Ever wonder what that smell is when you pass the dump ? Ever wonder why pig farms are so vehemently opposed by their neighbors ? I can answer your questions with one word : Methane. Methane gas is a normally-occurring byproduct of the process of decomposition.
In industrialized nations, we more commonly refer to it as Natural Gas - you know, the stuff that powers our furnaces and cooks our food. Yep, same stuff. We get our gas as a byproduct of drilling for oil. It comes out of the ground in much higher energy concentrations than what emits from the dump, but it's still the same stuff. In fact, Methane (Natural Gas) is so abundant, many oil companies simply flare it off, as there is not much profit to be made in refining it & shipping it to markets.
In less-industrialized nations (I don't know, is it still OK to say "3rd World" ?) access to energy sources of any kind is rare and beyond the reach of rural people. Typically, these rural people are farmers, often growing just enough to sustain themselves & their families. If only there was some way to harvest the energy being released from the decomposition of animal feces. Or perhaps from the waste from their farmin operation.
But wait ! Enter the anaerobic digester - a simple device which traps the methane gas which is generated & saves it for later use. Oh sure, the methane does not have as high an energy concentration as the stuff Big Oil flares off, but what does the subsistence farmer in the Sudan care ? Suddenly, he has an energy source to help power is farm, or cook his food, or light his modest home. If all that doesn't sound fantastic enough, imagine that the OTHER byproduct he gets from this process is a low-odor, high-concentration fertilizer, which he can spread on his crops to increase his yield !
Posted with Blogsy
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