A Chinese Dairy Farm Made The area’s Largest Machine For Turning Crap Into Power [Energy]

What happens when a Chinese dairy farm takes the excrement from 60,000 of its 250,000 cows and c onverts it into electricity ? They generate 5.66 milliwatts of power, that’s roughly enough to power 3500 American homes.

According to Technology Review, Huishan Dairy has created a methane converter it is over 10 times the scale of similar such devices. Powered by four of the GE engines pictured above, the converter captures methane from fermenting cow poop and turns it into power. Pop Sci does a fantastic job of summarizing the science behind the converter, which involves processes like hydrodesulfurization and anaerobic digestion, so on etc.

But what’s really interesting here’s that the dimensions of this converter may be more economically appealing to dairy farms within the US. Currently, methane converter within the US only generates 2 milliwatts of power, and are only used by 1% of farms. And considering the plant in China could reduce carbon emssions by over 180,000 tons, I’m sure this type of converter would have the complete support of green freaks stateside. [ Technology Review via PopSci ]

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This post is tagged: anaerobic digestion, dairy farm, dairy farms, electricity, milliwatts, power pop