Waste to Energy

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Comment by Dee Miller on November 16, 2009 at 11:23am

To Waste to Energy Group

I haven't been through every message, so I don't know if this information has been given before, but going through Google menu to "More" and then "Scholar" and doing a search on your topic will bring up white papers available - mostly for sale - on that subject. Also, Peswiki seems to have extensive information on whatever you can name organized in a meaningful way.

Comment by J Jay Pirko on November 15, 2009 at 12:40pm

To the Pickens Plan Waste to Energy Group:

I am working on an economic development proposal for the Youngstown, Ohio region, including waste-to-energy technology to increase our local energy production. This proposal includes:
- Waste Water Treatment Plant sludge & effluent bio-digestion into methane & other combustible gasses for electrical turbines.
- Municipal solid waste (garbage) which should be diverted from sanitary landfills and used for bio-digestion into methane & other combustible gasses for electrical turbines.
- Demolition debris (we have a few thousand condemned houses) and other combustible waste (tires, etc) to use for electrical generation.

Any companies working in these fields, technical expertise, or suggestions would be welcome.

- J. Jay Pirko
OH-17th District Group Leader

Comment by JeffM on November 13, 2009 at 1:41pm

John:

I have been working in the wastewater field for many years. On one project we have been de-watering septic sludge and simply take it to the landfill. The effluent is treated in a series of aerated ponds with aerobic and anerobic zones.

I am most interested in using facultative lagoons for production of Bio-diesel from algae. The nutrients and the sun are free, the algae harvest method can be hydraulic with the residual being used to power the plant parasitic losses. The ponds can be designed to produce very high quality effluent, free of nitrogen and phosphorous. I favor biological processes, as that is where I think we will end up, solar-biomass-chemical storage.

Comment by John Nistler on November 13, 2009 at 9:36am

Hello Karl, Robert. Interested in your overall discussion. During the second stage of our converting a rural Texas 3 pond plus irrigation sewage treatment into an alternative energy fuel production plant we are looking at the production of Methane from the trash pond.

From a business perspective we are considering a couple of approaches:

Approach 1 - the production of methanol. Nice price per gallon, less transportation and delivery issues, but as mentioned, technical feasibility might come into question. Have a few good chemists to pull off of, but it is still a question.

Approach two - mix the methane with hydrogen (available from electrolysis - please see other discsussion Waste Water - ....). This could be mixed with natural gas or move through gas pipelines. At point of use, the mixture could be burned or put through a hydrogen fuel cell with front end reformers and scrubbers (available technology from 1972). The idea is if the "natural or made natural gas was rich in hydrogen, more water, electricity and heat would be generated versus volume of gas.

Love to get inputs on these two approaches.

Regards,
John

Comment by Robert Schultz on November 12, 2009 at 9:25am

Received an e-mail from a friend in another group. He is setting up anerobic digesters for processing biomass/manure in Tillamook, OR. Lots of cows, a cheese factory, etc. along the Oregon coast.

Comment by Karl Mayr on November 12, 2009 at 4:38am

Hi Robert Schultz,

Liquid derivatives from methane are more attractive for long haul truckers. Methane is practically impossible to liquify, which requires large compressed gas tanks (to get CNG). City busses cary large gas tanks on the roofs of buses.

Converting methane to methanol sounds like a good alternate for over-the-road trucking.

Back in the 1950's, we lived on propane to operate a motel, service station, restaurant 25 miles west of town, and there was no grid at that time. Large Propane transports with huge Hall Scott engine hauled liquid propane for distribution. We had a 1000 gallon propane tank, and the gas cost about 15 cents a gallon (I now pay 3.15 per gallon).

I was there for all of high school (52 to 56), and we pumped our water with a wind powered machine, (wind mill). We serviced the leather pump gaskets at the bottom of the well (pulling the pump rods).

I became mechanical inclined (like many many others) out of necessity.

Karl from Tularosa

Comment by Robert Schultz on October 30, 2009 at 4:18pm

Karl,
I'm a big sports fan, but I can't afford the tickets. So I do what more people are doing these days, stay home and watch on TV. It's amazing that 50,000 people have the cash to spend on World Series tickets, and are willing to go sit in 40 degree weather for 3+hours to watch it, then battle traffic to get home. Give me a warm house, and a cold beer instead.

Comment by Karl Mayr on October 30, 2009 at 3:35pm

Hi Robert Schultz,

Good Comment regarding liquification of NG. Have you heard of Sasol,com. The started making liquid fuels from coal gas (methane+) in 1970's for South Africa, after the 1973 iol embargo to SA.

