Questions, Thoughts, Ideas on building a digester

Digester design and construction info

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Cyric30
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Joined:Tue Jun 15, 2010 12:10 pm
Questions, Thoughts, Ideas on building a digester

Post by Cyric30 » Tue Jun 15, 2010 5:59 pm

Greetings on and all, i am rather new to the forum, but i have read about digesters in the past some and am now looking more closely at the idea. and i have questions and thoughts.
i live in North central AR where we have significant temperature swings from summer to winter anywhere from 110 in Aug ( 90s norm day temp summer) to -20 in Jan (35-45 norm day temp winter)
i have access to literally tons of chicken manure for a relatively inexpensive price. it is used as fertilizer by many farmers, and by me occasionally also, so it is not really a matter of why buy it, but when i buy it, so why not run it through a digester first and get maximum usage out of it?
so i will try to put my questions in an 1,2,3... order for anyone to answer.
Be warned my education was not geared toward math and my typing not much better, you have been warned :)

1: Math Question, a US Short Ton, 2000ib, of chicken litter, which is manure and some mix of either rice hulls or sawdust say 70/30 mix. approximately how much Bio-gas could this make?

2: if said chicken litter is kept dry and covered can it be fed into a digester over the course of weeks & months without affecting digester operation or the amount of methane it makes.?

3: i would like to build a continues feed digester that would be relativity low maintenance. i have kept my eyes open for a container that could me adapted to the use of a contentious feed digester, and realized i might have something already. http://www.precisiontt.com/images/grain_cart_1_ex.jpg. this is not mine just an example,but mine is build very much like this. i believe my cart is some bigger than this about 650BU, if my calculations are right about 6000Gal. i realize this is very large, but could this be converted to make a continues digester? and if so would be be feasible to do?

4: i would like to run an entire small house with a digester. during the summer, i dont thing that would be much trouble, i believe that the only thing that would be used much would be a converted gas stove maybe 1 burner 1 hour a day (i dont cook much so sue me :)), heated water in association with roof mounted solar water heaters, so maybe only used during cloudy days. but the winter is when i really need the methane, i would like to produce enough methane to heat with during the winter,in a cabin of no more than 500sqft, heating around here is usually infrared heaters (they can be bought or converted to natural gas)(other suggestions welcome) this means producing methane during the winter or storing methane up during the summer.

5: methane during winter months, keeping the temp correct during the winter seems a bugger, burying the digester is an option, and heating it with Solar water heaters might help But the sun isen,t out alot in the winter and i am at a loss for any other easy way to heat a digester easily without messing the cost to benefit meter to crap, any ideas on this?

6:i have only 2 ideas on storing methane at the moment 1. is in bladders made from something like EPDM pond liner, which would need some major storage area to keep enough for months, or 2. compression, i have seen Harold Bates methane powered car idea and it seems do-able, if i have the stuff right, he used a 3 stage air compressor good to 3000psi which is basically a compressor to fill scuba dive tanks with. dive tanks are relatively inexpensive to buy, and easily stored (cool dry place obviously) do you all have any other thought on this?

7: obviously, if went with a compression method of storage that opens up another whole can of stuff, such as a methane powered car( simply converting a CNG setup would seem rather easy, ideas thought???

ok thats enough for now ive got what was on my mind out there for folks to read and consider please give me your ideas and thoughts :)

davidwillis
Posts:12
Joined:Tue Jan 13, 2009 10:20 am

Re: Questions, Thoughts, Ideas on building a digester

Post by davidwillis » Wed Jun 16, 2010 4:01 pm

I dont' have the answers to most of that... but maybe this can help you with the first question...
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