Full CNN report

Yes, you read it - cattle dung!!! - but many have suspected that, yes it is likely that dung can be a good alternative energy source (and a great fertilizer). Although the conversion rate is quite low - there is so much cattle and other dung around that it could become very commercially viable!

Next, there will be genetically engineered cattle that give not only milk, but gasoline - think about it..... :P

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Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

I think we have to wait awhile to see if it can be commercially implemented.

Sounds like it needs high pressure, heat, and an unspecified catalyst.

Maybe the heat can be generated from the left overs.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

how hard is it going to be to get people to fill the positions at the "gas" factory?
especially the material handlers...

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Does Annandale have a waste treatment plant?

Do you know anyone that works there?

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

well, yes, Annandale does have wastewater treatment. actually, why does it show me as stil lbeing in Annandale? i moved away from there months ago and changed my location in my profile here.. hmm. time to change it AGAIN...
but what goes thru a wastewater treatment plant is a bit different than truckload after truckload of cow crap.
i guess all the kids that grew up on dairy farms wouldn't have a problem with it..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Now if they can find a way to convert bird poop (especially from CANADIEN geese) we just might come out even with this Bird Flu pandemic. Yes, I am blaming the Canadiens! It's all their fault. Every time I have an important putt on a golf course, they always interfere. It just ain't fair, I tell ya.

Without more details, I don't find this particularly remarkable. The technology has existed for decades to do this as a two step process - compost the dung to make methane and then do a gas-to-liquid (Fischer-Tropsch) process to make liquid fuel. The devil is in the details - conversion efficiency and costs. The fact that they did it in a one-pot set-up isn't that amazing.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Waste from primates is pretty nasty stuff, that's why I mentioned it. I wouldn't want to work in a city sewage plant, but people do.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

people poop is nasty, and pig poop is not so dissimilar, but overall cow poop is not so bad. But if truckloads of manure were coming into a processing plant, chances are good they wouldn't be unloading by shovel. So no one would be wading in it. And on the farm end, removing the manure from the area is a job they have to do already.

But this isn't new. We looked into building a methane converter for our tiny farm over 30 years ago. Not quite gasoline, but still...

Never argue poop with a farmer. They know good poop a mile away.

Using dung for fuel isn't that alternative or new.
I bet there are still goat-herders in the Sahel that still cook on it.

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Join the Illuminati

The technology to turn methane in to methanol and then use a catalyst to covert it into gasoline has been around for years. Mobil's ZSM-5 catalyst has been patented and used since around the late 1970's, introduced in the world's first Synthetic fuel plant just down the road from me. Unfortunately at the time, oil priced dropped dramatically and as it required oil to be about $30 a barrel, it was uneconomic as the product requires further refinement, and eventually it was sold and used as a straight methanol plant since methanol was returning a higher price per unit, but with today's prices I am sure that with a good source of reliable methane, such a plant could be making money hand over fist.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Usually these gasoline "cures" end up costing the same or more than just normal gasoline...Ethanol for example.

Can't imagine why you'd want to convert methane into liquid fuel. We run plenty of cars off it here. The government will even pay you a thousand dollars towards the cost of converting your car from petrol to methane. (Which I think is kind of silly, but they didn't ask me.)

Question; If you've got methane to begin with, why not use methane??

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

If you convert methane to methanol, it can be mixed with gasoline and run in flexible fuel vehicles so there is easy integration into the fuel mix. You don't need a truly "special" car with special fuel needs. Also, methanol is safer to transport than LNG. So you get a flexibility and safety advantage. You might want to read this article on the proposed methanol economy:

http://www.technologyreview.com/BizT...66,296,p1.html

Currently, methanol is produced from fossil resources, but eventually it would be produced using nuclear and other non-fossil energy sources.

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Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Thanks for the link.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Do they sell methane at service stations in the U.S.? Here you can buy it anywhere so there doesn't seem much point in turning it into a liquid. The infrastructure is all in place.

Gangway

Not even slightly.

I think they must have meant biodeisel is like french fry grease. Ethanol is like ethanol.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I totaly agree, this is not new technology.

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But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about: Jayutah


I are Learnding.

Here's an article in 2004 about a $2000 gizmo (not counting installation cost) for home natural gas fueling in the U.S.:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5960905

As mentioned:

Honda said the unit offers a "personalized solution" to the fact that natural gas is not sold at gasoline stations.

"The biggest obstacle to broader acceptance of natural gas vehicles is the limited availability of refueling stations," American Honda Vice President Tom Elliott, said in a statement.

Also, it takes about six hours to refuel with this gadget, so has similar problems to electric vehicles. Assuming it did become popular, there would need to be massive upgrade of the infrastructure to handle the added capacity, and vehicles to use it. Compare that to the FFVs already on the road, and the relative ease of increasing them and use of methanol.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

True. One advantage is that these "cures" are carbon neutral. The second advantage is that they are clean. No need to worry about sulfur emissions and other contaminants that have plagued petroleum-based fuels.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

From "Future Fuels", article in AAA's member publication:

Interesting. I tried to Google for a count of regular gas (gasoline) stations in California. A "yellow page" listing of some type, which seems to cut off at 1,500 for any city I checked (apparently a search page limit), and a 2002 listing from a CA government site showed around 20,000 total.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Explains Dubya's ranch in Crawford...