many biocrop based Anaerobic Digestion Plants have been built with this being their primary purpose and this was of all the uses of biogas, the first to be used in large numbers in the western nations.

8. In the Eastern nations biogas is also used as a direct fuel for domestic cooking, and is generated from small buried digestors which use domestic sewage and also at times night soil.








The world is only just beginning to wake up to the huge importance of renewable sustainable biogas in the post fossil-fuel world. To be one of the people who gets in on this early, go to the biogas digester web site. Biogas is produced by the anaerobic digestion process - which you will also need to know about.


PDM food waste recycling breaks ground on new anaerobic digestion plant - Materials Handling World Magazine

PDM, the UK's largest food waste recycler, has celebrated the start of construction of its industry-leading anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Doncaster. This technology will add another method of recycling to PDM's portfolio of safe, secure and sustainable solutions and will use food waste as a resource to generate renewable energy.

PDM's AD service will operate under the ReFood brand and is being developed in partnership with SARIA Bio-industries who operate a network of ReFood plants in Germany. The new plant will be able to handle 45,000 tonnes of food waste each year and will include the latest de-packing systems to handle all types of food waste from across the food chain - food manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, hotels and even households.

The AD process works by harnessing the natural degrading process of biodegradable matter in a controlled environment. PDM's new plant will capture the methane produced to generate two mega watts per hour of renewable electricity, as well as heat for PDM's site. The plant will also produce a high quality nutrient-rich fertiliser which will be supplied to local farms - importantly helping to close the recycling loop as the nutrients from food are used to grow new crops.

Philip Simpson, commercial director at PDM comments: "We're delighted to see the start of construction of the ReFood plant. This venture helps to add another sustainable recycling solution to our existing portfolio. As a result, we're able to divert significant tonnages of food waste from landfill, where the methane that we can capture in the AD process could otherwise end up in the atmosphere, so it's a beneficial process on so many levels."

The ReFood plant will take around nine months to build and will include a food waste reception area, depackaging plant, digestor and combined heat and power plant. The facility is due to open in summer 2011.

Once operational, ReFood will bring 35 jobs to the local area and recycle food waste from a number of PDM's leading customers including Sainsbury's and commercial caterer Baxter Storey.


View the original article here

16 October 2010

Commercial food waste to fuel anaerobic digestion plant - FoodProductionDaily.com

News in brief Commercial food waste to fuel anaerobic digestion plant 22-Sep-2010

Related topics: Processing


A £12m anaerobic digestion plant that will convert food waste into energy is due to be completed in autumn 2011, said the UK company behind the scheme.


John Pointon & Sons (JPS) announced it would be going ahead with the project at its headquarters in Cheddleton, England, after receiving a £1.44m grant from the UK Government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP).


The plant will be capable of processing up to 60,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial food waste annually, including a diverse range of food stock from commercial customers such as chocolate and pastry, said the company.


The facility will have the potential to produce 2MW of electricity and save the equivalent of 85,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum. The development will include a pre-treatment facility, an advanced digestion plant, a biogas system and de-watering system. WRPA estimated that 195,000 tonnes of combined commercial and industrial (C&I) waste would be diverted from landfill in the first five years of the site’s operation.


View the original article here

15 October 2010

POPULAR ENERGY: BioMass - Wicked Local Mattapoisett

On the selectmen’s advisory Solid Waste Committee, there is an occasional attempt to revive discussion of Anaerobic Digestion. That term refers to the process of accelerating and controlling the natural process of digesting organic materials in the absence of oxygen.

To clarify further, the stomach does this all the time, although control is not always complete. In the British television series All Creatures Great and Small, there was an episode in which one of the vets was trying to relieve a bloated cow. Just as he succeeded, a nearby helper lit a cigarette. The resulting methane explosion blew both men into a nearby pasture.

In controlled situations, large quantities of organic matter are moved through a series of sealed tanks in which temperatures are gradually raised, methane is drawn off, and the remaining solids, with high nitrogen content, are packaged and sold to nurseries and farmers for soil enrichment.

I recently read an article about a dairy farm in Vermont with 385 milk cows. Things went well until the price of milk dropped and the operation started to lose money. The owner installed a big anaerobic digestion system and, thanks to an active market for soil conditioner, started to make a handsome profit. At the same time, they burn the methane in a boiler-plus-generator to provide much of the farm’s electricity.

