[Digestion] Cassava and Motor home, Manure flotation and Resource handbooks comments
Terrence Sauvé
tsauve at alfredc.uoguelph.ca
Thu Sep 13 11:56:15 EDT 2007
Excellent comment.
We do not see often enough the discussion of water being the most important GHG in atmosphere. Didn't saw that in the IPCC reports.
Why don't we make more Tequila with all that Cassava?
This discussion board is getting quite active since a few weeks...
Also another comment from the mobile motor home digester: why don't you buy a bunch of solar panels, a small wind generator and a few deep cycle batteries? Less of a pain in my opinion.
Never herd of actual manure floating in a digester, probably an issue with stirring and dilution. Someone spoke of a Chinese biogas handbook for rural regions. Anybody has that link? Might answer some questions on dilution of high %TS manure.
Two guide that I recommend for American people:
Dairy Waste Handbook, Dennis Burke
Biomethane from Dairy Waste - A Sourcebook for the Production and Use of Renewable Natural Gas in California,, Western United Dairymen
They both answer general questions that come along here, like biogas use and production, issues for digesters (both small and large scale systems in America).
They can both be found on the net relatively fast, sorry, forgot the original download links.
The founder of this forum also has a very good starting point, www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas
I will be doing co-digestion studies (with manure) for corn silage, FOG (grease traps waste) and whey in the next few months. If someone has questions or would like to discuss how I will be doing it, open up! I have most of the references available in *.pdf file. I will also be posting pictures maybe on the biogas forum (I will make an effort!) http://biogas.wikispaces.com/Digester+Projects
Good luck in your quests,
______________________________________
Terrence Sauvé, B.Eng Bioresource
Field Research Assistant
Recherche et Transfert de Technologie
Alfred Campus - University of Guelph
31 St. Paul Street, P.O. Box 580
Alfred, Ontario, K0B 1A0, CANADA
Tel.: 613-679-2218 x602
Fax: 613-679-2420
E-mail: tsauve at alfredc.uoguelph.ca
>>> "Katahdin Energy Works" <KatahdinEnergyWorks at verizon.net> 13/09/07 5:37 >>>
I think it's silly to sequester CO2--but then again, I think the fundamental
cause of global warming are aviation emissions of H20 into the greenhouse
layer; however why not grow your 'sugar' crops in greenhouses and use the
CO2 as 'fertilizer'....the 'Dutch touch'...let Mother Nature do your carbon
sequestration. Grow your 'carbon forest' indoors?
Frank J. Heller, MPA
KATAHDIN ENERGY WORKS
12 Belmont St.
Brunswick, ME 04011-3004
207.729.6090
http://mysite.verizon.net/fjheller/
-----Original Message-----
From: digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Lou Dobb
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 12:25 AM
To: Scupham, Samuel K.; Duncan Martin; Digestion at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Biogas + CCS = highly feasible qua N input
Good question: 230 square miles = 60,000 hectares.
-you need at least 75 kilograms of nitrogen fertilizer per hectare for a
good cassava crop = 4500 tons for 60,000 ha
-it takes around 33,000 cubic feet or 930 cubic meters of natural gas to
make 1 ton of N fertilizer (i.e. 148,500,000 cubic feet or 4,205,000 cubic
meters of natural gas for 4500 tons)
-thus, we would spend 4,205,000 cubic meters on natural gas to obtain
300,000,000 cubic meters of natural gas equivalent biomethane from cassava.
-in short, the final balance is extremely positive, we only need a tiny bit
of NG inputs to get a huge amount out
I bet that for sugar cane the balance is even better.
"Scupham, Samuel K." <ScuphamSK at bv.com> wrote: You'll have to check my
units, but I did some quick math to put in perspective how much energy this
is, just throwing some round numbers at it.
21000 Btu/lb NG
250000 tons NG/tanker
500000000 lbs NG/tanker
1.05E+13 Btu/tanker
6900 Btu/kWh for 2x1 combined cycle
1521739130 kWh/tanker
500000 kW output for 2x1 combined cycle
3043 hours of 500 MW combined operation per tanker
How much natur
-----Original Message-----
From: digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Lou Dobb
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:22 PM
To: Scupham, Samuel K.; Duncan Martin; Digestion at listserv.repp.org
Subject: Re: [Digestion] Biogas + CCS
The friends over at Biopact have already done so.
Quote:
===
To fill the largest LNG tanker currently on the market - with a capacity of
250,000 tons of liquefied natural gas, equivalent to around 300 million
cubic meters of natural gas - with pure biomethane, one would need between
450 and 650 million cubic meters of biogas. This amount can be obtained from
around 60,000 hectares of cassava, or 40,000 hectares of sugarcane.
===
Say you capture the carbon dioxide from those 650 million cubic meters of
biogas (at 35% CO2 per cubic meter), you would get around 450,000 tonnes of
CO2.
Most current sequestration projects pump between 5 and 10 million tonnes of
CO2 per year into wells (e.g. Statoil = 10mio t/y).
Now clearly, we only generate 450,000 tonnes of CO2 per LNG tanker we fill
with biomethane, which allows for great flexibility; either we stick to 1
shipment per year because we have chosen to sequester into a tiny site; or
we simply create a larger plantation because we have chosen to sequester
into a larger site.
Of course, much more flexibility is possible because of the emergence of
CNG ships. These don't require liquefaction/regasification infrastructures
and would be an excellent match for biogas + CCS projects.
