Electrical Energy from Sewage Update

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

I have completed some more research on this topic and this is what I have found. First, there is basically no difference between natural gas and methane. Natural gas is composed of 75% methane ( CH4 ) , 15% ethane ( C2H6 ) and 5% other.

Methane can be extracted from garbage ( landfills ) or sewage ( anaerobic digesters ) . When using an anaerobic digester to process sewage, the left over material makes an excellent compost/fertilizer.

With a few modifications, any device that runs off natural gas can run off methane from garbage and sewage. This includes internal combustion engines and turbines which can be used to produce electricity.

From an Australian report, the cost of electricity from: Coal-fired electricity 4c/kwh Solar electricity 10-20c/kwh Landfill sites electy 5.5c/kwh Biogas electricity 5.6c/kwh

I believe they used Australian dollar figures in this report ( duh? ) so converting to U.S. currency I came up with about 4 cents per kwh for biogas ( methane from sewage ) and Landfill ( methane from garbage ) produced electricity.

Dividing 5.6 c/kwh for biogas by 4 c/kwh for coal ( Australian dollar ) gives you 1.4 so using coal as a baseline you may roughly figure if the cost of electricity rises by 40 % then the widespread use of biomass will become viable.

-- Stanley Lucas (StanleyLucas@WebTv.net), October 08, 1999

Answers

This is a good convresion of sewage into fuel and fertilizer...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), October 08, 1999.

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