An article in the current issue of Sierra magazine, titled “On the Moove,” expands on the subject. At Western Washington University, Professor Eric Leonhardt and his students have built a hybrid car that gets the equivalent of 94 miles to the gallon, using a biofuel made from cow manure, at a projected cost of $2.50 per gallon.

With the help of a grant from the Department of Energy, Leonhardt’s team built a mini-refinery at a dairy farm near Bellingham. There, they scrub the gases coming off of the manure, extracting the methane that is its major component.

To quote the professor: “It is a huge net winner for the environment. Not only are we removing a major source of methane emissions, which are 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, but we are also displacing fossil fuels by using biogas in hybrid vehicles.”

The team can produce the equivalent of 100,000 gallons of gas from the dairy’s 667 cows.

Although the article does not describe the added benefit of using the solid residue for soil conditioner, that important byproduct provides added income for the production facility, plus soils that are rejuvenated without use of petroleum derivatives.

I can’t resist this one: If your family had two cars, each traveling 15,000 miles a year at 30 miles per gallon, you would use 1,000 gallons, the output of just less than seven cows.

To offset your greenhouse gas emissions, donate seven cows to the Vermont dairy farm, claim a charitable tax credit from the IRS, claim a Renewable Energy Credit from MassCEC and feel good all year.

On another subject, Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, reports that wind now employs more people than the coal industry. This lends support to a recent statement by Larry Summers, President Obama’s economic advisor, that the key to economic recovery is to remake the energy sector.

E-mail franergy@verizon.net.


View the original article here

14 October 2010

£1.4m funding for new anaerobic digestion plant - Guttridge

The government has provided funding for a new anaerobic digestion plant in the Midlands.

Waste collection company John Pointon & Sons (JPS) has received a £1.4 million grant to help finance the construction of the £12 million facility at its Cheddleton headquarters.

The plant will generate up to 2MW of renewable energy and can process a maximum of 60,000 tonnes of food and industrial waste a year.

JPS has been awarded the funds by the government's Waste Resource and Action Programme (WRAP).

Steve Creed, director for business resource efficiency WRAP, said: "The capital funding we provide is crucial in stimulating private investment, as is the case with JPS.

"When finished, this AD facility will be a very impressive operation. With feedstock coming from local commercial and industrial waste streams, this will benefit local businesses and create local jobs."

The plant could be fully operational by October 2011.

Typical Guttridge equipment used in the anaerobic digestion industry includes: conveyorsscrew conveyorschain conveyorsbelt conveyors

Emma Green ADNFCR-2798-ID-800080120-ADNFCR


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13 October 2010

British biofuels industry boosted by calls to increase production - Guttridge

The UK biofuels industry has been boosted by calls to increase production in order to reach renewable energy targets.


Chris Huhne, department for energy and climate change minister, claimed more anaerobic digestion (AD) plants are also needed if renewable fuels are to account for 20 per cent of output by 2020, reports fwi.co.uk.


He told delegates at the Liberal Democrat party conference that biofuels would have a "very important" future, while also underlying the need to change the public perception of AD facilities.

Mr Huhne said: "We need to get anaerobic digestion plants out there and deal with the myths around them.


"We will work harder to make people love anaerobic digestion plants, particularly ones fed on pig slurry."


Financial incentives could also be introduced to make it "daft" for firms not to adopt renewable energy, he added.


Currently, the UK only produces more renewable fuels than two other European countries – Malta and Luxembourg.


Typical Guttridge equipment used in the biofuel industry includes; elevatorsbucket elevatorsvalves


James Smith ADNFCR-2798-ID-800073021-ADNFCR


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Regional Roundup - BioCycle magazine

BioCycle September 2010, Vol. 51, No. 9, p. 16


East Lansing, Michigan
AD OPERATOR TRAINING IN OCTOBER
Michigan State University's new Anaerobic Digestion Research and Education Center will play host to an Anaerobic Digester Operator Training Program to be held October 26-28, 2010. Topics to be covered:


Anaerobic digester start-up and system restarts, operation and process control, process indicators, operational and sampling schedules, safety, biogas utilization systems and regulations. The safety component will include a walkthrough of an on-farm anaerobic system. Panel discussions feature system operators - agricultural, industrial and wastewater - and technology providers, and a tour of the MSU waste to resource/anaerobic digestion lab. The program cost will be $600, and enrollment will be limited to the first 30 individuals. For additional information and to register, contact Dana Kirk at kirkdana@msu.edu; (517) 432-6530.


