[Digestion] Digestion Digest, Vol 2, Issue 40

Mon Oct 25 08:34:35 CDT 2010

Dear All ,

540 M3 from 1000 Kg of cow dung ?
Is it possible that  there is an error in measurement ? OR an enthusiastic
overstatement  by the gentleman ?
( If cow dung or the flora present in /alongwith it had so much of energy
value ,,,, it would create so many possibilities )

Regards,
Avadhut Bapat

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Markus Schlattmann
<firmen at schlattmann.de>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> when you compare the yields based on fresh mass, are you sure you're
> talking about the same "dung"?
>
> Here in Central Europe cattle often are kept in stables leading to liquid
> (~8%TS) manure.
> In India perhaps "dung" is "dried dung"?
> Generally, for comapring gas yields of substrates it's better to compare
> gas yields based on VS, not fresh matter, since water content may vary a
> lot.
>
> I can't think that there's a production of 18 times more biogas if we are
> talking about comparable dung. You may calculate/estimate a C-Balance. If
> there's one loading, you can't get more C in CH4/CO2 out of the system than
> you have put into it with the substrate/inoculum in the beginning.
>
> Markus Schlattmann
>
>
>
>
> Am 24.10.2010 11:31, schrieb Anand Karve:
>
> Dear Mr. Bapat,
> the biogas plant in Wardha, which accepts 1000 kg cattle dung as a one-time
> load and produces daily 3 cubic meter biogas continuously over a period of
> 180 days, was an absolutely novel system to me. In fact that is why I
> reported it, because I felt that somebody in the AD discussion group maight
> know more about it. Since neither the British scientists nor any of the
> Indian scientists present there could give a scientific explanation to this
> phenomenon, I have ventured a plausible explanation. The Archaea are a very
> ancient group of organisms. Lignin is produced by green plants, which
> evolved much later. Therefore the methanogens cannot digest lignin. The fact
> that in Wardha, this particular biogas plant was producing almost 18 times
> as much biogas as would be expected, can be explained by the assumption
> that lignin was being digested by some other organisms and the products of
> the lignin digesting organisms were being made available to the
> mehanogens. But the speculation that some species of organisms conduct
> extra-cellular digestion of cellulose or lignin, and make the products
> of such digestion available to the methanogens, is not acceptable to me,
> because if such were really the case, one would have used such organisms to
> produce sugars from lignocellulosic material and then obtained alcohol from
> these sugars. Since nobody has succeeded in doing this, I feel that the
> organisms that digest cellulose or lignin consume the sugars themselves and
> multiply their own numbers, and that the methanogens consume these microbes
> to produce methane. I am ready to accept any other explanation, if it is
> logical.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Sumedh Bapat <sumedh.bapat at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> Dear Dr. Karve,
> I am sorry to comment on this again but I cannot overlook the discrepancy
> in the information you have provided here..
>
> * on October 17 you said : *
> "In any case, once it is accepted that the methanogenic organisms do not
> digest the dung directly and that they need the help of other organisms to
> digest it, one cannot accept that dung is the food of the methanogens. It is
> like saying that manure applied to a field is human food, because through a
> number of biological processes it ultimately ends up into products, which
> the humans eat."
>
> *on October 24 you said : *
> "According to text book knowledge, 1000 kg dung should have produced about
> 30,000 litres (or 30 cubic meters) biogas. But this particular biogas plant
> produces 540 cubic meters of it."
>
>
> I also happen to notice that both the subjects refer to cow dung.
> Now it can be seen that you claim that some other plant is generating 540
> times more gas than your plants.
> Do you mean that this 540 m3 gas that you saw, is produced by Methanogens
> which have consumed other similar organisms from the biogas plant , which in
> turn had "eaten" the Cpw Dung ?
> Can you please explain the sudden Biogas Generation manifold increase
> from 30 m3 (conventionally known) to 540 m3 ?
> *Again* _ Can you please provide a basis for such a finding ?
>
> Kind Regards,
> Sumedh Bapat
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 12:30 AM, <
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>   1. Re: Attachment to previous Article - More scientific based
>      research and questions (Anand Karve)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2010 02:43:13 +0800
> From: Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com>
> To: For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion
>        <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Digestion] Attachment to previous Article - More
>        scientific based research and questions
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTi=qxog1xd-4Q9JOwVaNpL8S=Bgpc2n=JxY7R5a=@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Dear Dr. Martin,
> I have just returned from a city called Wardha, where I attended a workshop
> arranged jointly by the Research Councils of UK and the Department of
> Science and Technology, Government of India. About 20 scientists each from
> UK and India were invited to this meeting.
> In the course of field visits organised during the workshop, Dr. Soham
> Pandya, The Director of Centre of Science for Villages, an NGO in Wardha,
> showed us an amazing biogas plant on his campus. This biogas plant accepts
> about 1000 kg cattle dung as a one-time load and produces daily about 3
> cubic meters of biogas, continuously over a period of about 180 days.  This
> is not the only biogas plant constructed by him. Using funds from the
> Department of Science and Technology, He has constructed a similar biogas
> plant in another place called Hingoli, where a one-time load  of 1000 kg
> dung yields biogas continuously for 6 months, to run an electricity
> generator for daily 3 to 4 hours, to provide electric lighting to all the
> houses in the village.  Officials of the Department of Science and
> Technology vouched for the veracity of these claims. According to text book
> knowledge, 1000 kg dung should have produced about 30,000 litres (or 30
> cubic meters) biogas. But this particular biogas plant produces 540 cubic
> meters of it.
> Neither Dr. Pandya nor any other scientist could give a
> scientific explanation to this phenomenally high yield of biogas. Dung of
