Chinese take biogas seriously

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Think you've got gas? The Chinese have everybody beat. According to technology review, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Huishan Dairy in northeast China collects methane gas from fermenting manure from about 60,000 cows to fuel turbines capable of producing 5.6 megawatts of power. Previously the world's largest biosystem generated about two megawatts. The Huishan system is about 10 times larger than typical generating systems such as seen on large dairies in California, which produce only a few hundred kilowatts.

The dairy installed four GE Jenbacher 420 engines to generate electricity from gas. It imports about 3,000 cows from Australia every month to maintain its massive herd of 250,000 cows, which technology review says is twice the number of dairy cows milked in the entire state of Florida. BF