Cows make fuel for biogas train

Source: By Tim Franks 
              BBC Newsnight


You have to tell yourself the cows are going to die anyway.
Inside the abattoir at Swedish Meats in Linkoping, the cows stood patiently, occasionally nuzzling the lens of our camera.
From there, it was a short walk past the white-walled butchery, down the steps to the basement where the raw material for biogas, slid greasily down a chute.
Still bubbling and burping, and carpeting you with an acrid stench, came the organs and the fat and the guts. Enough, from one cow, to get you about 4km (2.5 miles) on the train.
A tanker collects the organic sludge and makes the short journey to the biogas factory, where the stinking fuel is stewed gently for a month, before the methane can be drawn off.
Oil price rising
The world's first biogas-powered passenger train is taking its first passengers between the Swedish cities of Linkoping and Vastervik. And the biogas comes from the entrails of dead cows.

'Amanda' runs between the Swedish cities of Linkoping and Vastervik

The boss of Svensk Biogas, Carl Lilliehook, is a proper, serious Swede. But his eyes twinkle at the biofuel "revolution", as he calls it. You don't have to look far beneath the number-crunching CEO to find the muesli-crunching environment-lover.
Yes, he says, the train between Linkoping and Vastervik will cost 20% more to run on methane than on the usual diesel. But the oil price is going up and up, and in any case, Swedes care about being able to pick our mushrooms and their fruit.
Nor is it just trains. In Linkoping, the 65-strong bus fleet is powered by biogas. Indeed the city boasts that it was the first in the world to try out its buses on methane.
The taxis, the rubbish trucks and a number of private cars also fill up at the biogas pump, housed under a dinky green corrugated iron roof.
And if methane doesn't light your fire, you can choose to have your car run on a high-grade biofuel mix. This year, Saab started selling a biopowered version of their 95 model.
Its engine will take a fuel cocktail which is up to 85% bioethanol, made, principally, from Brazilian sugar cane.
Value for money
The experts regard bioethanol and biodiesel as "carbon-neutral", because they spew fewer carbon emissions, and the crops which provide them absorb greenhouse-gas causing carbon dioxide, as they grow.

Saab is now selling a biopowered version of their 95 model

The Saab executive we spoke to said his company would like to sell the car in the UK but, for the time being, the biofuel infrastructure is not there. Bioethanol - at a 5% mix - only became available from the start of the year in Britain.
In Sweden, the attraction is not limited just to the large, green consensus. The bio-powered version of the Saab 95 costs around $1,000 (£500) more than the normal model.
But with pump prices for the E85 mix a third cheaper than normal petrol, company car tax breaks, and exemptions for parking and congestion charges, Saab reckons you get that $1,000 back within the first year.
The harsh truth is that, across Europe, transport is not pulling its weight when it comes to meeting the Kyoto targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry is. So, to a lesser extent, are households and agriculture. But now the European Commission - the guardian of the European Union - has weighed in, demanding that transport do more.
It has set binding targets for the amount of fuel use it wants taken up by bio-products by the end of this year, and by 2010.
The UK is set to fall well short of the 2% target for the end of December. The government reckons it is on course for 0.3%. Sweden is likely to be 10 times ahead, at 3%.

By road and by rail, Sweden has a lot to teach the rest of us.

Biogas plant set up by UN

Source:http://www.dawn.com

ISLAMABAD: A plant set up in Sanghar, Sindh, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is generating 50 cubic metres of biogas – sufficient to energise 20 households – in addition to producing 200kg of liquefied and 150kg of solid fertiliser a day by using 400kg of agricultural waste.

The UNEP announced on Wednesday that its Japan-based International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) had taken up the project to convert agricultural waste into clean, sustainable energy. The project was completed at a cost of Rs2 million.

A survey carried out by the IETC and the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro, found that 2.5 million tons of waste, comprising wheat and canola straw, cotton stalks, cotton gin waste, sugarcane tops, bagasse, rice straw and husks, and banana plant, was produced in Sanghar district.

A subsequent calculation found that the energy potential of the available waste was equivalent to 1.07 million tons of firewood or 910 million units of electricity. The converted waste could meet the energy demands of roughly 400,000 households.

It was learnt that while 20 per cent of sugarcane tops was being fed to animals, the rest was being burnt in the fields along with the entire banana plant waste and 70-80 per cent of rice straw. The Sanghar Sugar Mills agreed to provide the land and funds to build the plant.

Please save our world from Pollution and Global Warming.

Please every reader kindly play your role to save environment  and our world from global warming and pollution and also from diseases due to use of fertilisers.

Please try to use natural ways of energy and also recommend others.We cut down the forest and burnt a lot of trees as house hold fuel.

In according to increase our agriculture yield we used a lot of chemical sprays and fertilisers and they produced a lot of diseases  and killed a lot of animal and plants .

Some of species are near about end.

We have lots of transport but now we have not any clean environment and no clean air to breath.

Not only this we have finished maximum fuel and natural gas in result we have very costly gasoline and gas.All earth,s resources are near about end.

So we can say we have lost both Clean Environment and resources and many much diseases are reward.

So my question is is there any solution to save our world, our resources and Environment?

Here are some suggestions that are may answer to above question.

The solution is; we have to use natural ways of energies.

Bio Fuel: We can protect our nature by using bio fuel.Double advantage we have pollution free world and cheapest fuel. There are many ways to get bio fuel but now a days we have a plant that gives us fuel (diesel oil).

Jatropha: Jatropha is plant that gives us bio diesel that can be used in every diesel engine.Jatropha plant start fruiting in third year of its life its life is average 60 years. Its oil can be used directly in engine we need no refinery process. Its fuel is sulphur and lead free and totally nature friendly. 

Gas: we have bio gas option that is nature friendly gas easy to produce . There it can be used as house hold use and also as commercial use. We have to use organic wastages and animal wastages in it. Here is again double advantage we save money and nature by using that wastage. On the other hand we have to pay for gas and for destroying wastage.

Bio fermenter: We have as cheap fertiliser as free. if we produce bio gas we have out put wastage that is the richest fertiliser . We can separately make bio fermenter to produce free fertiliser by wastage. And we can play role to save our world.

Kindly Sir if you like please share it. It will take only few seconds.Thanks!