> Indian cattle consists mainly of lignin (from the veins and midribs of the
> grass and leaves that they feed on) and micro-organisms. One has to assume
> in this case, that there are microbes in the dung that feed on the lignin
> and that the methanogens digested the lignin eating microbes.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Duncan Martin <duncanjmartin at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Perhaps Dr Karve & I should agree to disagree?
> >
> > To argue that dung is not food for the methanogens because they need help
> > to digest it is really a semantic quibble. It misses the point I was
> > responding to - that the digestion process is not *completed *by the act
> > of defaecation, it is merely *terminated* for the owner of the gut in
> > question.
> >
> > I have never seen any serious literature suggesting that microbes are
> > altruistic. However, the principles of commensalism are well established
> and
> > I see no basis for dismissing them. Moreover, the complex web of
> metabolic
> > interactions in AD has been extensively researched and is pretty well
> > understood - though I am sure there is more to discover.
> >
> > Nor have I seen any literature whatsoever suggesting that the methanogens
> > consume other microorganisms. I would be intrigued to see a proposed
> > mechanism.
> >
> > To dismiss all the textbooks as wrong (see previous postings) is
> unhelpful,
> > at best. Who could only say that unless he had read every one of them? Of
> > course, there are mistakes - even in the best books - if only because
> > science moves on, so any book becomes outdated. And there are indeed some
> > layman's guides to AD that include some odd ideas - but who would take
> them
> > as serious guides to the science?
> >
> > When we find such errors, let us use this forum to report them - giving
> > exact references. But lets not confuse newcomers to the field by
> dismissing
> > every other source of information as rubbish.
> >
> > Finally, let us accept that each of us is entitled to his opinion - but
> > lets reserve this forum for the fruits of practical experience and
> > evidence-based information.
> >
> > I suggest we draw a line under the present debate.
> >
> > Duncan Martin, PhD, MCIWM, MIChemE, MIEI
> > Cloughjordan Ecovillage
> > Ireland
> >
> > On 17 October 2010 16:39, Anand Karve <adkarve at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Duncan,
> >> I dont believe in the theory of a chain of micro-organisms, with one
> >> species converting the cellulose into glucose, another converting the
> >> glucose into an organic acid (e.g. citric acid), still another
> converting
> >> the organic acid into acetic acid and ultimately the acetic acid being
> >> converted by the methanogenic organisms into carbon dioxide and methane.
> If
> >> this were true, one would have by now isolated the organism that
> converted
> >> cellulose into glucose and used the glucose to produce alcohol.
> Cellulose is
> >> the most ubiquitously found organic compount in the world and with this
> >> simple process, one would have produced unlimited quantity of liquid
> fuel.
> >> But even today, the conversion of cellulose into glucose is achieved in
> any
> >> industrial process by using a cellulolytic enzyme extracted from a
> >> cellulolytic organism. The reason for this is, that the glucose
> converted by
> >> the organism from cellulose is consumed by the same organism. And once
> it is
> >> consumed by an organism, it is converted into its cell all the way down
> to
> >> carbon dioxide. The micro-organisms in the gut of an animal cannot be
> >> expected to be so altruistic as to predigest the food and suply it to
> the
> >> methanogens. I feel that the methanogenic organisms consume the fellow
> >> micro-organisms in the gut of animals and digest them to produce methane
> and
> >> carbon dioxide. Such dog-eat-dog reactions occur also in the soil
> supplied
> >> with organic matter.
> >>         In any case, once it is accepted that the methanogenic organisms
> >> do not digest the dung directly and that they need the help of other
> >> organisms to digest it, one cannot accept that dung is the food of the
> >> methanogens. It is like saying that manure applied to a field is human
> food,
> >> because through a number of biological processes it ultimately ends up
> into
> >> products, which the humans eat.
> >> Yours
> >> A.D.Karve
> >>   On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Duncan Martin <
> duncanjmartin at gmail.com
> >> > wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> Yes, the gut methanogens do, in a sense, eat what the animal eats.
> >>> However, it would be more accurate to say that their diet is derived
> from
> >>> what the animal eats. The methanogens in the gut of a cow are
> surrounded by
> >>> celluose and other biopolymers but they cannot digest them. They live
> on the
> >>> waste products of other microbial processes. The web of metabolic
> >>> interactions is well known.
> >>>
> >>> Where I would "hoot out" Dr Karve is his belief that dung cannot serve
> as
> >>> food for the methanogens because they are "thrown out" of the body
> along
> >>> with the dung. I don't understand the logic here.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> for more information about digestion, see
> >> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> >> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> >> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > for more information about digestion, see
> > Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> > http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> > and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
> *Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *
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> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
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> End of Digestion Digest, Vol 2, Issue 40
> ****************************************
>
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> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogas
> http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
> President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
> *Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *
>
>
>
>
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>
> for more information about digestion, see
> Beginner's Guide to Biogashttp://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas/
> and the Biogas Wiki http://biogas.wikispaces.com/
>
>
>
> --
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
> Markus Schlattmann
>
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