Biomass Energy

Poo Power Packs a Punch

by Deb Powers

Credit: actruncale@stock.xchangForgive the alliteration, please. There's something about the subject of poo that brings out the adolescent boy in all of us, and I'm not immune to it. Call it poo, manure, waste, biomass - it's all one and the same, and it's part of the answer to our energy future. It's also the ultimate recycling strategy - recycling the waste that we've already recycled through Mother Nature's most efficient recycling machine - the digestive system.

To be entirely fair, biomass energy refers to a far wider range of materials than just poop. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, biomass is "plant and animal waste" and it currently provides 15 times as much energy in the U.S. as wind and solar combined. Biomass fuel includes things like sawdust from lumber mills, grass clippings and wood chips, some garbage from landfills - even the methane gas produced when garbage decomposes in landfills. Ethanol and gasohol are both biomass fuel products.

And then there's poo. Using animal poop for energy is nothing new. People all over the world have burned dried cow and chicken dung for fuel for centuries. At its very basic level, the easiest way to get, say, electricity from animal poop is to dry it and burn it, using the heat from the fire to generate steam that's used to turn turbines. Modern biomass facilities that make electricity this way use mixed manure and wood chips to power generators that make electricity. It's one way to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

There is, however, another way to make power from poop - anaerobic digestion. Basically, the process works like this:

• liquefy the poop by mixing it with water
• pump it into a closed, airtight tank
• add certain bacteria to speed up the breakdown of the poop
• collect the methane gas that is given off as part of the biological process
• pump the gas out to burn as power for a generator
• strain the remaining liquid to remove any solid matter
• use the liquid as fertilizer

There are already a lot of plants and projects out there that use poop for power. In the Netherlands, a Dutch plant is using chicken manure to power up to 90,000 homes; two California dairy farms are extracting methane gas from cow poop and selling it to the power companies; in China, biogas digesters are being used to provide fuel for cookstoves; the Denver, Dallas, Toronto and Syracuse zoos

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