Nature's Home Brewed Gas | Green Energy News

May 22, 2005 – Vol.10 No.9

NATURE’S HOME-BREWED GAS.

Methane from the decomposition of organic matter will be endlessly available as long as there’s life on the planet. Methane, when used as fuel, can burn cleanly but leaves carbon dioxide behind. But, given that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, tapping methane as a source of energy seems a lesser evil.

Projects that involve methane as fuel are varied in their technical nature but produce the same result - usable energy from a renewable source.

Ocean Spray, best known for cranberry juices and sauces, along with Onyx Waste Services, will build a mile-long pipeline in Wisconsin to deliver methane gas from the Onyx Cranberry Creek Landfill to an Ocean Spray juice processing plant. The methane will fuel steam boilers used for a cranberry juice concentrator.

According to Ocean Spray the $2 million project (shared by Ocean Spray and Onyx) will not only cut Ocean Spray’s energy bill by 25 percent per year, but it will begin reducing greenhouse gases from the landfill by 7000 tons per year. (Though the Ocean Spray plant will still have greenhouse gas emissions of the lesser kind.)

The pipeline is expected to be complete by the fall of 2005 and be ready to help concentrate juices made from the 2005 cranberry harvest. Visit Ocean Spray at http://www.oceanspray.com/ Onyx at http://www.onyxws.com/

To be used in a number of methane-as-fuel projects in France, Capstone Turbine has announced it has sold 2.8 megawatts of its 30-kilowatt microturbines to Soffimat, a Paris-based energy systems distributor. For Capstone, the order is the second recently from Soffimat. Seven months ago the company ordered one-megawatt’s worth of 30 kilowatt turbines.

The microturbines will be installed at four landfills in France. Ordinarily the methane from the facilities would be flared off. Now it’s being put work.

Capstone has been busy selling microturbines worldwide. The company recently took a 3.2 megawatt order for its 60-kilowatt machine. Since 1998 the company has shipped more than 3000 microturbines. Visit Soffimat at http://www.soffimat.com/ , Capstone at http://www.microturbine.com/