Everything poops, however some more than others. Cow manure is a natural source of methane, and is also quite plentiful. Although this is a resource, it’s not being used as efficiently as possible; therefore a biogas digester is an amazing solution to this waste of energy.
On November 2nd, we took a trip down to a local farm to collect our own cow poop, with help from Mr. Chad Hoffman, a beef farmer. He had a total of 500 cows that take in 11,000 pounds of feed a day and produce a third of that in manure. That’s a lot of poop, which can be turned into a lot of energy. |
With this poop, we came back to our lab and created slurry to add to the digester, which was a very smelly, stinky process. After doing this we left the slurry in the digester for about three weeks so that the bacteria could create an environment. Once this was done we were able to begin the feeding process.
With a lot of cows comes a lot of energy, but sadly, places with a lot of cows don’t have Biogas Digesters. However, the technologies of biogas digesters have been introduced to these people and are beginning to be used. Thanks to cow poop, now many farmers in third world countries have access to clean and free energy. If these technologies continue to develop, hopefully in the future we will put manure to use instead of letting all the valuable resources go to waste. |