Why is landfill, sillage etc car-fuel out of favour?
Discussion
I've done it this way for years. Forget Hydrogen, EV.... are most of you aware we can use the methane going into the atmosphere via landfill. cow-farts, sillage etc to run vehicles?
Essentially you mimic a cow's stomach to produce gas or take it via landfill, sewage.
My previous posts get pulled apart as some crank. Fair enough I suppose, but this does work. I do it now. It's big in countries without their own oil. A lthough the Yanks - as many - use shale-gas. Tesco, DHL and Waitrose etc run methane. See it in Germany. India and near every vehicle in Argentina and Iran.
It's done in the UK on a very small scale.
Not to be confused with LPG. Why does it not find more favour? Why is it never discussed?
Skip to 8:27 to see how you'd use it your end.
Essentially you mimic a cow's stomach to produce gas or take it via landfill, sewage.
My previous posts get pulled apart as some crank. Fair enough I suppose, but this does work. I do it now. It's big in countries without their own oil. A lthough the Yanks - as many - use shale-gas. Tesco, DHL and Waitrose etc run methane. See it in Germany. India and near every vehicle in Argentina and Iran.
It's done in the UK on a very small scale.
Not to be confused with LPG. Why does it not find more favour? Why is it never discussed?
Skip to 8:27 to see how you'd use it your end.
Edited by OldDuffer on Wednesday 13th December 11:06
Maybe, but sounds more inefficient. I can't grasp why methane is not even on the map, By comparison, what does get talked about, Hydrogen and EV are more complex, and don't deal with the greenhouse gases we produce if we don't use the methane from sillage/landfill/sewage etc.
Methane goes into the atmosphere now. A Tesla is not a good way to burn it.
Methane goes into the atmosphere now. A Tesla is not a good way to burn it.
I remember reading a while back that the methane created from waster is generally very "dirty" (I think it is a high sulphur content). The generator's engines used to convert it to electricity have to be rebuilt very frequently due to that damage from the sulphur. I think it is too expensive to remove it.
OldDuffer said:
It's done in the UK on a very small scale.
Not to be confused with LPG. Why does it not find more favour? Why is it never discussed?
It only works for a handful of people because it's not mainstream.Not to be confused with LPG. Why does it not find more favour? Why is it never discussed?
For biofuel the energy yield per unit area of land is so small that it cannot work for mainstream use.
We don't have enough land, or more accurately, that land can be used hundreds of times more effectively.
Biofuels yield useable energy about one hundred times lower than installing solar panels on the same area.
And solar is fairly poor yield per acre itself.
If you did try to power all of our cars with biofuel for example, it would require 50% of the UK's landmass to be permanently dedicated to that purpose.
Where crops are involve, there is also the threat of climate change affecting yields, crop damage, disease and loss of soil quality.
All totally avoidable with a wind turbine or a solar panel.
OldDuffer said:
Maybe, but sounds more inefficient. I can't grasp why methane is not even on the map, By comparison, what does get talked about, Hydrogen and EV are more complex, and don't deal with the greenhouse gases we produce if we don't use the methane from sillage/landfill/sewage etc.
Methane goes into the atmosphere now. A Tesla is not a good way to burn it.
Can you elaborate on the "complexity" of "EV"?Methane goes into the atmosphere now. A Tesla is not a good way to burn it.
In general it's a very efficient way of transport.
An EV at this point running off a diesel generator is on par or better on diesel than a diesel car. That's not even taking into account using the waste heat from the generator.
That's not to mention infrastructure. Sure, EV's will need some additional infrastructure, but most of it is there already. For something like Methane/Hydrogen, the cost will be at least an order of magnitude higher.
Therefore, as another user pointed out, convert the methane into electricity and pour it in an EV.
kambites said:
OldDuffer said:
Maybe, but sounds more inefficient.
It may sound it, but it isn't. 
A centralised power station is always going to be far more efficient than putting a power station into each car and then transporting the fuel to petrol (methane..) stations and then driving the car to that station to get the fuel..
Why do some people fail to factor those obvious things in before announcing 'a great idea' that they desperately hope could be better than BEV?
delta0 said:
Burning fuels (methane, hydrogen, etc.) is not the way forward. Emissions with global warming potential occur. This is why electrification is the only solution.
That's just the tip of the iceberg (geddit...)Ignoring global warming and net emissions entirely, from a plain old practical standpoint it's just daft to keep on dragging fuel around the place to fill up individual cars with individual power plants in each car to burn that fuel. The OP of this thread has questioned why something that could be used as a petrol replacement isn't being used - but that entirely misses the point of why we're moving away from any such fuel. Petrol isn't 'bad' it's the entire system that of use that is bad, and can now easily be improved upon via electrification.
Even in these early days where range can be an occasional limitation, electrification of personal transport and most goods transport is still the best overall solution - taking everything into account.
Spunagain said:
I remember reading a while back that the methane created from waster is generally very "dirty" (I think it is a high sulphur content). The generator's engines used to convert it to electricity have to be rebuilt very frequently due to that damage from the sulphur. I think it is too expensive to remove it.
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