On oceanic CNG transport and tankers, see here:
A quick look at CNG ships
http://biopact.com/2007/09/quick-look-at-cng-ships.html
Not sure, but it could be feasible, couldn't it? Just think of the fact
that we can actually go carbon-negative! All other renewables and nuclear
are merely carbon-positive or carbon-neutral. That is: they prevent new
emissions from entering the atmosphere. Biogas + CCS would take emissions
*from the past* out of the atmosphere.
Mmm, not sure.
Cheers, Lou
"Scupham, Samuel K." wrote: It would be an interesting exercise to
calculate how many acres of crops would need to be digested to produce
enough methane to fill an LNG tanker.
Regards,
Sam Scupham
-----Original Message-----
From: digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:digestion-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Lou Dobb
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 2:47 PM
To: Duncan Martin; Digestion at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [Digestion] Biogas + CCS
Duncan, I think you have misunderstood the idea of so-called "Bio-energy
with Carbon Storage" systems (BECS).
The entire point is to build your biogas plant at the sequestration site.
The great advantage of biogas production is that you can clean up the gas at
the sequestration point before you burn it (pre-combustion carbon capture).
This means you become entirely independent of power plants; no need for
power plants, no need for nearby markets. You grow energy crops for biogas
close to the sequestration point; this can be any remote point.
Scientists have said that such BECS systems are the most feasible way to
combat climate change; they can take us back to pre-industrial atmospheric
CO2 levels by mid-century. They studied these systems in the context of
"abrupt climate change" scenarios and geo-engineering options.
So to illustrate the concept: take a depleted near-shore oil well in Angola:
on-shore you grow crops; digest them, scrub out the CO2 and pump it into the
old oil field. Then you have ultra-clean, carbon-negative biomethane, that
can be exported (either in CNG ships or in LNG tankers).
This concept precisely allows you to use sequestration sites that could
otherwise not be used. That's a huge advantage. Other CCS concepts have the
great disadvantage that they are tied to power-plants, and so they must find
a sequestration site close to an already existing power plant; this often
requires huge and costly infrastere's some interesting research showing that there are a large number of
such remote sequestration sites.
Finally, the economics might work out given the fact that carbon prices are
set to skyrocket. Moreover, if you want to sell NG quality gas, you have to
capture carbon anyways. So why do all this effort to then release it into
the atmosphere, when you can just as well store the captured CO2 in a
sequestration site?
I found an interesting article about this concept, here:
Pre-combustion CO2 capture from biogas - the way
forward?http://biopact.com/2007/03/way-forward-pre-combustion-co2-capture.ht
ml
It seems like biogas with CCS could be a winner because carbon capture costs
are considerably lower than for fossil fuels (check the table).
Yours, Lou
Duncan Martin wrote: Lou and all
The principle of sequestration is fine - but I very much doubt that the
economics would work for AD.
You have obviously grasped one of the major problems, that of scale, when
you suggest locating the biogas plant near a carbon sequestration site
(which would certainly have to be near a major source, such as a large power
plant or a large sink, such as an oilfield). Such installations are not
generally in the same areas as anaerobic digesters.
The energy used to haul the digester feedstock to the biogas plant and to
haul the digestate back to wherever it is to be used would add substantially
to the operating costs of the biogas plant, the economics of which are
generally fairly marginal at best.
At the scale of many biogas plants, a more realistic option might be to
supply it to glasshouses, where it would be sequestered by boosting plant
growth. At least one Scotch whisky distillery was doing this 30 years ago,
although the CO2 came from the fermentation process, not from a biogas
plant.
(The Scots might be a more cheerful race, if it were not for the fact that
only 50% of the carbohydrate that goes into a distillery comes out as
ethanol!! The remainder, of course, is lost as CO2. However, they can
console themselves with a per capita production rate of ethanol about 10x
higher than their nearest competitor! 20x would be nice, of course - but why
be greedy?)
An interesting alternative might be to release it in an unconfined growing
environment, such as a biomass plantation or forest. I do not know how
efficient the capture of CO2 would be but my guess would be that a dense
plantation or forest canopy might extract quite a lot of the CO2, at least
in summer, provided it was released at ground level and well away from the
edges of the planted area. An efficiency well below 100% would still make a
useful contribution, given that the energy cost and transport costs would be
almost zero.
Otherwise, I do not think there is usually much alternative to venting the
CO2 to atmosphere. It might be argued that this is equally good, since it
will sooner or later be taken up by plant growth anyway. It follows that the
above 'forest' proposal would only be useful if there was a significant
improvement in the biomass growth rate -- which there might be.
Duncan J Martin
Chair
Republic of Ireland Centre
Chartered Institution of Wastes Management
================================
CONTACT DETAILS
Duncan J Martin, PhD, CEng, CSci, MIEI, MCIWM, MIChemE
24 Townsfield, Cloughjordan, N Tipperary, Ireland
Mobile: +353 86 8377 906
Home: +353 505 42087
Email: duncanjmartin at eircom.net
================================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lou Dobb"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 6:14 PM
Subject: [Digestion] What happens to CO2 when scrubbed out of biogas?
Okay, I'm a bit of a lay man, but I wonder what happens to the CO2 if it is
scrubbed out of biogas by water washing.
And, importantly, wouldn't it be possible to store this CO2 underground (as
in carbon capture and storage systems; in depleted oil fields)? This would
make biogas carbon-negative.
In pr export the
carbon-negative biomethane which is now upgraded to natural gas quality.
You would get a premium for this carbon-negative gas (carbon currently costs
�,�20 per ton, but this is expected to increase significantly).
So has anyone thought about coupling biogas production to CCS?
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