# The next energy source: Barnyard animals



## Janon (Aug 25, 2002)

Neat article :

The next energy source: Barnyard animals


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## housewife (Mar 16, 2006)

Wow that looks really good!!!
Any hope that they will put one in Southern Ontario??


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## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

Arouond here (western Wisconsin) they are encouraging farm sized methane generators. I will try to find some links to some of the news stories.


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

The subject line is kinda funny to me.  Not really the next source.....

Back when my farm was fist settled, a few years before MN became a state, the fellow dug out a hillside a bit into a 2-compartment shelter, & his family lived on one side, the animals lived on the other side of this dugout. The dips are still in the lawn where that was, a rock or 2 come out along the edge.

Methane is one of those things that works well on paper. It takes a lot of care & thought & so forth to make to work in the real world - often more hassles & issues than one can afford. Been watching those contraptions 'down on the farm' for a few decades now, & always seem to come up short when they go on-line. Production is quite variable, storage is very difficult, and so on.

--->Paul


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## jnap31 (Sep 16, 2005)

rambler said:


> Methane is one of those things that works well on paper. It takes a lot of care & thought & so forth to make to work in the real world - often more hassles & issues than one can afford. Been watching those contraptions 'down on the farm' for a few decades now, & always seem to come up short when they go on-line. Production is quite variable, storage is very difficult, and so on.
> 
> --->Paul


Well they seem to make it work just fine all over a lot of poor asian countries. True though in colder weather the process does not work that well.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

rambler said:


> The subject line is kinda funny to me.  Not really the next source.....
> 
> Back when my farm was fist settled, a few years before MN became a state, the fellow dug out a hillside a bit into a 2-compartment shelter, & his family lived on one side, the animals lived on the other side of this dugout. The dips are still in the lawn where that was, a rock or 2 come out along the edge.
> 
> ...



There is a farm near here that produces all it's electricity needs pluss sells $2000 worth a month back to the electrin co op.


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

tinknal said:


> There is a farm near here that produces all it's electricity needs pluss sells $2000 worth a month back to the electrin co op.


I have a design but it's not on paper that consists of a looped-farming method. It's a matter of growing your own grain and corn, taking the corn and pressing it for it's oil. Then taking the press meal and using it to cook off ethanol. You have a small farm size deisel converted to run on VO or biodeisel and use the corn oil for that.

Then, the strained pulp from the corn after cooking is taken and air dried (no power). Once the corn pulp has been cooked off, it is now a 37% protein feed suppliment that doesn't have all the starches (sugar=bad) that the corn had. You take the corn pulp and the grain and formulate your own feed for your livestock, preferably chickens.

The chicken dung from the birds is mixed 30:1 with organic material. A 30:1 ratio is the best for methane production. Then it's digested in a digester. A second generator would be needed. It would have to be converted for ethanol (just replace all plastic parts with metal) and it would have a ethanol/natural gas conversion kit. This would alternate the fuels as needed with electronic sensing.

I often wonder if those farms that are doing it, like the one you're talking about, have systems that resemble my idea or just blow mine away.


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

tinknal said:


> There is a farm near here that produces all it's electricity needs pluss sells $2000 worth a month back to the electrin co op.


I'm all for it. 

If you look at their startup costs, they aren't breaking even I'll bet.

Got a lot of help & aid & grants along the way.

That's cool, I'm all for it, I hope it works, I hope everyone learns & expands & comes up with a system that is positive energy/ cash flow from such a learning installation. Good use of govt money, compared to ball stadiums & such....

Until a few things improve, the setup will lose money if it had to be 100% owner financed. The production is impressive. But the cash-flow is poor. I hope setups like that continue to improve & expand & become positive energy & cash providers. Will be very cool.

I'm all for it. I just don't want folks to believe it is simple & easy & makes money right now......

Storage is the biggest problem. In a cold climate like we have in MN, production is so uneven. With no easy way to store ng/ methane, that becomes a problem. Quality control of the gas is difficult as well, so it is difficult to just vent into a pipeline without massively expensive controls.

But it does work, and like all the alternatives we are using (photo electric, passive solar, bio-diesel, ethanol, wind, etc.) the initial tries & attempts are very expensive & not too efficient. Gotta keep trying, & the bugs get ironed out, and ir _will_ work.

I didn't mean to dash the idea entirely. Good idea on paper, gotta make it work right in the real world.

As with wind energy, there are either massively large setups, or small backyard, home-scrounged inefficient baulky but cheap setups. Middle ground, smaller, cheaper, dependable systems aren't in sight.... It turns into a lifestyle choice. The 3rd world setups work - when that is all you have. 

