Japanese Make Gasoline From Cattle Dung

[RedEarth]

Mar 3, 7:57 AM (ET)

By KOZO MIZOGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) - Scientists in energy-poor Japan said Friday they have found a new source of gasoline - cattle dung.

Sakae Shibusawa, an agriculture engineering professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, said his team has successfully extracted 1.4 milliliters (0.042 ounces) of gasoline from every 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cow dung by applying high pressure and heat.

"The new technology will be a boon for livestock breeders" to reduce the burden of disposing of large amounts of waste, Shibusawa said. About 500,000 metric tons (551,155 U.S. tons) of cattle dung are produced each year in Japan, he said.

Gasoline extracted from cow dung is unheard of, said Tomiaki Tamura, an official of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency. Japan relies almost totally on imports for its oil and gasoline needs.

The team, helped by staff from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology near Tokyo, produced gasoline by adding several unspecified metal catalysts to the dung inside a container and applying a 30-atmosphere pressure and heat of up to 300 degrees Celsius (572 Fahrenheit), Shibusawa said. Details of the catalysts could not be disclosed, he added.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060303/D8G43QN00.html

[Warpy]

1. TDP is the stopgap technology

and will turn all that rotting, stinking waste in landfills across the country into light, sweet crude. The numbers work. I have no clue why it's not being set up around the country now that foreign oil is so expensive.

I would imagine a more sensible administration would develop this technology while fully funding research into renewable energy sources.

[benburch]

2. I wonder if we could throw Bush Voters into the reactor?

Soylent Unleaded! It's REPUBLICANS!

[Canuckistanian]

3. I call bullshit. Literally.

This sounds like a highly suspect story.

First of all the term "gasoline" is probably very misleading. They may have extracted some kind of volatile fuel, but it ain't the gasoline we put in our cars.

Second, what is the amount of energy needed to extract this fuel? It might be viable on a very large scale only.

And the third alarm bell for me are these "undisclosed catalysts".

This has all the earmarks of an energy fraud.

[JohnWxy]

7. I think it would be a lot easier and much less energy intensive to

just make diesel fuel out of it. It's called bio-diesel! North Carolina with all those corporate pig farms could become the middle-east of pig poop.

[DinahMoeHum]

4. But how much energy is being expended to produce this energy?

Aye, there's the rub.

:smoke:

[NickB79]

5. This doesn't seem that impressive

Someone correct me if my numbers are off, but 500,000 metric tons of dung with a 1.4 mL per 100 g conversion rate comes out to 7 million liters per year. That comes out to 1.8 million US gallons per year. Is my math off, or did I get it right?

I know every little bit helps, but the US uses 140 BILLION gallons of gasoline a year; I don't know what Japan uses. Even if Japan uses a fraction of the gasoline the US does, 1.8 million gallons doesn't seem to be much at all.

The other thing that comes to mind is that the conversion of dung to energy is usually a last resort for many cultures. In Africa and southeast Asia, the rural poor have taken to burning dried dung as a fuel source due to lack of wood and charcoal from deforestation. The end result has been far less nutrient replacement in the soil, reducing yields for poor farmers.

While the Japanese are wealthy enough to use synthetic fertilizers on their fields (for now), fertilizers are rapidly becoming more expensive to produce. I doubt that this dung will go to waste once fertilizers skyrocket in price, and will prove just as valuable in this regard as it is for fuel production. Even if the remaining waste is applied to the fields after it is used for gasoline production, nutrients and energy content of the biomass will have been lost being converted to fuel. Thus, one pound of raw dung will have more value as a fertilizer than one pound of "used" dung post-gasoline-production. In the long run this could have serious effects on soil productivity.

[JohnWxy]

6. I"LL BET WE START SELLING THEM CATTLE SHIT AND THEN

THEY WILL BEGIN EXPORTING GASOLINE TO US AND MAKE BILLIONS OUT OF IT. AND OF COURSE WHEN SENSIBLE PEOPLE OBJECT THE REPUBS WILL SAY WE'RE JUST BEING PROTECTIONISTS!

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Much ado about nothing.

Fuel wasn't "extracted", it was "produced". Almost any source of organic (carbon-containing) material can be subjected to "destructive distillation" in absence of air to give some hydrocarbon content. Add some H2 and you can make even more -- peanut butter or packing tape, chicken fat or Chiclets. Notice how incredibly low the yield is -- not worth destroying good natural fertilizer for this. Spread it on the fields. If you want to make it into fuel, put it in a methane digester and let the bacteria do it.