Methane Generation

[musikwerke]

I hope you have better luck getting the power company to agree to buy from you than people in Maine have had in spite of the law that says they have to.   And that is if you have 3 phase power available on the utilitly pole and if you are willing to spring for the matching transformer, reverse power relay, underfrequency and undervoltage protection relays and whatever else they've deemed necessary to have since I looked into doing this.

[farmerdoug]

In Michigan, local utilities are required to buy your power but only to the amount you buy.  If you produce more you are giving it to them free.

Farmerdoug

[Don P]

I think those are called PURPA laws if anyone needs to look them up.

[Blue Sky]

For anyone interested.  Back in the 70's, the New Alchemy Institute of Falmouth, Mass. was interested in all sorts of alternative forms of natural energy and such things.  Their libraries were filled with all sorts of Empirical Data from experiments they did.  One of these I was interested in was a technique developed by a Frenchman by the name of Jean Pain.  He had an Institute in France dedicated to creating methane gas from wood chips.  I read his Manuel so many years ago
     Essentially, you take very small diameter deciduous trees with lots of foliage; chip it; put into a tub grinder; mulch it again, then lay it out on a slab of some hard material and soak it with so much water that it will not retain any more.  Pile it into large specifically designed piles with 2 strands of PVC running in concentric spirals with in this pile.  One for air, one for water.  The results were 180 degree Fahrenheit temperatures.  Also within this system, a slurry tank was installed in such a way that you would use small amounts of composting material to create pressurized methane gas, which Jean Pain then modified all his vehicles to burn.  I believe you can get info on this from the Jean Pain Institute.  Check it out.
                                                             Enchanted Forester