Is gobar gas or gas form cow's dung the solution for world energy problem?

Question

google>gobar gas plant.

http://mothercow.com

Answer 1

It is not THE solution, but it can help. You must understand that there is no single solution. I see so many people here that say one thing will solve all our problems, but that is just naive. There is not nearly enough cow dung in the world to supply all our energy needs. There is not enough plant material to supply all our energy with ethanol. There is not enough uranium to supply all our needs with nuclear. There is not enough wind or sunlight that we could realistically collect that would supply all our energy needs. There is not enough of any one thing that would supply all our energy needs. And any source of energy has environmental problems. Solar panels take a lot of energy and toxic materials to make for example.

Answer 2

He wants to drill more oil and build more refineries even though he admits that Global Warming is real, pretty screwed up! I think he is trying to clear the way for nuclear in some places as well. I think though Bush will want to go out with a bang and bomb Iran before he is done. He'll be known as the prez that never cared about what US citizens or the rest of the world wanted but is loved for all his work he did for oil and energy businesses.

Answer 3

No. It's not feasible to collect, store and distribute enough to meet any kind of significant demand

Answer 4

It's been a wild, exciting ride . . . but our blindly wasteful squandering of the planet's fossil fuels will soon be a thing of the past. In the United States alone (the worst example, perhaps, but not really unusual among "modern" nations), every man, woman and child consumes an average of three gallons of oil each day. That's well over two hundred billion gallons a year.

If we continue burning off petroleum at only this rate—which isn't very likely since population is climbing and the big oil companies remain chained to "sell-more-tomorrow" economics—-experts predict the world will run out of refineable oil within (are you ready for this?) 30 years.

So where does that leave us? Well, number one, we obviously must get serious about populatio n control and per-capita consumption of power and, number two, if we don't want to see brownouts and rationing of the power we do use . . . we'd better start looking around for ecologically-sound alternative sources of energy.

And there are alternatives. One potent reservoir that's hardly been tapped is methane gas.

Hundreds of millions of cubic feet of methane—sometimes called "swamp" or bio-gas—are generated every year by the decomposition of organic material. It's a near-twin of the natural gas that big utility companies pump out of the ground and which so many of us use for heating our homes and for cooking. Instead of being harnessed like natural gas, however, methane has traditionally been considered as merely a dangerous nuisance that should be gotten rid of as fast as possible. Only recently have a few thoughtful men begun to regard methane as a potentially revolutionary source of controllable energy.

facts about gobar* gas:
Cow dung gas is 55-65% methane, 30-35% carbon dioxide, with some hydrogen, nitrogen and other traces. Its heat value is about 600 B.T.U.'s per cubic foot.

A sample analyzed by the Gas Council Laboratory at Watson House in England contained 68% methane, 31% carbon dioxide and 1% nitrogen. It tested at 678 B.T.U.

This compares with natural gas's 80% methane, which yields a B.T.U. value of about 1,000.

Gobar gas may be improved by filtering it through limewater (to remove carbon dioxide), iron filings (to absorb corrosive hydrogen sulphide) and calcium chloride (to extract water vapor).

Cow dung slurry is composed of 1.8-2.4% nitrogen (N), 1.01.2% phosphorus (P 2 0 5 ), 0.6-0.8% potassium (K 2 0) and from 50-75% organic humus.

About one cubic foot of gas may be generated from one pound of cow manure at 75° F. This is enough gas to cook a day's meals for 4-6 people.

About 225 cubic feet of gas equals one gallon of gasoline. The manure produced by one cow in one year can be converted to methane which is the equivalent of over 50 gallons of gasoline.

Gas engines require 18 cubic feet of methane per horsepower per hour.

*Hindifor "cow dung"

One such man is Ram Bux Singh, director of the Gobar Gas Research Station at Ajitmal in northern India. Although some basic research into methane gas production was done in Germany and England during World War II's fuel shortages, the most active exploration of the gas's potential is being done today in India.

And with good reason. Population pressure has practically eliminated India's forests, causing desperate fuel shortages in most rural areas. As a result, up to three-quarters of the country's annual billion tons of manure (India has two cows for every person) is burned for cooking or heating. This creates enormous medical problems—the drying dung is a dangerous breeding place for flies and the acrid smoke is responsible for widespread eye disease—and deprives the country's soil of vital organic nutrients contained in the manure.

The Gobar (Hindi for "cow dung") Gas Research Station—established in 1960 as the latest of along series of Indian experimental projects dating back to the 1930's—has concentrated its efforts, as the name suggests, on generating methane gas from cow manure. At the station, Ram Bux Singh and his coworkers have designed and put into operation bio-gas plants ranging in output from 100 to 9,000 cubic feet of methane a day. They've installed heating coils, mechanical agitators and filters in some of the generators and experimented with different mixes of manure and vegetable wastes. Results of the project have been meticulously documented and recorded.

This comprehensive eleven-year-long research program has yielded designs for five standardized, basic gobar plants that operate efficiently under widely varying conditions with only minor modifications (see construction details of 100 cubic foot digester that accompany this article) . . . and a treasure trove of specific, field-tested principles for methane gas production.

Answer 5

they are working on it and soon we all will know

Answer 6

maybe