experience with anaerobic fermentation out there ?

[jacquesm]

A friend of mine has recently bought a fairly large property, enough for several appartments and businesses. He's quite environmentally conscious and is researching making his own gas for cooking and heating purposes.

His preferred method is to use anaerobic fermentation and while discussing things with him I figured I'd ask the fieldlines 'crowd' if anybody out there has already done this and has helpful hints/tips/success stories/failures to relate so that we can avoid duplicating efforts.

Any information you can supply would be greatly appreciated, especially if you have already dabbled in this and are willing to share the results obtained.

[tecker]

I use Pipe separation in my house (Shower and sink )  to grow rye grass for worm castings But that could be cut and feed to a digester .I'm looking at testing the septic tank . There's methane that comes from there .The continents could be separated and agitated easily for max production .  finished liquid used to  increase rye production (after aerating and exposure to high ultraviolet). I don't see any scum growing in the tea made from worm casting from just sink and shower ( a good tel of coliform consent). The chemicals used is a biggie that is hole can of worms .

[richhagen]

Jaques, I don't have experience with this but recall reading a couple of articles on the subject, you may have seen these articles, but there are a couple of articles by Al Rutan regarding this subject in the ESSN journal.  One is in the January 05 edition, and while I don't recall which month the other article was in, here is also a link to all of the editions online.  Rich

http://www.rebelwolf.com/essn/ESSN-Jan2005.pdf

http://www.rebelwolf.com/essn.html

[tecker]

 Most salts will separate with electrolysis (along with other things I hope ).The salts may increase hho but would have to be cleaned there .I have some stainless that's destined for that project.

[Bruce S]

I'll second Rich's link, Al Rutan was a pioneer in this area.

There's an entire history including his complete how to over on journeytoforever website.

I did build the one also done in England by a gent who was all about using chicken droppings for Methane based fuel. The plastic and tire method seemed to work very well. Heed ALL the warnings about letting go of the first outputs, they can explode ;_)

The water bubbling works to remove sulfar smell as well.

I quit due to lack of availble droppings and not the least that the city wanted nothing to do with letting me try from pipe cast offs :-) Dog/cat and others turned out to be too low an output without "adding" stuff.

I do hope your friend does take this on, getting started is easy enough and fairly cheap. Just becareful and do run the output through a water bubbler>>> you'll be glad you did.

The solids left over after I shut it down was some of the best "stuff" my container grown tomatoes grew like weeds :-)

Google chicken poop for fuel and have a good read!! its very informative and the old guy was way smart too. I wish I could find some of the pumping equipment he used to pressurize , once at a specific pressure it stays liquid easily.

Keep us up to date!!

Bruce S

[Seedler]

I agree with bruce, Any air in your digester and you got a problem.  

I made basic digesters from 5 gallon drums, and was using cattle waste.  I've heard that human waste is the best.  Always ment to go full scale but never had the time.  Remember to treat the digester like a real stomach.  If your using any kind of animal waste remember to throw in a bit of greens every now and then.

Hope all goes well.

Dee.

[Bruce S]

Seedler;

 I would like to stay on this track even more.Perhaps this will help them in their quest.

How well did the 5 gallon units work out? Did you slurry the "stuff" and go 50/50 with water weight? Did you go the drum in a drum similar to Al's initial "beginners" setup

Bruce S

[Seedler]

Bruce,

Yes I used a 50/50 mix with water.  I uses a drum in drum setup to store and compress the gas, just one drum upside down in the other with the lower one filled with water, and a concrete block on top.  I was only experimenting so I never astually used the gas, just used a bicycle valve slightly open to have a small flame burning.

Dee.

[Chagrin]

You need to keep the temperature of the mix above 80 degrees F if you want it to work well and you need to keep the temperature reasonably stable. 5 gallon buckets probably wouldn't work that well.

[elvin1949]

jacquesm

  Earlier this evening  NBC nightly news had a piece about a dairy farmer/cheese factory in Minnesota sp?  doing that.

 They had a 6,000 dollar electric bill every month and a HUGE waste problem.

They built a digester that was as tall as a grain silo and looked to be at least 5 times as big around.

They fed it with cattle waste then fed the methane to several large generators.   They are producing enough electricity to offset all of there use. And supplying 60 other homes around them with all the power they need. Also the affluent left over feeds there pastures.

 The article should be online at NBC's website.

later

Elvin  

[elvin1949]

Sorry

  I forgot something. Years ago [ early 80's ]

the Mother Earth News did a interview with a pig farmer in South Africa that was doing the same thing. I think his name was  John L Fry.

 He described the whole operation with pictures.

later

Elvin  

[jmk]

 I saw an edition yesterday too on a dairy farmer in Waterloo Wisconsin. Maybe this is the same farmer? He gets the methane from the manure to power his farm. Then they use the manure for fertilizer. They have a dairy farm that makes lots of cheese

[finnsawyer]

So the left over rich feed their pastures?  Man, our foreign brethren must have some puzzled looks reading this stuff.  Anyway, I saw that segment too and didn't see any rich folks other than the farmers themselves.

[TomW]

Ok so finn is our thread spelling comedic now?

Affluent, effluent...

massage message...

Hope it ends soon before the wrong people get insulted.

Some folks don't seem to appreciate or get the humor or don't see it as humorous like I do, however.

My personal favorite is guide wires for guy wires.

