Stephen I should have given a better explaination. I have cut the end out of the barrell. That is how we filled it with the cow manure straw mix. We then topped it with water to displace the air. The 45 gal garbage bag is fitted to the top of the barrel like a stocking hat and held in place with two rubber bands made from a tractor inner tube. My discharge hose is a piece of plastic tubing taped into the corner of the bag and capped. This digester is sitting on three concrete blocks with a heat lamp under it, the barrel is also wrapped with fiberglass insulation.
The system has been producing methane for about ten days. The first couple of bags of gas were not flamable, probabley mostly co2 as you said, however for the last ten days it has been making a gas that burns so I am assuming that it is methane. The purpose of my experment was to prove to myself if this would work. As a farmer I have all the resources available to make methane, but I read an article that 50 to 60 percent of the digesters built were failures. So my objective was to keep my expenses as close to zero as possible. Since my last post I replaced the bag and added a little water, it is now making a flamable gas. I usually burn it off in the morning and evening. I wish that I would have weighed the barrel of poop, but I would have had to haul it to town and weighed it at the elavator scales, and I'm afraid they might have had me committed for that. lol Seriously though my goal is to make a trench type digester, but I want to keep it as simple as possible. That is why I used such a high ratio of solids to liquid. I am thinking more along the lines of a batch filled digester, or maybe making two so that one could be in production while you cleaned out the other one. My reasonung for the high solids would be to have it like a landfill. I realize that it would need to be lined and covered but if it will make methane without agitation then the digester could be just a lined trench. It will be interesting to see how many more days my barrell will keep making gas and I am especially interested to see how much and what kind of sludge is left when it quits. Lonny ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-~> Make good on the promise you made at graduation to keep in touch. Classmates.com has over 14 million registered high school alumni--chances are you'll find your friends! http://us.click.yahoo.com/03IJGA/DMUCAA/4ihDAA/FZTVlB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
