Friday, March 07, 2008

Cow dung finds powerful new use


If you’ve read anything about dairy farms you know they produce an incredible amount of manure. That manure decomposes and gives off methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. In fact cattle cause more global warming than cars. Some say the ultimate answer is to stop eating meat and dairy products.

Now a dairy farmer in California has come up with another solution -- a way to capture that methane to power homes. And PG&E is buying it. Vintage Dairy Farms and BioEnergy Solutions have a multi-million-dollar facility that washes the you-know-what in a huge vat until it’s 99% liquid. Then it screens out the solids and pumps it into a gigantic covered lagoon that “digests” it. What’s left produces gas which is piped to Northern California to power about 1,200 homes. Several other dairies have expressed interest. They need to get rid of the stuff some way. Source: Reuters PlanetArk
(Photo from Flickr and photographer *~Laura~*)

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