[Stoves] Dung as fertilizer and fuel

[adkarve]

Dear Mr. Marshall,
the methanogenic bacteria cannot digest lignin, but they can easily digest
cellulose, starch, sugar, fat or protein. Any of these substances would
yield methane if fed to methanogenic bacteria. Dung is not the food of the
methanogenic bacteria at all. They are only thrown out of the body along
with dung. Therefore dung is required only as a source of bacteria. However,
one can equally well use water from the septic tank of a latrine, or slurry
from an existing biogas plant. Once the bacteria have established themselves
in the biogas plant, one can operate the plant entirely without dung. In
fact that is how all our clients operate their own domestic biogas plants.
The number installed by us has, in the meanwhile, reached 900.
Yours
A.D.Karve
----- Original Message -----
From: jason marshall <jdmarshall at gmail.com>
To: Stoves <stoves at listserv.repp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Dung as fertilizer and fuel


> I remember reading at some point about a research project to determine
> if mixing cow manure with waste cellulose could increase methane
> production.  Unfortunately I'm unable to find a citation now.  It
> would have been sometime in the last few years.
>
> All I can recall now was that yes, it did improve output, but I can't
> tell you what sort of cellulose source they used (sawdust? straw?
> wastepaper?), nor the ratio (1:1 seems to ring a bell, but I don't
> know if that's by volume or by mass).
>
> The theory went that the manure provides the microbial action, but
> most of the energy comes from the 'new' material.
>
> I wonder, for instance, what would happen if one put manure and
> bagasse in a digester.
>
> -Jason
>
> On 8/29/06, adkarve <adkarve at pn2.vsnl.net.in> wrote:
> > The sugar industry in India uses bagasse containing about 50% moisture
as
> > fuel, to produce steam for generating electricity. Dry dung cakes,
> > especially those that contain straw and dry leaves as additives, have
> > definitely a higher calorific value than bagasse with 50% moisture. The
> > western part of Maharashtra State in India, has a well established sugar
> > industry as well as a well established dairy industry. The dung
available
> > with the dairies can be mechanically briquetted, after squeezing the
water
> > out of the dung by means of a filter press. This process would yield the
so
> > called dung tea, that can go back to the field. Briquettes made from the
> > dung solids can be burned in the boilers of the sugar factory to
generate
> > electricity or sold to anybody who may want to use them as fuel. Making
> > biogas from dung is a wasteful process. One gets only 25 per cent of the
> > original calorific value, if the dung is converted into methane.
> > Yours
> > A.D.Karve
> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> - Jason
>
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