While PA Representative Charles Dent votes away our natural heritage in Alaska so the fat cats can drive their SUVs, there is real research being done to turn bullshit into an alternative energy source. No, I’m not talking about that stuff spewing from the mouths of our politicians in Harrisburg and DC, I’m talking about new scrubbers developed by Western Washington University students that take the corrosives out of methane that is naturally produced when real cow manure degrades so it can be used to power cars and other machines. This has a triple ecological benefit since that methane and its byproducts are not released into the air in its most harmful form, the harmful stuff in manure doesn’t leach into the water supply and the methane gas used in cars burns cleaner and with less greenhouse gases than gasoline. It’s also less flammable and less dangerous. Even better, it is CHEAP to produce, right now about one fifth the cost of gasoline. According to the Vehicle Research Institute’s Director, Eric Leonhardt, “If we can get farmers to put in anaerobic digesters, that’s going to be the environmental impact,” he said. “The gas is really an aside. The real impact is getting manure out of the water supply.”

Methane, whether it be from cow manure, from your local landfill, or from the municipal sewage treatment plant, is naturally occurring and there for the taking, with the only processing needed being to scrub the highly corrosive hydrogen sulfide out of the methane before it’s used in engines. The students do this with an anaerobic ingester they built from pvc pipe and spare parts. According to Seattle PI:

An anaerobic digester on Darryl Vander Haak’s dairy farm in Lynden processes manure from about 1,000 cows into electricity to sell to Puget Sound Energy. At full capacity, the digester can produce enough energy to power 180 homes . . . Waste produced by 15 cows has been enough to run the institute’s natural-gas car for 250 to 300 miles, Wilson said.

I, for one, applaud the work the students are doing. If more of our country’s tax dollars were spent on programs like this instead of a War in Iraq (or Iran, or Kuwait, or wherever else there’s oil) our air and water would soon be cleaner, our country’s reputation as innovators and leaders in technology would be restored, and our wilderness areas would not need to be destroyed.

[tags]cow manure car, manure methane, Charles Dent, environment, clean air, clean water, natural gas, alternative energy[/tags]

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 8:26 amunder Sustainability and . Comment RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.