ALTERNATIVE ENERGY: Power from Cows?

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Transforming Cow Effluent Into Electricity by Sy Guth

The world had a good laugh at New Zealand a few years back when the New Zealand government wanted to add a "flatulence" tax on farmers for the amount of methane gas their cows and sheep produce. It was at the time when countries were being asked to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change around 2003.

New Zealand has a large dairy and sheep industry and being a small country, the cow and sheep effluent accounts for more than half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions. The cows seem to be the main offenders in this matter. It is their burping and effluent actions that create a high methane omission problem.

The New Zealand farmers mailed "flatulence" in boxes to their MPs in Parliament House and then drove their tractors to Parliament House in protest. The government backed down on the tax, but out of that cow row, Natural Systems Ltd has developed a system, BioGenCoolTM, to convert cow effluent into energy for use on farms.

The system is environmentally friendly and is a process that extracts methane gas and carbon dioxide from cow effluent to biodigester technology. The after production result is a product that is used as a fuel in a co-generation plant to generate electricity. The electricity is then used to provide for the vacuum pump, hot water and milk chilling requirements. The BioGenCoolTM system has won the EECA Special Award for Energy Efficiency, Conservation and Renewable Energy in the Canterbury Resource Management Awards for 2008.

To read more about the BioGenCoolTM or the Canterbury Environment Awards 2008 visit http://www.global-enterprizes.com/articles.htm

For further articles that may be of interest visit http://www.global-enterprizes.com/