[Digestion] delivering biogas in cylinders

[adkarve]

Dear Paul,
Making methane from sorghum was just an example. One can equally well make
it from waste starchy or sugary material. It can be overripe fruits, peels
and stones of fruits from a fruit processing factory, turmeric or ginger
rhizomes from which curcumin or zinziber oil has been extracted, rhizomes of
banana, oil cake of non-edible oils like castor, Jatropha (and 20 other
species currently available in India) erc. In all these cases, the transport
cost of the raw material has already been absorbed by the main product.  In
the case of food waste from restaurants and in municipal soil waste, the
municipalities would bear the cost of transport. My latest biogas plant
model would produce about 200 litres of methane per 100 litre digester
capacity, within a reaction period of just 24 hours. This process allows the
volume and capital cost of the methane digesters to be drastically reduced.
I am not planning for huge centrally located digesters but small ones to be
located wherever suitable raw material is available. I agree that gaseous
fuel, and especially methane, is difficult to transport. Therefore I am
thinking of decentralised factories, which would get their raw material
locally and also sell the methane only to local customers.
The process is so simple, that every family can produce its own methane by
using my technology.  We have already installed 2500 domestic digesters
working on food waste. They belonged to the category that produces about 50
litres of methane per 100 litre digester volume. The cost of these
digesters, producing daily about 250 g of methane, is around US$200. My new
digester, producing the same amount of methane, would cost just US$ 75. Both
the models can be scaled up to industrial scale.
Out of the petroleum that India uses, almost 80% is imported. Practically
the entire foreign exchange earned by India through export of goods goes out
of the country again for importing petroleum. My process offers some relief
to the Indian economy from the compulsion of importing the middle eastern
oil. It is a cheap process, as it uses waste products. Unlike alcohol,
anybody can produce methane without having to get permission from the
government.
A.D.Karve

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Harris <paul.harris at adelaide.edu.au>
To: adkarve <adkarve at pn2.vsnl.net.in>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 5:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Digestion] delivering biogas in cylinders


> G'day A.D. Karve et al,
>
> I see economics as misleading, as the price of fossil fuel is too cheap
> - we need to account in energy!
>
> Of course farmers can deliver inputs over long distances and you can
> economically compress methane at today's energy cost, as all that is
> done with fossil fuels. What you are actually doing is acclerating the
> decine of oil as the energy used in transport and conpression in your
> process could be used directly for something else without the
> inefficiency of producing methane - every unnecessary transformation of
> energy is a waste of energy as it is inefficient. We need to look at the
> whole system, not just a small component.
>
> Happy digesting,
> HOOROO