Toyota's New Power Plant Will Create Clean Energy From Manure (usatoday.com) 75
schwit1 shares a report from Futurism: Japanese automobile giant Toyota is making some exciting moves in the realm of renewable, clean energy. The company is planning to build a power plant in California that turns the methane gas produced by cow manure into water, electricity, and hydrogen. The project, known as the Tri-Gen Project, was unveiled at this year's Los Angeles Auto Show. The plant, which will be located at the Port of Long Beach in California, will be "the world's first commercial-scale 100% renewable power and hydrogen generation plant," writes USA Today. Toyota is expecting the plant to come online in about 2020.
The plant is expected to have the capability to provide enough energy to power 2,350 average homes and enough fuel to operate 1,500 hydrogen-powered vehicles daily. The company is estimating the plant to be able to produce 2.35 MW of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen each day. The facility will also be equipped with one of the largest hydrogen fueling stations in the world. Toyota's North America group vice president for strategic planning, Doug Murtha, says that the company "understand[s] the tremendous potential to reduce emissions and improve society."
The plant is expected to have the capability to provide enough energy to power 2,350 average homes and enough fuel to operate 1,500 hydrogen-powered vehicles daily. The company is estimating the plant to be able to produce 2.35 MW of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen each day. The facility will also be equipped with one of the largest hydrogen fueling stations in the world. Toyota's North America group vice president for strategic planning, Doug Murtha, says that the company "understand[s] the tremendous potential to reduce emissions and improve society."
Clean energy? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clean energy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clean energy? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cows exist either way.
True, but they don't exist in Long Beach. The poop will have to be hauled in. This sounds like a publicity stunt rather than a real attempt to help the environment.
This will take waste that would normally generate methane
A cow patty decaying in a field does not generate methane. It only generates methane if it decays in anaerobic conditions.
Re:Clean energy? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are about a zillion cattle ranches within 200 miles of Long Beach. Until I moved out here to the Central Coast, I had no idea just how big ranching is here.
If you drive Hwy 101 or Hwy 5 from San Luis Obispo (where I live) to Long Beach, you will see tons of cattle and horses. Don't do the drive today, though, because fires have closed down 101 through Ventura and Hwy 5 through Castalc Junction. I know these things because I'm supposed to catch a plane at LAX tomorrow and ain't nothing moving through there. Not even Amtrak, because the smoke from the fire is so hazardous. I may have to take the Surfliner up to SFO to fly out.
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There are about a zillion cattle ranches within 200 miles of Long Beach. Until I moved out here to the Central Coast, I had no idea just how big ranching is here.
Real live cattle ranches aren't all that helpful for this kind of operation, though. What you need is a feedlot, preferably a really nasty and high-population one. In that case, the shit is highly concentrated, and easy to sluice into tanks or bags or whatever you're collecting the shit in.
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That's a good point. From what I can tell, the cattle ranches here in California are more like spas for livestock. However, the beef here is really good and surprisingly cheap. I couldn't believe that the same cut of beef is less expensive in Central California than it is in Houston, Texas, but it's true.
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This sounds like a publicity stunt
Are you joking??? Of course this is a publicity stunt. Toyota is in the business of manufacturing cars, not environmental cleansing. As generating hydrogen and electricity this way costs significantly higher than just buying them off the grid (electricity) or splitting water (hydrogen), it is obvious the only reason Toyota is doing it is for the PR reasons - especially in California.
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In addition to the other response...
Toyota make lots of things, not just cars. If this catches on they'll be quite willing to make it (subcontracting it out?) and sell it to others.
Cleaner perhaps but not clean (Score:2)
The cows exist either way.
Yes, but that still does not make this "clean" energy. If a coal-fired plant uses an improved boiler that reduces its emissions that does not make it a clean energy source it just makes it a less damaging one. I'd argue that this is exactly what this is - it might be better than what we do now but there is no way you can call this clean given the emissions required to produce what it needs to run.
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Are you really such an moron?
Of course it is clean energy.
Either the manur rotts on the fields or wherever and creates CH4 and CO2 or you burn it in a gas plant, and create the same amount of CO2 in the end.
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More, methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, even though shorter lived. I believe the half-life of a methane molecule in the atmosphere is supposed to be around 20 years...then something eats it and turns it into CO2.