San Francisco, California
CITY SURPASSES DIVERSION BENCHMARKS


The City by the Bay announced in late August that it has shattered its goal of reaching at least 75 percent landfill diversion by 2010 and that it now has the highest recycling record of any city in the country. Mayor Gavon Newsom says the current rate of 77 percent diversion is up 5 percent from last year. Figures compiled by the city?s Environment Department for 2008 show San Francisco diverted more than 1.6 million tons of material ? double the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge ? through recycling, composting and reuse. The lowest disposal on record, 560,000 tons, went to the landfill.
?San Francisco is showing once again that doing good for our environment also means doing right by our economy and local job creation,? said Mayor Newsom. ?For a growing number of people, recycling provides the dignity of a paycheck in tough economic times. The recycling industry trains and employs men and women in local environmental work that can?t be outsourced and sent overseas, creating ten times as many jobs as sending material to landfills.? Recology, the city?s primary recycling company, employs more than 1,000 people in San Francisco and in the past few years, has added 118 new employees to sort recyclables and monitor collection routes in order to meet San Francisco?s aggressive recycling goals.


In related news, San Francisco Zero Waste Manager Jack Macy was named Recycler of the Year at the recent annual convention of the nonprofit California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA). The city aims to stop landfilling waste by 2020. ?Macy has done a tremendous amount of work creating fabulous programs that could spread across the nation,? said CRRA executive director Stephen Bantillo.


Woodstock, Ontario
BLENDED FOOD WASTES AS DIGESTER FUELS


Organic Resource Management Inc. (ORMI), based in Toronto, Ontario, recently acquired a property in Woodstock to construct an Organic Residuals Recovery Transfer Station (ORRTS). The facility will receive grease trap waste, FOG (fats, oils and grease), toter-collected source separated food waste, slurried grocery store organics and industrial dissolved air flotation (DAF) sludges from commercial, institutional and industrial generators in Ontario and western Quebec. ORMI will blend these feedstocks into a slurry to be delivered to anaerobic digesters on five Ontario farms. ?We have 20 year contracts to be the exclusive feedstock supplier to these farms,? says Douglas Carruthers, senior vice president of ORMI. ?We also can blend feedstocks for industrial and municipal digesters.? The facility, expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2011, will receive up to 150 tons/day of materials.


The receiving building at the transfer station will include a DODA bioseparator to process the FOG and toter-collected food waste to remove contaminants and make a slurry. Food waste from collection trucks servicing the toters will be combined into bulk trailers at third party transfer stations for transport to Woodstock. Separate tanks will receive the grease trap waste, FOG and DAF. ?The building will not have a traditional tipping floor,? explains Carruthers. ?All movement of materials is enclosed. The facility will create a homogenized blend of feedstock and allow for some initial hydrolysis breakdown, resulting in a conditioned material. We can hang an octane rating on the tanker truck so the farms know what we are sending.? Adding this material to the digesters significantly boosts biogas production.
The five farms use continuous mix, mesophilic digester technologies that can handle 8 to 11 percent solids content. The blend is unloaded into storage tanks and then pumped into a pasteurization unit that heats the material to 70?C (held for one hour) prior to being fed into the digesters. ORMI currently operates grease trap waste facilities in Toronto and Ottawa that process materials into a clean slurry. Those operations also receive DAF sludges and slurried grocery store food waste. ?These feedstocks have been blended and utilized in anaerobic digesters for over three years, which has given us the experience to move forward with the ORRTS in Woodstock,? adds Carruthers. ?We installed a DODA bioseparator at the Toronto facility last fall, which is very effective in removing trash from the materials we receive.?


Martha?s Vineyard, Massachusetts
GOLF COURSE GREEN IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE


A Martha?s Vineyard golf course has been chemical pesticide and herbicide free since its inception eight years ago. Before Vineyard Golf Club even broke ground, developers struck a deal with environmentally friendly island dwellers to put the course on the map as one of the country?s only organically maintained facilities. Superintendent Jeff Carlson described a ?team approach? to pest and disease control that combines use of natural products such as Sustane, a composted turkey manure fertilizer, with common-sense cultural practices. He?s also experimented with compost teas, though his current regime does not include them.


Despite the challenges of managing primarily with natural fertilizers, Carlson says, ?the greens are getting better, not worse. Pesticides are like antibiotics in the grass ? you could make a case that their continued use causes some degree of sterilization of the microbial activity; you are knocking out the good bugs. Hopefully, what we are seeing is that the greens are beginning to fight off a lot of these diseases with their own beneficial microbial fungi and bacteria. There is a lot of stuff going on inside the soil that we don't really know too much about.



