Methane/Biogas/Biodiesel

What about methane digestion

Ok what about methane digestion. The burn the methane in internal combustion engine. They do it in India all the time. Villages start co-ops where all the farmers bring their manure to be digested. Then when the manure is processed they get back the ready to use fertilizer and the village gets the electricity.
Animal waste can be used and a mixture of vegetable waste can be added. I don?t remember the ratio. This was researched back in my move up in the hills and become a survivalist days.
Anyway small-scale village owned I think would be the way to go. If you have black out you have only yourself to blame.
John
edited for spelling

hippies

I am not really in a position to do much now. My resources are more on the individual level when I finally get down to the D.R. I do know that with the trouble with power and so forth I was thinking of setting up my homestead as an independent small village. I know that since my Fianc? is from a poor family and if I live there I will be stuck with her family around either way so I was just figuring I would homestead and put them to work feeding themselves and taking care of our own energy needs as far as possible.
Thanks for the offer though. As far as using vegetable for fuel hippies were doing that for years. Mother Earth News is filled with info on that. Wood gasification and methane digesters and so forth. Many homesteads in the US use all of the above as well as heating water with compost piles. I know that is not something needed in the D.R. but it is done.
John

hippie want to be

Ok my background. West Virginia Six generation is a county with no stoplights to this day. I am the first generation with electricity and plumbing. I still have relatives that live with out modern conveniences.
In Honduras and Thailand I saw 1/6 acre or so fish ponds about 3 feet deep with chicken houses over top of them. The chickens were fed garden waste and the fish fed off of the Manure and alga. The water from the ponds was use as a manure tea to fertilize crops.
Now I do not know how a plan I had for homesteading in a temperate zone would work in D.R. but I will give you the run down of what I had researched as a teenager and found it still is relevant.
I would have set up a series of ponds. In those ponds I would have used cattails and other water plants that had edible parts. I would harvest the plants and feed them to goats and rabbits. (Rabbits unfit for D.R. due to heat I believe.) I would process all animal waste in a methane digester and produce natural gas. I would have worm beds to process the sludge left from methane digestion and all plant waste. The worms I would use to feed fish in the ponds and chickens set up in pens around my gardens. The chickens in the pens would provide natural pest control as wel as eggs and meat. The worm casting I would use for potting soil in the raised beds of my gardens. The excess and wasted crops would be fed to hogs. The Goats would be used for dairy and meet. Excess milk also goes to the hogs. The methane would be used for generators for electricity. Crops in the gardens would be high priced truck crops.
A few years ago there was a variety of Strawberry that was produced that was day neutral so it could be grown in greenhouses year round. I have read the info about bringing new plants each year into Haiti and growing strawberries there. If the day neutral variety could grow in the D.R. without the need for constant plant replacement from outside sources then strawberries and lettuce grown in heavy shade would be good money crops.
Someplace in a scrapbook I have the figures but off the top of my head I can give you this. A one-acre body of water with out outside food and aeration will produce 1000 pounds of edible fish per year. Fish give you a return of over 70% of meat produced per input of feed. If aeration and outside feeding is given then the carrying capacity is 10,000 pounds per year. For each pound of animal waste a methane digester will produce 3 cubic feet of methane.
Well when I have more time in a month or so when I am back in from sea I can look up more.
John
Edited to add link on strawberries
http://www.tropical-seeds.com/tech_forum/fruits_anon/strawberries.html

Clay

I am from Clay and the population is 11000. Like I said no stop lights. I knew HB was from Kanawha County. My sister went to Marshall and my old National Guard Unit before I joined the Navy was at the Tristate Airport in Ceredo.
My dream after I get my Fiance up here and I retire fromt he Navy is to hoemstead in the D.R. My pension will be $1500 a month and I am building assets slowly now. I retire in under two years. I am probably going to use my Gi Bill and Finish the two A.S. degress I am with in a semster each in and follow through with one B.A. Tnat should use up my benifits pretty well.
I like to explain to people when they call me a redneck that a hillbilly is the highest level that rednecks wish they could attain.
John

do I need another thread

My comments have been somewhat related to waste recovery but with a slant toward homesteading. Does another thread need to be looked at or the subject still valid for this thread?

methane digester

Here is a link that has full instructions on methane digesters

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/MethaneDigesters/MDToC.html

John

what about small scale

HB what do you feel about small scale such as the type that are used in villages in India and China. I feel if someone were going to be playing at farming and just trying to be busy enough to keep pride going then a small scale biogas system would be a cost effective way of cutting out the grid and having full time "LUZ".
Maybe it is my West Virginia roots coming through but I got to stay a redneck.
John
http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/troprice/Biogas.htm

Clay County Sizemores

If You Know R.T. Sizemore of Sizemore?s IGA in Clay he is my First Cousin. If you knew E.J. Sizemore who had the grocery store at the lower end of town in the early 70s and was killed in 1975 that was my dad. If you know John A. Sizemore of Hartland Retired Coal miner. That is my uncle. If you know Edward Jesse Sizemore of Clay Surveyor that is my brother. Every Single Sizemore in the County is my kin as well as every Sizemore in KY. NC. VA. And TN. but I can only tell you how close for the Clay ones.
Has anyone looked at wood gasification for small-scale generation?
John
P.S. my family has been in Clay or Roane County since before they were counties.
I will be in Sosua on 16 December for ten warm days.

ld news but forgotten news

In london in the Jack the Ripper days the street lights were gas lights. The gas source was sewer gas. So here we are trying to enlighten the third world when we should look at what works.
John