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Are you really such an moron? Of course it is clean energy.
Either the manur rotts on the fields or wherever and creates CH4 and CO2 or you burn it in a gas plant, and create the same amount of CO2 in the end.
You are underselling the benefits here. Methane released into the atmosphere stays methane for about a century on average, and causes 25 times as much solar heat trapping as does the same amount of carbon as CO2. So this is a much "cleaner" (environmentally beneficial) situation than simply letting that manure rot and release the methane.
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Methane in the (upper) atmosphere stays there for a few years ... not centuries.
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There are plenty cows in California to support this. For many years we have been doing this in Vermont, it is called Cow Power. The manure power generators are installed right on the farm. The hay that cows eat is not completely digested. The left over hay from the process is suitable for use as bedding which saves the farmer money.
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My guess is this isn't quite the same process, but it could be. Or this could all be PR fluff. It's still probably a worthwhile thing to do.
OTOH, I understood that processing manure this way lost a lot of the nutrients which would otherwise (eventually!) be returned to the soil. But eventually can take a long time, especially if you don't have decent native dung beetles. (Australia had to import some IIRC.)
Re:Clean energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are a complete idiot.
Next thing you're going to complain about the number of trees required to support a paper recycling plant.
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Paper is not made of trees.
Explain what a pulp mill is then (Score:2)
Paper is not made of trees.
Oh, really? [wikipedia.org] Some paper may contain fibres from other sources but a lot of paper comes from wood which is why there are pulp mills in places known for harvesting timber like Canada. They literally make it from trees.
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I've been hearing that paper isn't made from trees for quite some time now. Trees give rather coarse paper, while paper made from cotton and other textile fibers is smoother, is always the argument. But maybe it's a local thing. I live in the Netherlands, where there are not many trees around but loads of paper is used. It's probably cheaper to make paper from used clothes (many people here throw their clothes away after one year of use because they are then out of fashion) rather than wood.
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Poop Power (Score:2)
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California is the fourth largest cattle-producing state.
Also, there aren't any uranium mines in Long Beach, but I bet you wouldn't have the same objection to a nuclear power plant here.
Well sure (Score:2)
Re:Well sure (Score:5, Interesting)
"Walter, I love you, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to face the fact you’re a goddamn moron."
You may have heard a rule-of-thumb is that it takes 1.5 to 2 acres to feed a cow calf pair for 12 months.
As a last resort, we can always resort to math:
There were 92 million grazing cattle in the US herd for 2016, sharing a total of just south of 800 million acres of range & pasture land with dairy farms, sheep, goats, and horses. Let's generously say that beef producers occupy 50% of the available free range. 400,000,000 acres/92,000,000 cattle is 4 cow/calf units per acre, one third to one half of the optimal average required for sustained range-only feeding.
Where do you thing they make up the shortfall?
Re:Well sure (Score:4, Funny)
Hamburger Helper.
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No, 400 mega-acres for 92 mega-cows is 4 acres per cow/calf pair...
Always remember, acres/cow is what you get when you divide land by number of cows....
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Even with optimal acreage, it's necessary to supplement the grazing with protein cakes, salt licks, and winter hay... which generally requires even more acreage.
Re: Well sure (Score:2)
Where do you thing they make up the shortfall?
Grain feeding.
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How much land it takes to support one cow depends a *lot* on the nature of the land. I don't think the data you supply allows one to make an even approximately accurate calculation. If I took your opinion seriously I'd ask my brother, who owns a small ranch what he figured. He must figure it pretty closely, as he needs to buy hay each winter...but what he worries most about isn't hay, it's water. Even so, his opinion would just say what he needed on his land. Ranchers on desert land would need a lot mo
That's a bunch of bullshit.. (Score:2)
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Reminds them of home.
2.35 MW or 2.35MWh ? (Score:3)
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will it have a constant production of 2.35MW ? or will it produce 2.35MWh a day ? Huge difference. "The company is estimating the plant to be able to produce 2.35 MW of electricity and 1.2 tons of hydrogen each day." I would expect a unit in Wh in this sentence, a unit of energy, not a unit of power.
THey're both units of power, effectively. 2.35 MW is a unit of power and 1.2 tons of hydrogen per day can be easily interpreted as a unit of power, since they're interested in teh stored energy in hydrogen and a
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The real problem here is that 2.35MW it peanuts. Half a dozen 18-wheeler engines hooked to generators could do that much.
