Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Does not really make pleasant reading

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4373440.stm

You have to tell yourself the cows are going to die anyway. Inside the abattoir at Swedish Meats in Linkoping, the cows stood patiently, occasionally nuzzling the lens of our camera.

From there, it was a short walk past the white-walled butchery, down the steps to the basement where the raw material for biogas, slid greasily down a chute.

Still bubbling and burping, and carpeting you with an acrid stench, came the organs and the fat and the guts. Enough, from one cow, to get you about 4km (2.5 miles) on the train.

A tanker collects the organic sludge and makes the short journey to the biogas factory, where the stinking fuel is stewed gently for a month, before the methane can be drawn off.

Flatcapdriver

It doesn't look that sustainable to me given the amount of cows that will be needed to keep the trains running. I would have thought using sugar beet will be the better option alongside willow as a fuel for power generation which would allow the CAP to be reduced as farmers have an alternative revenue stream and then we could stop this whingeing from African nations about a level agricultural playing field.

It can't be that simple, can it?

Felix.

You would be surprised how much methane can be produced from rotting things.

You could plant a field of fast growing trees, cut them down, homoginise them, extract the methane, cool to a liquid, use as fuel which gives of CO2, use this to feed the next lot of plants..........bingo.

By the way - any LPG cars will be able to use this.

Flatcapdriver

Are you sure about the LPG? I'd have thought that they would have needed re-jetting at least due to the different pressures involved?

Brendan Hughes

Willlow? Are we talking about the tree that is f-all use except for crying into ponds and making cricket bats?

Presumably this article relates to the dead-cat-fuel one that was posted a month or so ago.

Headline in Portuguese newspapers today, one council now has 20 collectors for chip-fat, which will be used to power the council vehicles

Flatcapdriver

Yep willow.


http://www1.sac.ac.uk/envsci/Externa...r/SupplyCh.htm

Brendan Hughes

OK, I can see that it coppices easily and grows easily. But why not another wood? It seems that the main energy comes from burning and providing heat, yet willow is bloody awful to burn. Why not birch, or chestnut? (Perhaps as they don't regrow so easily...) Just don't understand why they picked one of Europe's worst-burning woods.

De Warrenne

because it coppices and grows quickly.

When you've dried it, pelletised it and stuffed it into Drax's main burners it burns pretty well

Flatcapdriver

It is because of it's growth rate.

Felix.

Don't think so - just a minor adjustment