In San Antonio, Greenhouse Gases From Sewage Are Saved And Sold As Energy (Earth: sale, transfer)

[smitty12]

In San Antonio, Greenhouse Gases From Sewage Are Saved And Sold As Energy

This week, a new biogas facility opened in San Antonio, Texas, and began turning greenhouse gases into a power source. Companies that partnered to develop and run the new facility are the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) which treats sewage and provides potable water and wastewater to about 1.3 million people in Texas, and Ameresco, a publicly traded energy services company. The project captures methane gas that’s generated during sewage treatment, and directs this gas into a commercial, natural gas pipeline nearby so it can be sold, delivered and used as energy for heat and electricity generation. Typically, waste water facilities burn methane off in flares.



. . .



Ameresco will treat and transfer at least 900,000 cubic feet of methane gas from SAWS wastewater plant to a nearby commercial gas pipeline, where they will sell it on the open market. The gas will be used and sold as energy, and some royalties on the sale of the biogas will be returned to the water company and its customers, reducing its cost of operations, overall. SAWS expects to generate at least $200,000 a year from biogas sales.

[Dopo]

Good,
but what we need is millions of solar panels to create energy ($$$$$) and at the same time give shade.

I won't be happy until I see things like this all over the city.
And it's not about "saving the Earth" is about saving me from the South Texas heat.


http://www.onsolar.ca/imm/Solar_Carport_or_Pavilion.jpg (broken link)

[elnina]

Oh, bean & cheese tacos could solve the problem much cheaper

[Soviet]

This is one of those things that make me proud to be a San Antonian!

[TexasRedneck]

I like the gas recovery idea, but the solar panels - unless things have changed since I really looked at it a couple of years ago, the actually energy costs involved in the overall manufacturing of the panels and the cost of install far outweigh any realistic cost/energy savings.

It's kinda like the electric cars - LOOKS good, until you do the math on ROI.

[scuba steve]

Tex Mex = more energy from excess gasses. And higher BMI too from what I read, so it's kind of a tradeoff I guess.

[HillCountryHotRodMan]

Originally Posted by elnina

Oh, bean & cheese tacos could solve the problem much cheaper

.... and I'm ready for my Toot Rebate!

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by TexasRedneck

It's kinda like the electric cars - LOOKS good, until you do the math on ROI.

I always find this kind of comments funny....
especially since one of my college professors retrofitted his VW Rabbit in the 1980s and made it into an electric car that he's been driving for years.

Run Rabbit, run - Missouri S&T Magazine (http://magazine.mst.edu/2006/09/run_rabbit_run.html - broken link)

http://magazine.mst.edu/fall2006/Rabbit.jpg (broken link)

[TexasRedneck]

Originally Posted by Dopo

I always find this kind of comments funny....
especially since one of my college professors retrofitted his VW Rabbit in the 1980s and made it into an electric car that he's been driving for years.

Sorry, Dopo - it doesn't work. 99% of the folks out there don't have the mechanical ability NOR the inclination to do the work involved in converting their own, which means having it done by a shop.

Let's say a conversion would cost $8,000 - that's likely to the (very) low side, but let's go with that.

Average commute - 24 miles RT/day, 120 mi/wk, 480/mo - call it 6,000 miles/annually.

Now, let's say my car gets 20 mpg. 6,000 mi/20 = $300/year for gas.

Now, let's say you can get 5% APY investing your money (not hard to do...)

Tell me again how it's a "smart investment", please.

[elnina]

I just wonder why LPG converted cars are not so popular here as they were in Europe where approximately one in three gas stations offer LPG as a vehicle fueling option - usually at half the price of normal 'petrol'. Of course the installation cost in Europe is much cheaper than here - $400 versus $4000 ( wonder why ).
A hydrogen conversion on the other hand, is definitely easier to accomplish. You can get an HHO hydrogen conversion kit for under $250 on the internet, and there are thousands of people either installing simple hydrogen generators themselves or getting a friend or friendly mechanic to do it for much less.