Wikipedia says that it is a commercial process, and can come close to making a profit. It is also a laborious process, but liquid feul for 19 wheelers is a big plus for on the road rigs. I will encourage Secretary Chu to persue the feasibility of this process and compare it to diesel only.

Propane is almost a liquid at 20+F, and it could be considered too. What are all these well paid scientist doing these days, I wonder. We have an energy crisis ruining our ability to support jobs and a tax base. Do they care for their country?

How are all these "Sports" figures being supported? Where are the "entertained" getting all the bucks to spend on sports events?

Karl from Tularosa

Comment by Robert Schultz on October 30, 2009 at 1:06pm

Key Step Made Towards Turning Methane Gas Into Liquid Fuel

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2009) — Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have taken an important step in converting methane gas to a liquid, potentially making it more useful as a fuel and as a source for making other chemicals.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is plentiful and is an attractive fuel and raw material for chemicals because it is more efficient than oil, produces less pollution and could serve as a practical substitute for petroleum-based fuels until renewable fuels are widely useable and available.

However, methane is difficult and costly to transport because it remains a gas at temperatures and pressures typical on the Earth's surface.

Now UNC and UW scientists have moved closer to devising a way to convert methane to methanol or other liquids that can easily be transported, especially from the remote sites where methane is often found. The finding is published in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Science.

Methane is valued for its high-energy carbon-hydrogen bonds, which consist of a carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms. The gas does not react easily with other materials and so it is most often simply burned as fuel. Burning breaks all four hydrogen-carbon bonds and produces carbon dioxide and water, said Karen Goldberg, a UW chemistry professor.

Converting methane into useful chemicals, including readily transported liquids, currently requires high temperatures and a lot of energy. Catalysts that turn methane into other chemicals at lower temperatures have been discovered, but they have proven to be too slow, too inefficient or too expensive for industrial applications, Goldberg said.

Binding methane to a metal catalyst is the first step required to selectively break just one of the carbon-hydrogen bonds in the process of converting the gas to methanol or another liquid. In their paper, the researchers describe the first observation of a metal complex (a compound consisting of a central metal atom connected to surrounding atoms or molecules) that binds methane in solution. This compound serves as a model for other possible methane complexes. In the complex, the methane's carbon-hydrogen bonds remained intact as they bound to a rare metal called rhodium.

The work should spur further advances in developing catalysts to transform methane into methanol or other liquids, Goldberg said, although she noted that actually developing a process and being able to convert the gas into a liquid chemical at reasonable temperatures still is likely some distance in the future.

"The idea is to turn methane into a liquid in which you preserve most of the carbon-hydrogen bonds so that you can still have all that energy," she said. "This gives us a clue as to what the first interaction between methane and metal must look like."

Maurice Brookhart, a UNC chemistry professor, said carbon-hydrogen bonds are very strong and hard to break, but in methane complexes breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond becomes easier.

"The next step is to use knowledge gained from this discovery to formulate other complexes and conditions that will allow us to catalytically replace one hydrogen atom on methane with other atoms and produce liquid chemicals such as methanol," Brookhart said.

The lead author of the paper is Wesley Bernskoetter of Brown University, who did the work while at UNC. Goldberg, Brookhart and Cynthia Schauer, associate chemistry professor at UNC, are co-authors.

The work comes out of a major National Science Foundation-funded collaboration, the UW-based Center for Enabling New Technologies Through Catalysis, which involves 13 universities and research centers in the United States and Canada, including UNC. Additional funding came from the National Institutes of Health.

The center, directed by Goldberg, is aimed at finding efficient, inexpensive and environmentally friendly ways to produce chemicals and fuels.

Comment by Karl Mayr on October 30, 2009 at 6:23am

Good Work> James,

Now, it seems that the new "media" like Twitter can disseminate this "new area of applied physics.

I hope that others here can see the merits of plasma technology. We encourage the expansion of this "miracle" plasma technology.

In order to grasp new technology, we must dedicate our time and energy to new ideas. The Ruskies seem to find a lot of value in PLASMA TECH. Quite an impressive video.

I participated in a Western Region PP Meeting, and I did something "new and different", and made "written comments" to attendees....BEFORE the phone conference......Let's be bold and different...if we expect to change from a passive society!!!!

Karl from Tularosa
Karl from Tularosa

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