Biological Engineers Generate

Natural Gas with Bacteria

October 1, 2006 — A new kind of waste digester uses two different strains of bacteria in different tanks. This would normally take place in the same environment, but microbiologists have now separated it into two stages that increases natural-gas production. The technology increases efficiency and can turn three tons of food scraps into enough energy to power 25 homes for a day.

DAVIS, Calif. — There’s a new twist on the old adage, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Now that trash may be another man’s power. Researchers in California are turning garbage into bio-gas that may one day provide the electricity in your home.

Trash could soon be powering your home. A new digester can transform it into energy. It uses two strains of bacteria to convert waste into bio-gas. Most digesters store both bacteria in the same tank, which makes the process unpredictable and slow. But not this digester.

“Zhang’s process takes the two bacteria and separates them into two separate environments,” Dave Konwinski, the director of OnSite Power Systems in Davis, Calif., tells DBIS.

This new and improved digester is the brain child of Biological Engineer Ruihong Zhang. She and her students at UC Davis first built its prototype in the lab. She’s thrilled her new technology is being put to use in the real world.

“It’s a new technology … So it’s like a child grow into adult,” she says.

The digester will turn three tons of food scraps into energy for 25 houses a day. But it’s not just for homes. The digester could be especially useful to fuel processing plants. It s scheduled to be up and running this fall. OnSite Power Systems plans to market it in several states in the next couple of years, including California, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

“We can actually scale a digester to fit their current operations, fill it right at their operations, take the waste stream into the digester, and the energy right back into the plant,” Konwinski says. “It will make a substantial dent in our current energy requirement for petroleum.”

It’s a win-win-win situation for the environment, industry and consumers.

BACKGROUND: Environmental engineers at the University of California, Davis, are building a full-scale anaerobic digester that can convert any type of solid organic waste into electricity — even leftovers from restaurants. The system is part of the $100,000 Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD pilot project), but an even larger digester system is being put into place in San Francisco.

HOW IT WORKS: In the process, food waste is collected from restaurants and institutions and then fed to bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen environments. It’s called anaerobic digestion, a naturally occurring process of decomposition. One type of bacteria turns carbohydrates into simple sugars, amino acids and fatty acids. A second group of bacteria eats those compounds and turns them into hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide, and acetic acid — the primary component of vinegar. Then a third group of bacteria takes those broken-down compounds and turns them into methane and carbon dioxide. Between 60 and 80 percent becomes methane. The methane can be used as fuel for an internal combustion engine that provides electricity.

TYPES OF DIGESTION: Anaerobic digestion is not the same thing as human digestion, since the type of bacteria that produce methane don’t live in the human digestive tract. Industrial anaerobic digesters can also harness this natural process to treat waste, provide heat, and increase nutrients in soil. They are most commonly used for sewage treatment and for managing animal waste.

BENEFITS: The goal of SMUD is to obtain 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and biodegradable matter by 2011. Currently SMUD derives 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, of which biomass accounts for 2.5 percent. The UC-Davis digester would keep food and other biodegradable waste out of landfills; food leftovers account for 18 percent of a landfill’s contents. One tone of leftover food can produce enough fuel to power 18 homes for one day.

WHAT ARE EXTREMOPHILES? An extremophile is any microbe that thrives in extreme conditions, such as temperature (extreme heat or cold), pressure, salinity, low oxygen environments, or high concentrations of hostile chemicals. Most extremophiles belong to a class known as archaeobacteria, but certain species of worm, crustacean and krill can also be considered extremophiles.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., contributed to the information

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 7th June 2010

Eco Factor: Low-emission fuel sources discovered in China.

China has discovered new sources of frozen combustible ice on the tundra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which according to researchers can supply China with 90 years worth of energy. The new reserve equals at least 35 billion tons of oil and is one of the newest sources of energy to be discovered.

Combustible ice is a frozen form of natural gas that has been found in high altitude frozen plateaus as well as underwater in marine sediments. The frozen hydrates can be lit on fire, however, researchers expect that the hydrate will have to go through a phase change process where it will be melted into methane and water before it can be combusted efficiently.

One cubic meter of combustible ice contains 164 cubic meters of natural gas and is considered to have few impurities, which means that the fuel can be combusted with lower emissions.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 5th May 2010

Cows are the answer

Aidan Turnbull reports on a recent visit to Electrawinds Biomass Mouscron, one of Belgium’s most advanced cogeneration plants based on biofuels. such as biomass and solar energy.

It’s incredible to think that tallow from rendered-down dead cows could be one of the major sustainable fuel sources behind 18MW of ‘green energy’ being produced by the Mouscron co-gen facility.
In terms of energy that’s enough to supply the needs of 44,000 families and still produce enough recoverable ‘waste’ heat to sell to industry facilities in the vicinity – and warm up local swimming pools too.
The other significant fact about the project, say the operators, is the
remarkable reliability and low wear rates the engines at Mouscron have achieved since their installation in 2006.
When the plant was first commissioned the concept of running engines on biofuel was pretty much uncharted territory.
But with their broad insensitivity to fuel quality, Mouscron’s large medium speed diesel engines, designed for heavy fuel oils, seem to cope readily with carbondioxide neutral fuels such as plant oils,
animal fats and various blends of wasteoils.
Typically, these are fuels which can cause considerable problems in high-speed engines with their more sensitive injection systems. But thanks to large mediumspeed diesel engines made by MAN Diesel,
they have effectively become part of the global warming solution.
The technology Electrawinds nv, headquartered in Ostend, Belgium, is currently the largest private player on the Belgian market for
renewable energy. Initially a provider of ‘green’ electricity, it began establishing wind energy projects, but soon began toinvest in other forms of renewable energ.

Its business strategy of combining wind, biomass and solar energy is unique in Belgium. Electrawinds now operates inItaly, France and Eastern-Europe. The story really begins In August 2005 when Electrawinds set up its first 13MW biofuel-based energy-generating plant in Ostend.
A template for later projects, the role of this facility was to convert animal and vegetable fats into sustainable energy.
Today, the Ostend plant has a capacity of Mouscron’s large medium speed
diesel engines, designed for heavy fuel oils, seem to cope readily
with carbon-dioxide neutral fuels such plant

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 18th July 2009