Methane gas is a clean burning and renewable source of fuel and it looks like one company is now trying to extract the gas from cows. Over at CNN/Money, it’s reported that a Swedish firm is doing just that — using methane produced from cows in an effort to solve the energy crisis. Because of the digestive process of a cow’s four stomachs, these beasts produce about 75% of the methane produced by all animals. The problem has been on how to trap this gas that the cow produces from both ends. The article states:

Swedish company Svenska Biogas, however, are currently doing the next best thing: taking the bits of cows that would otherwise be discarded during the slaughter process — stomach and intestines primarily, but also udders, blood and parts of the liver and kidneys — and extracting the residual methane directly from them.

“Depending on the cow’s size, we can get 80-100 kilos of material from each animal,” Carl Lilliehook, Managing Director of Svenska Biogas told CNN.

“These are all the things that would otherwise be classified as food-process waste and either incinerated or disposed of in landfill sites.

“This material is then heated at 70 degrees centigrade for one hour to boil off the impurities, and put in a digester for one month, where micro-organisms break it down, producing a mixture of methane and CO2 which is drawn out of the top of the digester.”

Having been “upgraded” — filtered through water to remove as much of the CO2 as possible — the resultant methane biogas is then used to fuel cars, taxis, rubbish trucks and the 70-strong bus-fleet in Linkoping, the town where Svenska Biogas is based.

After reading this article and the amount of methane that cows produce, would it be possible to trap this gas before the animal is slaughtered? There are countless numbers of vacant warehouses across the land that could be used to store cows. Than, as they let out the gas, it could be trapped into vats and processed for energy.

Is this too far-fetched, or do you think it would work?

Comments welcome.

Full article here.

[tags]cows, methane gas, fuel, energy, crisis, [/tags]