Animal waste turned into motor fuel (alcohol)

Discussion in 'Peak Oil' started by DKR, Nov 9, 2019.


  1. DKR

    DKR Raconteur of the first stripe

    Source (https://insteading.com/blog/poop-power-new-plant-makes-ethanol-cow-manure/)

    (see also - Calgren Renewable Fuels, Lurgi announces successful start-up of Calgren Renewable Fuels, LLC ethanol plant in California)

    Money quote:
    The San Joaquin Valley has become America’s breadbasket over the past few decades. Products including pistachios, almonds, citrus, stone fruit, cotton, and grapes are grown here and distributed all over the United States and are exported around the world. Tulare County, about a three-hour drive north of Los Angeles, recently surpassed nearby Fresno County to become the wealthiest agricultural county in the U.S. Home to 450,000 people, Tulare is also the top dairy producing country in the U.S. That means a lot of cows, which means a lot of manure, and in turn, all that agricultural activity has contributed to a region that has one of the worst air pollution records in the country. Furthermore, effluent from cow waste is a huge threat to what already are the San Joaquin Valley’s stressed watersheds.

    On the upside, all that agricultural waste creates a solid biofuels pipeline. Forget the food-versus-fuel debate: many of the crops grown in the valley are high-value products that are lucrative, and the region’s conservative bent leads farmers and ranchers to stick to the crops, trees, and animals they know. But eliminating waste, especially cow manure, is becoming expensive and of course, problematic for the local environment.

    The recent launch of the Calgren Ethanol Plant in the Tulare County town of Pixley is a step in helping California meet its clean energy goals while addressing the San Joaquin Valley’s terrible air pollution. Built with the help of a $4.6 million grant from the California Energy Commission, the plant, according to the coalition of companies that built the facility, will churn cow manure into bio-ethanol which can then be blended with conventional gasoline.

    The core of Calgren’s plant is an anaerobic digester built by DVO, which is based in Wisconsin. Regensis, a Washington state building contractor, was in charge of the plant’s construction. Calgren Renewable Fuels operates the plant, the output of which will be enough to fuel 145,000 cars annually. At a recent ceremony that hailed the plant’s opening, company and California officials touted the plant for what they say is a genuine closed-loop system. In addition to generating ethanol, biogas will also be produced in order to power the facility, nixing any need to be connected to the local grid.

    Full details at linked article.


    (Pig power: A messy problem becomes a fuel solution)
    Brewerys sell spent grain to pig farmers. Pigs eat the grain and make bacon. The pig poop goes to make alcohol. What's not to cheer about?

    My point?
    There are plenty of alternatives to feeding the massive petro industry. Some of these solutions can be done at the local level - as shown by the Cali alcohol plant. All kinds of agro waste can be converted. And are currently in at least test production.

    more below
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2019
  2. DKR

    DKR Raconteur of the first stripe

    Six years in the making, California’s first biogas project connecting a dairy to an ethanol plant is nearing the end of its first year of operations in the San Joaquin Valley.

    The $9.5 million renewable energy project relies on manure piped from a dairy to an anaerobic digester a mile away at the Calgren Renewable Fuels ethanol production facility in Pixley, Calif.

    Calgren’s digester captures manure-generated methane gas and burns it as clean biogas to power the ethanol plant. In turn, the plant yields nearly 60 million gallons of ethanol a year that, blended with gasoline, creates a low-carbon fuel for many of California’s 27 million cars.

    Officials says the Pixley biogas project is the first California digester to use agricultural waste to create renewable natural gas to power another renewable energy facility. It’s also the first digester in the Golden State to be 100% American-made and constructed. And its now the state’s lowest-carbon commercial ethanol producer.

    “This project is a model for biorefineries in California and throughout the U.S.,” says Jim Mckinney, program manager for the California Energy Commission. The state agency contributed $4.6 million in grant funds to the project.

    The project produces several benefits, according to officials.