Let me know when they put together a 500MW power plant using these techniques....
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not as:
As a FYI, ambiguous phrases like this can be made less ambiguous simply by rearranging the text as:
Are they retarted? (Score:1)
I mean,
1) You have to "fabricate" the manure (it takes a lot of resources to make and the "creation" process does contamine)
2) Instead of fertilizing the soil to cultivate food for humans (I guess the "half the planet earthlings are starving" hasn't take its toll in their minds) they prefer to burn the manure.
Win-Win! Wait... ain't that right, is it?
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Are they retarted?
No. Are you?
1) You have to "fabricate" the manure (it takes a lot of resources to make and the "creation" process does contamine)
That is a byproduct of people farming cows. The manure is going to be fabricated either way.
2) Instead of fertilizing the soil to cultivate food for humans (I guess the "half the planet earthlings are starving" hasn't take its toll in their minds) they prefer to burn the manure.
My guess is that the ash would contain all the minerals except possibly nitrogen alre
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Possibly because it's false. No, there are not 3.5 billion people starving right now.
There aren't even that many who fit the (rather generous) definition of "hungry" commonly used to describe the problem.
By the by, the number you're looking for for "hunger" is ~800 million (11% or so). The number of people starving is a very small fraction of that, but the exact value is unknown (there are places still that don't
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Yes they are somewhat retarded, the amount of energy produced is laughable, this is not a solution at larg scale level. And the most important part of "fertilizer" for soil is the nitrogen which the ash won't have, though it would have potassium and some other minerals. Other ways manure helps soil is via moisture retension and carbon (up in smoke).
In short, poop is more useful as poop.
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"Half the planet starving" was perhaps 40 - 30 years ago ...
Welcome in the year 2017.
Biogas (Score:5, Insightful)
From Wikipedia.
Germany had 5905 Biogas plants in 2010 .
The electricity supply was approximately 12.8 TWh, which was 12.6% of the total generated renewable electricity then.
I don't see a real difference here, but since I'm not a newbie I can't possibly RTFA.
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The difference is that in Germany, Biogas plants get to sell their electricity for a guaranteed price. Yes, it's a subsidy. But IMHO not worse than subsidies for other power plants, such as Hinkley Point in Great Britain. In that case, a new nuclear power plant is going to get a subsidy.
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Actually in germany we distinguish between bio gas, which comes from manure and decomposting plants and gas from landfills.
Gas from landfills uou are required by law to collect, and usually it is piped intoo the natural gas grid.
Bio gas plants are usuall run by farmers because they can be combined into virtual power plants and provide reserve energy, which makes good money.
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Yes but this is Toyota! It's in 'Murika! It's on Slashdot!
That is nothing... (Score:2)
Then... we will make manure from clean energy!
So... (Score:2)
Trumpâ(TM)s Twitter Tweets could be used as some kind of super fuel?
What if we run this system inside the Trump Reality Distortion Field... Will it produce enough power to keep Bitcoin mining economical?
REALLY? (Score:2)
Someone discovered that modern reporters don't know that methane comes from decaying organic material, like cow dung! Now THAT made this a headline story.
See also India coaldung fuel balls, India. Just in case a reporter out there wants to get a scoop on what to do with the leavin's.
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...But where did the carbon atom from the methane go. Typically, you burn methane to produce heat, water and carbon dioxide, the heat you use, the water usually goes down the drain and the carbon dioxide goes up the flue. Where did the carbon atom go in the process being set up here?
With just a moment of Googling I found a description of the process [energy.gov]. The carbon is released as carbon dioxide, so it is swapping carbon releases as methane for carbon released as CO2. But since methane is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas, molecule for molecule, this is a 25-fold reduction in greenhouse emissions.
I know. I'm thinking to much. It's a curse.
No bothering to do any research, and just thinking a little tiny bit is a curse I grant you.
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Because reducing the emissions is an activity of no value whatsoever?
A big step forward for Toyota (Score:2)
Making energy from dung is a big step forward from making cars out of dung
A messy disaster waiting to happen. (Score:2)
But what may occur if, perchance, the manure strikes the ventilation equipment? Has anyone considered this possibility? It even sounds like an almost catchy catch phrase.