--->Paul


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

Dahc said:


> I have a design but it's not on paper that consists of a looped-farming method. It's a matter of growing your own grain and corn, taking the corn and pressing it for it's oil. Then taking the press meal and using it to cook off ethanol. You have a small farm size deisel converted to run on VO or biodeisel and use the corn oil for that.
> 
> Then, the strained pulp from the corn after cooking is taken and air dried (no power). Once the corn pulp has been cooked off, it is now a 37% protein feed suppliment that doesn't have all the starches (sugar=bad) that the corn had. You take the corn pulp and the grain and formulate your own feed for your livestock, preferably chickens.
> 
> ...


I'm in the upper midwest, corn & soybeans are _the_ crops here. You would do better to grow both corn & soybeans, press oil from the soybeans. Don't get much from corn. You could continue a better crop rotation using both crops, rather than monoculture. There are other oil crops for non-soybean areas - rape, sunflower, etc.

Press the oil crop, ferment the corn/ starch crop.

As to air drying, that doesn't work well at least here in humid midwest. You would have a moldy mess - or use a lot of energy stirring, moving air, or something. A different option is to feed the product wet, as it is produced, before it has a chance to mold/ spoil. This requires attention to detail & managing supplies carefully - but far less energy that trying to dry it. This works on your integrated all in one operation. Huge ethanol or biodiesel plants need to ship the feed meal away, and thus often need to dry it down to haul or store it.

Not changing your plan much, and my thoughts can use some improving too, but food for thought on developing the idea. 

--->Paul


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## Dahc (Feb 14, 2006)

Nah, here in GA, wet stuff dries pretty well but not without maintenance. You know: Can't be in a container with any depth, needs to be moved around a bit to expose still moist stuff.

In order to get our chickens to eat alfalfa pellets or cubes, we have to re-hydrate them so the pellets or cubes break apart. Re-hydrate is my mr. fancy pants word for spray it with a water hose, then we stir it every couple hours. It's not much work but it would be for a system like that and that method doesn't have any safeguards for rainy or overcast days without using electricity.

... and you can't make ethanol from soybeans. The three point advantage of corn is integral to the idea. Oil, ethanol and a high protein feed additive without the starches. If you get too many different crops growing, a hard working married couple wont be able to do all the work. There'll be a lot of work. It's not an idea for lazy people, that's for sure.

I would not practice the "traditional" method of crop rotation. I'm more of a "scripture oriented" person. Just one crop in a field with a one year rest every seven years. All organic material produced but not used would go back into the soil of the field but that's a different area.


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## WisJim (Jan 14, 2004)

rambler said:


> As with wind energy, there are either massively large setups, or small backyard, home-scrounged inefficient baulky but cheap setups. Middle ground, smaller, cheaper, dependable systems aren't in sight.... It turns into a lifestyle choice. The 3rd world setups work - when that is all you have.
> 
> --->Paul


Oh-oh--and I thought that my 2.5kw 1940s vintage Jacobs was working dependably and reliably putting out power for me since 1977 or 78. There are some new systems out there too in the 1 to 10 kw size that are proving to be reliable. I know that I am not the only one in this group using them either.


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

WisJim said:


> Oh-oh--and I thought that my 2.5kw 1940s vintage Jacobs was working dependably and reliably putting out power for me since 1977 or 78. There are some new systems out there too in the 1 to 10 kw size that are proving to be reliable. I know that I am not the only one in this group using them either.


My comment was not an attack, you don't need to be defensive. 

Those old Jacobs are quite the engineering, real workhorses. Perhaps not quite as efficent as some newer engineering..... Doesn't make it bad.  Work fine.

Now, a lot of homesteads of 'regular folks' can't run on 2.5kw. And a lot of 'regular folks' don't like waiting on the wind, if they need power they want to flip a switch.

So, it's a little bit of a lifestyle choice. Isn't it????? Battery bank maintenence, and so forth - it's not the 'flip a switch' type of thing, is it?

There is _nothing_ wrong with that. But it is 'different'. Isn't it?

Myself, I think it's cool. I drive past the places with electric windmills, & kinda droole a little......... Been facinated with them since I was little.

I notice a lot of the 'new style' small plants that were put up in the late '80s seem to be missing their power head. Two the tower collapsed as well. Must have been some bad engineering or quality control in there somewhere.

Not sure what I said wrong, but certainly not knocking windmills or methane digesters. Just that there are different things to look at is all. I think that is a fair way to look at most things - not as a cheerleader, but practically & from all sides?

--->Paul


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## ozarkcat (Sep 8, 2004)

Rambler - 

It doesn't have to do specifically with MN - my great-grandparents had a farm in the St. Croix River valley that had gas lights run on methane from the barn as recently as WWII. I'm not saying it's big-time production, just to not dismiss it out of hand.


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