    “We turn waste into fuel,” says Lyle Schyler, president of Calgren Renewable Fuels. Ethanol comprises 10% of fuel at California’s gasoline pumps. Moreover, the project’s carbon output “is quite low” because of the digester and other emission-controlling equipment at the plant. “This project is exceptionally green,” Schlyer says.

    “Electricity and hydrogen are getting a lot of media attention these days as the fuels of the future,” Mckinney says. “But it is the workhorse plants like this Calgren facility that reduce the carbon content of our fuel supply. At 58 million gallons per year, that’s enough low-carbon fuel for 145,000 cars every year.”
    The new biogas system will reduce the amount of natural gas used to fire Calgren’s boilers by 6% and reduce the carbon footprint of the plant’s fuel product by 67 grams of carbon per megajoule, Mckinney adds. “That’s one-third less carbon than gasoline and one-third less carbon than most of the corn ethanol we import from the Midwest,” he says.

    The project’s benefits don’t stop with Calgren and the California environment. Frank Junio and his family also have profited from the project—their Four-J Dairy is supplying the manure to Calgren’s plant. For their role in providing the manure, the Junios got a new manure management infrastructure for their 1,800-cow dairy operation.

    The new infrastructure includes a new, double-lined lagoon. The dairy also gets the dried manure solids that are discharged at the back end of the digester cycle. Those manure solids are trucked daily to Four-J Dairy, where they’re used as bedding for the Junios’ cowherd.

    The digester’s remaining effluent is piped back to the dairy each day to be applied to field crops.
    More on the plant. Cow manure produces electricity for the alcohol production - from corn.

    The Pixley biogas digester is a two-stage, plug-flow complete mix system. It has a 1-million-gallon capacity, says Steve Dvorak, whose Wisconsin-based DVO company engineered the digester. (Calgren’s Daryl Maas conceived and guided the project; Regenis built the digester.)

    While 90% of the waste going into the digester comes from the dairy right now, the digester has received permits to use all kinds of feed stocks, including municipal and food processing waste.
    Located 12 miles south of Tulare and adjacent to Freeway 99, the Calgren facility was built in 2008. It’s one of only four commercial ethanol production plants in California.

    Corn feed stock for Calgren’s plant arrives by train from the Midwest at the neighboring JD Heiskell facility. It’s then transferred via elevators and conveyers to Calgren’s plant for processing. In addition to ethanol, the Calgren plant produces wet distillers grains and corn oil.
    So, yeah, still uses people fuel to make auto fuel.
     
    Gator 45/70 and oldawg like this.
  3. DKR

    DKR Raconteur of the first stripe

    Manure to ethanol - Manure Manager

    Here the manure was used to produce methane, which is burned as part of the ethanol production process.
    Sadly - (Sale of Mead's E3 Biofuels plant about to close) it went under.

    The $80 million investment was knocked out of action by a boiler explosion in February 2007 and subsequent failures to repair it, according to bankruptcy documents.

    Also - We actually did run an auction process and had court approval to sell," he said. "The sale order was approved, but the sale didn't consummate, because of a number of issues, problems with things like the bonds and taxes owed. Nebraska has some unusual laws on past-due taxes.

    Sold in 2010, I don't find any current articles indicating operation other than this - AltEn LLC to restart closed-loop ethanol plant ... AltEn LLC of Kansas, are the new owners of the former E3 Biofuels ethanol plant in Mead.

    RPT -Floods shut nearly a sixth of U.S. ethanol production flooding impacts a lot of alcohol production..
     
    Gator 45/70 likes this.
  4. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Gator 45/70 likes this.
  5. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

    And how much is gasoline in Commiefornia?
     
  6. Cruisin Sloth

    Cruisin Sloth Special & Slow

    6.09/usg in the wet coast Canukland
     
    Gator 45/70 likes this.
  7. HK_User

    HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

    Doesn't matter, after all a byproduct of a Biogas unit is CO2!!!

    CO2 is a Green House Gas
    .
    green·house gas
    noun
    noun: greenhouse gas; plural noun: greenhouse gases
    a gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect by absorbing infrared radiation, e.g., carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons.
     
  8. Gator 45/70

    Gator 45/70 Monkey+++

     
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