Methane our most Wasted Resource - 3/12/08

Hobert Pruitt
Beyond Fossil Fuel Columnist

The other day my son and I were driving past the local landfill. I pointed out to my son the pipe coming out of the ground with the large flame billowing from the top. I explained to him that as the stuff in the landfill decays it creates methane gas which is simply a fancy name for natural gas. What a total waste of resources. The methane could be collected and used to generate electricity or create heat, any number of uses, but we just burn it off like it was a nuisance.

A number of years ago I watched a documentary on India where in this area of the county all the wood from the surrounding forest have been burned by the local people to cook food. A sponsored government program was started where each family would somehow receive a large cylinder about five foot tall and twenty feet in diameter. The family would put all their human and animal waste in the cylinder along with any other food waste. A pipe came out of the top of the cylinder which captured the methane coming off the waste. The methane then was used for cooking and heating. Yes this sounds gross, but they had no other options.

Recently a company called Sintex in India has come up with a solution to solve India’s sanitation problem along with their energy problem. Fortune magazine recently reported that Sintex Industries is a plastic and textile manufacture in Gujarat, India looking to profit from India’s human waste problem. Sintex has developed a new biogas digester which turns human waste, animal waste and kitchen garbage into methane which can be used for cooking or generating electricity.

Sintex’s digester uses bacteria to break down waste into sludge like a septic tank. The process emits mostly methane gas. Instead of venting the methane into the air like we do here in the U.S. from our landfills, the methane is piped into a storage canister.

A 1 cubic meter digester primed with cow dung to provide bacteria will convert the waste from a four person family into enough gas to cook all the meals. The sludge can be used for fertilizer. The 1 cubic meter unit cost about $425.00 and will pay for itself in energy savings in less than two years. $425.00 is a high price for most people in India, so the government is subsidizing the price to about one third of the cost.

We are seeing the start of a worldwide energy crisis. We will see $4.00 gasoline in just a few weeks and maybe $6.00 by 2009. If we don’t start conserving energy and start a massive development of alternative energy sources we may find ourselves using biogas digesters like India.

For more on my prediction of $6.00 gas by 2009 go to this link
http://www.beyondfossilfuel.com/resources/6_gas_010308.html

For more information on how India is solving their food and fuel problems go to this link http://www.beyondfossilfuel.com/biodiesel/genetic_crops_022808.html

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