'Poop to pump' plant makes methane good

[KiwiCoromandel]

An American company's drive to locate domestic sources of energy is taking a turn into the barnyard.

Panda Ethanol Inc has secured nearly $US160 million ($NZ254m) in financing to build an ethanol plant which will be fired by mountains of manure in Hereford, a cattle town in the Texas panhandle.

"We have located a project in what I would call the Saudi Arabia of manure," said the company's chief executive officer, Todd Carter.

The plant will gasify half a billion kilograms of manure a year to make 378.50 million litres of ethanol. The manure will save the plant the equivalent of nearly 365,000 barrels of oil a year. Panda hopes to get it running by late next year.

Companies are racing to build ethanol plants as the oil industry uses the fuel as a replacement for gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tert-butyl ether), a suspected carcinogen. Growing United States motor-fuel demand means ethanol production will need to increase about 5.67 billion litres a year.

Some environmentalists have questioned the green benefits of ethanol because some of the fuel's refineries use electricity from plants fired by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

But Carter's "poop to pump" ethanol plant will fuel more than 90 per cent of its own energy needs by heating manure until it releases methane, which it will then burn to make steam to fuel the plant.

The process destroys the methane, a greenhouse gas that is at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Some environmentalists worry that the runoff from farms that group large numbers of cattle together can pollute water supplies. But Carter said the plant would turn what already existed in the region into something useful.

Ash from the process could be used to make cow bedding and cement, he said.

When it comes to harvesting manure, timing is important. "It can't be too fresh and it can't be too old," said Carter.

source:Reuters

http://www.ewire.com/display.cfm/Wire_ID/1618

[Excrement_Cranium]

I wonder how exactly one determines the ripening of poo.