biogas the way forward

[renewablejohn]

Why can we not get our act together like our european counterparts and work together.

If I asked my local village to join a district heating scheme I am sure the nimbys would object to laying the pipework. The farmers would not agree to getting rid of their slurry and the households would not sign up for the district heat.

http://www.agri-pulse.com/uploaded/20091014h9.pdf

[renewablejohn]

Even more biogas produced from grass,  and when does the uk start commercial production.

http://www.metaefficient.com/renewable-power/first-biomethane-gas-station-opens-in-austria.html

[Rooster]

Why can we not get our act together like our european counterparts and work together.

If I asked my local village to join a district heating scheme I am sure the nimbys would object to laying the pipework. The farmers would not agree to getting rid of their slurry and the households would not sign up for the district heat.

http://www.agri-pulse.com/uploaded/20091014h9.pdf

$3 million capital for 140 homes then they seem to be paying $3000 a year for the heat.

Its a great idea but are the finances don't look that good.

No mention of what happens to the income from selling the electricity but presumably the $3000 heating bill has already been offset by the income from the grid.

[renewablejohn]

Rooster

The Co op will receive approx £700k income from the grid of which it pays approx £300k to the local farmers keeping the money in the local community. So £400k between 140 coop members even after paying off the capital investment is still a nice little earner.

[Ivan]

It's certainly one of the best options for being co2-neutral with transport.

[renewablejohn]

It's certainly one of the best options for being co2-neutral with transport.

It will never happen in the UK as the government have already issued the report to say that this technology will not work. See the report by BERR below.

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file16464.pdf

I bet on the back of this report all UK research was stopped in 2005 and only now after it has been shown to work on a commercial scale will they think about applying the technology when we could have been at the forefront of the technology. 

[Ancient Brewer]

Rooster

The Co op will receive approx £700k income from the grid of which it pays approx £300k to the local farmers keeping the money in the local community. So £400k between 140 coop members even after paying off the capital investment is still a nice little earner.

For the farmer

$3000 just for heating? I think this might have some trouble competing with conventional alternatives

[renewablejohn]

Rooster

The Co op will receive approx £700k income from the grid of which it pays approx £300k to the local farmers keeping the money in the local community. So £400k between 140 coop members even after paying off the capital investment is still a nice little earner.

For the farmer

$3000 just for heating? I think this might have some trouble competing with conventional alternatives

If you read the article the 3000 euro's for heat is 30% less then he was paying using oil. Do not confuse with your own heating bill as this german house is likely to be more of a hotel with 4 bedrooms for the family and a further 8 bedrooms for guests to use the ski slopes. Without winter tourists these villages would not be able to survive.

[dhaslam]

I don't think farmers would object too much if the slurry was spread  back on the land afterwards  except that disease regulations  would be a problem.    Mixing  slurry from different farms could spread disease unless it is heated to high enough temperatures in the process of extracting the gas.   

[Ivan]

I think the anaerobic conditions kill off aerobic microbes, and disease microbes are aerobic....so as far as I know the effluent is pretty disease-free. Also the BOD is greatly reduced, so presumably even if it gets contaminated with the raw feedstock (which is probably quite likely), it's unlikely to be a problem. I think there's a strict minimum retention time to achieve this, though.

[KLD]

If you read the article the 3000 euro's for heat is 30% less then he was paying using oil. Do not confuse with your own heating bill as this german house is likely to be more of a hotel with 4 bedrooms for the family and a further 8 bedrooms for guests to use the ski slopes. Without winter tourists these villages would not be able to survive.

Erm, could still be true, but it's not very step around Göttingen, and

Until very recently, Jühnde used to be a very ordinary village - a few farms, a
shop, a GP. Visitors found their way rather accidentally to the 760-strong
community located in among soft rolling hills in the south of the district of
Göttingen in Lower Saxony.

  (from here)

That said, three and a half thousand euros for oil a year doesn't sound like a 2up 2 down terrace ;-)
---
What a phantastic project!
And very surprising that they managed to unite (a large part of) the village to take the plunge. Just because they are Germans doesn't mean they are not villagers, with the same village feuds as everywhere. (I grew up near there. No no, they didn't make me leave. Honnest ;-) )

Klaus

[renewablejohn]

Klaus

I do apologize  I automatically assumed that the references to alpine glaciers would mean that the development would take place in an alpine region. Having looked on google maps this is clearly not the case with the agriculture being more like Lincolnshire rather than the alps. Having said that the properties in the village look very big on google maps and I think they have done very well to retrofit a district heating scheme on such a scale. The villagers should be praised for their achievement of using waste on their doorstep as with so much woodland in the surrounding area the easier option would have been to put in a biomass plant.

[KLD]

John

Absulutely. I was always intrigued how a district heating system is first introduced into a new neighbourhood. There will be a variety of houses there, some with rickety old heating systems, but also some with relatively newly installed systems. How do you persuade people to chuck their own boiler and connect to the heat pipe? And in Jühnde they managed to then get enough people to even pay upfront for building the whole system. Well done indeed.

Klaus

[dylan]

HI there, i wrote in about doing a jean pain experiment i think a year or so ago. I had about 50 tonnes of mixed woodchips in about march from a local green waste company. Most of the woodchips were dry so it took a while to get them really wet, nothing really started to work until i added about 6 sacks of fresh horse manure and about 5 bags of fresh grass clippings - these gave enough green material to kickstart it.
I had wrapped some water filled alkathene pipe inside the heap and led this into my polytunnel..
The heap got up to about 65 c and stayed that way for about 5-6 months! However my idea of a thermosiphon for the pipes didnt work..
I didn't try and get any methane from the heap, but the heat generated was very impressive, and nice in a cold spring
I don't think fungi- moulds would be a problem when the heap is hot as it's above their ideal temp, however once it started to cool down there were lots of mushrooms appearing. It Could be an added bonus to inoculate the heap, get free heat, methane, mushrooms and then great compost at the end of it!
If you used the methane to power a pto woodchipper its almost a closed loop

[martin]

really good experiment! - why on earth is more work not being done in this field? - as you've shown most convincingly, if intelligence is applied to this sort of system there are all sorts of exciting possibilities!