[Digestion] Negative Biogas Press

Sun Feb 13 18:43:27 CST 2011

Hi all,

in Germany biogas production is getting somewhat unpopular at the 
moment. A lot of the resistance is spreaded by citizens who don't want 
to have a biogas plant in the neighborhood (this can be understood if 
this may be a plant of x MW). The use of social media networks, web 
sites and discussion groups makes it easy to spread these thoughts 
widely. It's easy to link to this youtube video showing cattle dying and 
using the word "biogas" in the same sentence, but:

* do you see a biogas plant in this video?
* do you hear the word biogas in this video?
* the statement at the end is, that they do not exactly know the cause
* they say "cattle farms" are effected, not "biogas farms"

* => so this may be a problem of intense cattle farming in general than 
a special biogas problem in particular?

We all had this in the german discussion board before, perhaps you may 
get some more information here, e.g.:
http://www.schlattmann.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2178
There are also some other links to this topic in this thread.

We also had some food<=>biogas discussions, but this may depend on the 
area/country if food is rare. In Germany for example this is not the case.

For organic enrichment in soils, someone may also use intertillage/catch 
crops?

I think I will post these lines also to my english language board for 
some additional discussion/thoughts.

Markus

Am 14.02.2011 00:37, schrieb Alexander Eaton:
> Hi All,
>
> I have received this from a few people now...it is clearly circulating 
> widely.  I have plenty of comments regarding the soil aspects, and 
> certainly some of the AD sludge contents from industrial or black 
> water plants is a bit beyond my expertise, but I would certainly 
> appreciate some comments from this group, especially any Germans that 
> can comment on the YouTube part. This guy clearly is now against 
> biogas, and it would make sense to have some good responses to this 
> type of thing.
>
> Best
>
> Dear Kamal,
> Dear All,
>
> Besides the clear and proven advantages of biogas there are at least 
> two extremely severe problems:
>
> Organic matter that is converted into gas is no longer availabel to 
> produce humus, so there are reports from farmers that the soil is 
> getting less and less producticve. Rich soil may be far more important 
> that the relatively litte amount of gas. Composting expecially with 
> earthworms and additon of some charcoal dust (can easily be made from 
> straw, rice husks instead of the terrible burning) ideally plus stone 
> dust can be far more beneficial with rising productivity for food and 
> more biomass and is simple, too. At TUHH we are now working intensely 
> of also composting urine and mixed excreta stabilised by 
> lactofermenters together with woody wastes to make more soil as I want 
> to work with ecolocical agriculture and not do industrial agriculture 
> with addion of fast fertiliser. Biogas can be a threat for long term 
> food security and you will have to pay for the gas with more and more 
> fertiliser demand, less water reproduction, flooding through 
> compacting soils.
>
> In Germany (seehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cNyyU3zcXY sorry in 
> German) (and probably elsewhere)  there are dramatic problems with the 
> masses of heavily subsidised biogas plants for food to energy 
> producion where/*Clostridium botulinum */is growing rapidly under 
> anaerobic conditions producing the highly toxic substance, there are 
> hundreds of farms where all milk cows are dying and the farmers are 
> ruined, even they became ill sometimes. The reason are fodder fields 
> that are fertilised with the sludge from the biogas plants. The very 
> dangerouos botulinum toxin (misused by people who hate aging by 
> paralysing nerves in the face thus turning it into a mask, then called 
> botox) is only showing effect after many month so the effect is often 
> not related to the cause.
>
> I used to be very positive towards biogas and have planned and built 
> them, I will not do this anymore except for some industrial 
> wastewaters. Maybe also for sanitation in areas where the soils are 
> super humus rich already and botulism can be avoided safely.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Ralf
>
> For Discussion of Anaerobic Digestion 
> <digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org 
> <mailto:digestion at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
>
> -- 
> Alexander Eaton
> Sistema Biobolsa
> IRRI-Mexico
> RedBioLAC
>
> Mex cel: (55) 11522786
> US cel: 970 275 4505
>
> alex at irrimexico.org <mailto:alex at irrimexico.org>
> alex at sistemabiobolsa.com <mailto:alex at sistemabiobolsa.com>
>
> sistemabiobolsa.com <http://sistemabiobolsa.com>
> www.irrimexico.org <http://www.irrimexico.org>
> www.redbiolac.org <http://www.redbiolac.org>
>
>
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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/
>

-- 

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Markus Schlattmann

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