Kitchen Garden Forum

BBC News, What to do with 12,000 tonnes of pig poo?

Use a biomass digester to produce methane, use that to generate electicity, use the waste heat to warm the farmhouse and the other end product is fertiliser.

Burning the Methane gives CO2 which is one twentieth the greenhouse destructiveness of methane
See BBC News Article

I was going to post this one too, excellent and I was pleased to see his plan for profits was improving pens for his pigs.

So like the Foston piggery proposals which attracted so much opprobrium from organic and environmental pressure groups

http://www.soilassociation.org/Takeacti ... fault.aspx

Perhaps so Alan, but I read it as a traditional farming business, with the middle aged son trying to carry on with his fathers farm and struggling. Yes the piggery is shed based but no dates were given, so it could have been so for decades, point being it was a farm already in existence heading for bust and then for a change actually saved by the bank lending the money for this substantial piece of lot which means he can now cope with the supermarkets paying him the same or less per pig as twenty years ago.

Peter

I wasn't criticising. The Foston proposal for a large unit and biogas plant has been demonised by opponents, as has the Nocton dairy plan.

"4,000 pigs and 100,000 chickens" is fairly large-scale "factory farming" - again I am not criticising, just observing.

Hi Alan,
Those who perpetually demonize agricultural schemes are simply playing to the gallery of people who simply do not have any idea about farming.
In particular the Soil Association try very hard to sow doubt into peoples minds and then leave it up to their disciples to spread the message and at every telling these things get worse.
If we are to progress at all in this country we must embrace science like there was no tomorrow because unless we do there will be no tomorrow.
The Soil Association fear anything that they think could harm Organics, and remember they set out to sell Organic Produce at a high premium so they cannot be said to even begin to represent the average family.
Because of their attitude to advancement as a movement I truly think they are going in the wrong direction.
Large piggeries and large dairy units will eventually have to come and as is demonstrated with this scheme to make electricity, which actually takes the smell out of 'Pig --it' must have merit on that alone and electricity too. My word what a bonus!
Because the Soil Association want smaller old traditional methods to be used I am convinced that rather than viewing these proposed schemes
and adding sensible comment, where it might be appreciated, they have a kind of think tank that lists as many things that could go wrong and then over elaborate them and then publish their findings.
JB.

Pity we can't do the same with people poo and have digesters and generators instead of sewage works.

PLUMPUDDING wrote:Pity we can't do the same with people poo and have digesters and gererators instead of sewage works.

Thames Water have a process where the sludge is dried & burnt so the resulting lower volume of ash , inert & odourless, can go for landfill.
Obviously there is an initial energy input, nut batch a burning dries batch b & so on.
They also collect & use the methane.for electricity generatipn, ise the waste heat on sewage processing and power the plant with the electricity.

Not sure if it is widespreadr or test / pilot, but.the technology exists, works and should be encouraged.

Similarly landfill site methane used to be captured and flared off to prevent issues. Current thinking gathers it and generates electricity.

Been going on for years. Was born and brought up not too far from this http://www.engineering-timelines.com/sc ... sp?id=1110 (might explain something!). I half remember the publicity about that big investment in the 60s.
It's just alongside what we used to call the World's largest navigable sewer - "The Manchester Shi* Canal". (No counter claims for the Suez Canal please)

See also

The manure from horses in the King's Troop will be used to heat and light its new headquarters in south London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10591601

So, if it is possible and has been tried and tested for years, why isn't it done everywhere? Could it be that the government didn't want to upset the major energy suppliers in the past by encouraging competition.

Perhaps now is the time for a change in their thinking.

They seem to be willing to pay foreign companies ridiculous amounts of money to install wind farms and are happy for them to own our major utility companies, but just drag their feet when it comes to supporting and encouraging British firms to do anything.

Just came across this news item; which may be of interest in this discussion?

Defra announce Anaerobic Digestion Loan Fund at UK AD & Biogas 2011

It is good to see they have actually thought about this kind of waste treatment, I hope they don't do their usual trick of tying everthing up in red-tape and not facilitating the start up of people wanting to do this.

Hi PP,
This is the scheme set up a while ago now and itwas an was an experiment. I honestly do not know is it is still in operation.

The South Shropshire Biowaste Digester at Ludlow is intended to be a large-pilot scale digester, the first of its kind in the UK.

If you go to Google you can read all about it.
It is a long file but it gives you some good diagrams and photos so if you browse through rather than read it gives you a good idea of what occurs.
All attempts to provide the website for you have failed.
It was reported at the time that the Soil Association condemned the fertilizer saying that because the base scource was from public waste collection there could be too many contaminants for it to be returned to the land. The base scource was, what you and I would put on the compost heap, not garden waste but household green waste.
Of course there will be somebody who will always put the wrong thing in the specified bin but they seem to be only able to manually scan the incoming digestate and that wasn't enough for the SA.
I have been unable to determine whether the plant and scheme is still operating.
JB.