Carlson says superintendents across the industry are being pushed toward more natural methods of management by consumer awareness, new knowledge about turf and soil management and shear economics. If you don't have to spray every fairway and tee green, that saves a lot on the chemical budget, he says. The thing that most drives how we manage our courses is what our golfers perceive as a good golf course. Mono-stands of green grasses and all those practices lead to more pesticide use. There needs to be a paradigm shift of how golfers look at courses in order to put the stress on excellent playability versus visual perception. We are, as an industry, not 100 percent there yet.


St. Peters, Missouri
CITY RECEIVES EXCELLENCE IN COMPOSTING AWARD


The Solid Waste Association of North America recently chose the city of St. Peters as winner of the 2010 Gold Excellence Award in Composting. This is the third major honor the city has received in recent years for its Organic Resource Recycling Program (ORRP), which turns dewatered biosolids and yard trimmings into high-quality compost. In 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded St. Peters (population 58,000) a National Clean Water Act Recognition Award in the category of Exemplary Biosolids Management for a large operating facility. In 2007, St. Peters received an Outstanding Management of Wastewater Plant Biosolids award from the Missouri Water Environment Association for developing and implementing cost-effective, environmentally safe and publicly acceptable biosolids management practices.


The city collects yard trimmings curbside and opened the Earth Centre facility for drop-off. The dewatered biosolids from St. Peters? wastewater treatment plant are processed, mixed, composted and tested. The ORRP recycles 6,000 tons of biosolids annually and 30,000 cubic yards of yard trimmings into reusable mulch and compost. St. Peters residents are entitled to two free cubic yards of compost or mulch each year. Between 2,000 and 3,000 residents pick up free compost or mulch from the Earth Centre each year (and may purchase more than their free allotment at a discounted rate). The city uses the compost for erosion control, to help grow vegetation after construction projects and in constructed wetland projects.


Lemoore, California
SOLAR FARM TO SHINE THE LIGHT ON DEFUNCT FARMLAND
California farmland ruined by decades of irrigation is slated to become one of the largest solar array fields in the world ? potentially, according to The New York Times, generating as much power as several nuclear plants. The proposed 30,000-acre Westlands Solar Park near Lemoore ? in the San Joaquin Valley about 30 miles south of Fresno ? would reside on 47 square miles of once-fertile farmland largely owned by the Westlands Water District and retired from agricultural production due to high salt levels in soils as well as chronic water shortages. The project has received broad support from environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, agricultural interests and state government.


Proponents of the project say that since the land has been farmed for so long, there are no issues to contend with regarding impacts to wildlife ? issues that have derailed other potential solar farm projects in California. At peak power, the proposed project could generate up to 1 gigawatt of power, enough energy for about million homes. Not too far from the Interstate 5 corridor, the location offers another plus because it will be relatively easy to deliver the generated power to transmission lines and substations. Some farmers in the area have said that leasing some of their land for solar would free up water rights that would allow them to farm other areas adequately. According to published reports, the project represents a trend to site alternative energy projects such as wind and solar on despoiled lands such as toxic waste and landfill sites.


College Station, Texas


San Carlos, California
COUNTY PHASES IN CURBSIDE SINGLE-STREAM AND FOOD WASTE COLLECTION


RethinkWaste of the South Bayside Waste Management Authority recently began phased delivery of 276,000 recycling, compost and garbage carts to 92,000 residences within its service area. Residents will receive a black ?Garbage? cart in the size of their choosing, a 64-gallon single-stream blue ?Recycle? cart and 96-gallon green ?Compost? cart. The wheeled carts will be serviced by a new automated collection fleet of 72 side loaders, replacing the existing Allied Waste fleet of rear loaders with two-person crews.


RethinkWaste?s partner, Recology, invested approximately $35 million for the new residential collection fleet and carts. ?The start of the rollout is a significant and meaningful milestone for our customers,? said Kevin McCarthy, executive director of RethinkWaste. Single-stream recycling means those customers will no longer be required to separate paper products from plastic, metal and glass containers in separate recycling tubs. Once everyone has their carts, within about 3-1/2 months, residents will also receive a 2-gallon kitchen pail for in-home compost collection.


Copyright 2010, The JG Press, Inc.


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