Argentina’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology went about trying to come up with a CH4 capturing device and created a prototype device that can extract as much as 300 liters of the gas daily. That’s enough CH4 to run a fridge or car for a day. With over 51 million cows in the country, Argentina sees the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from dairy and non-dairy cattle as worthwhile. Pablo Sorondo, press officer for the Institute sees a potential future where the gas collected from the cows could be used to provide all the energy needed to operate farms off the grid. Farms could even contribute power to nearby communities from the gas collected.
Is this for real? Well apparently the technology which involves a backpack with a tube inserted through the cow’s skin into its intestinal tract was first tested about three years ago. Once collected the gas was then compressed and condensed and used as fuel. But it appears that there is no hint of any ongoing development for the project at the National Institute’s website.
What it does, however, is illustrate a real challenge for livestock-based farming. The problem has been considered significant enough for California to sign into law a bill, SB 1383, aimed at addressing short-lived climate pollutants that includes regulating dairy and beef cattle sources for managing methane emissions. The bill doesn’t suggest anything as interventional as sticking a tube through the hide of a cow to capture the gas from its intestines, but rather refers to gas emissions after the fact describing innovation in manure management to harvest biomethane as an energy source. The goal is to reduce methane emissions from the dairy and livestock sectors by 40% from 2013 levels by 2030.
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The biomethane produced by Clean Energy is 90% cleaner than diesel. Extracted from organic waste it is processed, purified and dispensed through pipelines to the company’s fueling infrastructure where it is then compressed or liquefied. It then gets transported to stations where it is sold as fuel. The company has plans to produce 56.8 million liters (15 million gallons) of the stuff over the next year.
On the company website it claims that using Redeem will allow a car fleet consuming on average 3.8 million liters (1 million gallons) per year to reduce its carbon footprint by 9,700 metric tons. That is equivalent to taking 1,940 cars off the road.
Redeem is lower priced than gasoline or diesel, ans should be a very attractive offering particularly to vehicle fleet operators.
The map below shows where current and future Redeem supplied stations are located. Current ones are in blue and dark green. Future stations are in the lighter green.
