The largest biogas production facility in the US has just been approved to be built. As a facility, it will use cow manure as a feedstock for biogas and burn it to generate electricity. At first, this seems like a pretty eco-friendly endeavor, for cow manure contains methane, a greenhouse gas that is roughly 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The article mentions that the manure will be trucked in. This process presumably uses petroleum fuels.
I think a biogas facility is a fine idea, but one has to account for all the potential costs and inputs. With this system, the cost of operation will fluctuate as petroleum gets more expensive. However, I think a smaller biogas facility would work pretty well in smaller communities, because all the farmers could bring manure to a local biogas facility and create electricity for the community that way. (This would hopefully incur less transportation costs.) Farmers then might even get a little extra money on the side for selling the cow manure. However, I see a possible hang-up in this system. This model assumes that farmers don't need the cow manure. However, manure is used for fertilizer and in a sense, it's very valuable for raising crops.
The cool thing about biogas though is that it can use many different feedstocks, so communities could possibly fuel it with: sewage, leftover food, garbage, farming byproducts, etc. It would be interesting to see how people will come up with solutions for generating power, to see the florist and the pizza shop decide who's scrap bio material will be used for generating electricity or use it for something else.
For those of you who don't know how biogas works, check out this video!
Story Source : http://www.bioenergy-news.com/index.php?/Industry-News?item_id=2457
Nice little polling thing you added!
ReplyDeleteI will add to the angel site!
I really enjoyed your commentary because, to be honest, I don't know that much about biofuel except that it is a fuel that is made through a chemical process using natural products (and that's coming from my boyfriend trying to put it in "my" kind of terms). The fact that this facility is burning cow manure as a feedstock for biogas to generate electricity is amazing!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I would think that the process would be inexpensive but I didn't take into account the fluctuating cost of petroleum. Keeping this in mind, I do agree with you and think that operating in a smaller community would be more beneficial due to the farmers being able to bring in manure to be burned, which will then generate electricity.
This is a place where ideas will take us somewhere. People have a chance to use sewage, leftover food and garbage (like you said) to fuel biogas with. Like I said, that is amazing and I can't wait to see where this technology will take us.