J, sorry for the topic drift.

T

[ghurd]

The still is made from a 5 gallon bucket.  It works.

He wrote a book about it.

G-

[zeusmorg]

 L. John Fry is also known as the "father" of methane production his first working plant in South Africa dates back to 1956, his designs still are emulated in the field today. The Mother Earth News built several designs back in the 70's and early 80's and have many articles on the subject.

 Fry's system mainly consisted of a large anaerobic digester, 2 converted diesel engines for electric generation, a good storage design and some scrubber systems.

 Journey to forever has one of his publications available on the web: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/MethaneDigesters/MDToC.html

 A must read for anyone wishing to get into this.. the University of Colorado also did extensive research into the subject at one time.

 It really depends on the scale of production your friend wishes to get into, and what raw materials he has to use.

 For a digester to properly convert any waste materials the temperature should be held between 80 and 100 F this is usually done by burning off part of the methane produced to heat a water loop. Stirring of the slurry also increases production.

 Safety is a VERY important factor in this, as a mixture of between 4% and 25% methane to air is explosive. You must insure there is no available oxygen content in your storage and piping systems, and these systems are considered an explosion hazard.

 Usually these systems aren't economically viable unless you run a large farm,and have the waste to deal with. I doubt very seriously you would be legal building a system within a metropolitan area.

 Also methane gas has a much less energy potential than any of the other common heating gases.  

 Getting a system up and running can be difficult and my experiment with a smaller system (200 gal multi-stage built out of 55 gal drums) wasn't all that successful, however I do believe with persistence it can be done.

[finnsawyer]

Just wondering.  Who are the wrong people?  Is there money involved somewhere in this?  O.K.  I needled those guys about the words and flagged the issues for foreign readers, but what really gets my goat is the "there" for "their" error.  Come on, if English is your native language you know the difference.  Don't be so sloppy.

[elvin1949]

jmk

 I was half asleep when it came on.

I think you are right ,it as the same one.

later

Elvin

[elvin1949]

finn

  I stepped in it that time.

later

Elvin

[Bruce S]

zeusmorg;

  That's the other person!! Thanks for the other link, I for the life of me couldn't remember his name. He also nocited how much fewer problems with flies he had, they went in with the poo and stayed:-) circle of life thingy!!

One thing though, this is the item that is 90% of natural gas so the energy is right on track.

He was the one who even toured the US showing how easy it was.

The important idea of being carful with the air part. I'm glad to see all who've posted here about prodution has chimed in with it too.

Finn & TomW:

Since we're basically dealing in/with poo, I'm pretty sure everyone one got the joke. I don't think anyone reading these got upset about the jokes or mispeled words.

It's all "poo", so if you're dealing in/with "poo" you either have a thick skin and good sense of humor or this is the wrong area of conversation.

You should hear some of the jokes that go on around people who are indeed trying some of this out!! It's usually the women picking on the guys being so timid about the "poo" jokes. Most of them say this stuff is nothing compared to a babies first solid meal :-<> and how it'll pass...

If soemone's getting paid to post then I would be critcal of spelling, since no one is, well not such a big deal. Unless an English teacher is reading then ummmm sorry..:-)

It's very true about the temp being between 80F and 100F. below that and they work just slower above that and they begin to die out.

There was even a short part on PBS about making one in a 5gal water bottle, works great, except that it's not refillable without stopping the production.

Cheers

Bruce

PS, yep I make Alky in 5 gal plastic stills, much easier than loading poo :-()

 

[Bruce S]

tecker;

 Could you give more detail about the worm castings? how does it do versus a good potting soil? to buy the stuff from around here aint cheap!

Carefull with the septic tank! by tghe time it gets from there its already got air mixing with it, might be scary to try and tap.

Do you have a store bought U-V light setup? Or home built?

Thanks for the info

Cheers

Bruce S

 

[josephcrawley]

You should look at the research of Dr A. D. Karve. He has built much smaller digesters that produce higher gas volumes by using more caloricly dense inputs such as spent grains, oil cake non edible starches. Since poo has already been digested there's not much in it to make methane from. The digester I saw takes 2 kilos of input per day(dry weight) and provides enough gas for a family of 5 to cook with.

Joseph

[not benjamindees]

I've read several articles about methane digesters.  Once met a guy who installed this sort of thing on trash dumps.  They line the dump with plastic sheeting, insert wells and burn off the gas produced by the decomposing garbage.

For small setups, though, the general consensus is that you need a large amount of excrement, and perhaps some greenery thrown in as well, to produce a usable amount of gas.  You also need to make sure the amount of solids is high in relation to the amount of liquids.  The output of a typical toilet, for instance, contains much more water than could be productively digested.  Maintaining one seems like a full time job.

I've been thinking about putting together something like this as a small septic system for a while now, using a sealed plastic 55 gallon drum.  Since your post, I've given it some more thought. The design I have in mind would basically separate the liquids and solids under pressure with some type of filter.  The solids would be digested.  The liquids would be bled off by a trap valve into a grey water disposal pit.  It would probably also include some sort of relief valve.  I don't see any reason the entire thing couldn't be made of plastic.

Hopefully it would produce enough gas to maintain a small pilot light.  The drum could be insulated or buried fairly easily.

And actually I could find a couple of uses for one of these at the moment.  So there's a decent chance it will get built.  If anyone is interested in collaborating, let me know.