crude 'oil' from pig manure

Chemists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)have developed a method to make crude oil from pig manure!Not surprising any more as the price of petrol is currently $4 gallon in USA. Pigsty owners will be delighted to supply the "raw material" without any hindrance!The trouble is that "Whatever the pigs eat, from dirt to nutritional supplements, ends up in the oil". Scientists concede.

NIST researchers found that pig manure crude contains at least "83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium".

May be the farmers must subsidize the process to make usable crude from pig manure!


K.S.Parthasarathy





Public release date: 12-Jun-2008

Contact: Laura Ost
laura.ost@nist.gov
303-497-4880
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
NIST chemists get scoop on crude 'oil' from pig manure
To watch NIST chemist Tom Bruno talk about his research on crude oil made from pig manure, go to http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude
Click here for more information.

After a close examination of crude oil made from pig manure, chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are certain about a number of things.

Most obviously, "This stuff smells worse than manure," says NIST chemist Tom Bruno.

But a job's a job, so the NIST team has developed the first detailed chemical analysis revealing what processing is needed to transform pig manure crude oil into fuel for vehicles or heating. Mass production of this type of biofuel could help consume a waste product overflowing at U.S. farms, and possibly enable cutbacks in the nation's petroleum use and imports. But, according to a new NIST paper,* pig manure crude will require a lot of refining.

The ersatz oil used in the NIST analyses was provided by engineer Yuanhui Zhang of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Zhang developed a system using heat and pressure to transform organic compounds such as manure into oil.

As described in the new paper, Bruno and colleagues determined that the pig manure crude contains at least 83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium. Whatever the pigs eat, from dirt to nutritional supplements, ends up in the oil.

While the thick black liquid may look like its petroleum-based counterparts, the NIST study shows that looks can be deceiving. "The fact that pig manure crude oil contains a lot of water is unfavorable. They would need to get the water out," Bruno says.

The measurements were made with a new NIST test method and apparatus, the advanced distillation curve, which provides highly detailed and accurate data on the makeup and performance of complex fluids. A distillation curve charts the percentage of the total mixture that evaporates as a sample is slowly heated. Because the different components of a complex mixture typically have different boiling points, a distillation curve gives a good measure of the relative amount of each component in the mixture. NIST chemists enhanced the traditional technique by improving precision and control of temperature measurements and adding the capability to analyze the chemical composition of each boiling fraction using a variety of advanced methods.

NIST researchers analyzed the graphite-like char remaining after the distillation by bombarding it with neutrons, a non-destructive way of identifying the types and amounts of elements present. Two complementary neutron methods detected the heavy metals listed above.

Bruno and colleagues currently spend much of their time analyzing military jet fuels and are not planning a major foray into pig manure. But Bruno concedes that the effort may have a payoff. "Who knows, it might help decrease the nuisance of manure piles."

###

For more on the process of making pig waste crude, see "Converting Manure to Oil: U of I Lays Groundwork for One-of-a-Kind Pilot Plant". http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news3557.html

To view a video clip of Tom Bruno describing the work, please go to: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude

* L.S. Ott, B.L. Smith and T.J. Bruno. Advanced distillation curve measurement: Application to a bio-derived crude oil prepared from swine manure. Fuel (2008), doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2008.04.038.

Nuclear power generation slipped 1.9% last year, though there is news that the technology is poised for growth in many countries

K.S. Parthasarathy






Nuclear Policies
Nuclear generation drops 1.9% in 2007
09 June 2008

Figures from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show that nuclear power generation worldwide was 50 TWh lower in 2007 than in 2006, mainly due to cutbacks in three countries.


Kashiwazaki Kariwa
Kashiwazaki Kariwa is the biggest
nuclear power plant in the world.
Its extended outage has dented global
generation figures (Image: Tepco)
This 1.9% drop, from 2658 to 2608 TWh, was the first significant decline in world nuclear output in four years.


In Japan, the closure of 8000 MWe of capacity at Tokyo Electric Power Company's (Tepco's) Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant in Niigata prefecture following the earthquake on 16 July had a marked influence. The plant's closure led to Japan's nuclear electricity production dropping by almost 25 TWh to 267.3 TWh in 2007, despite no damage having been found to the reactors.


In the UK, the four oldest reactors - at Dungeness A and Sizewell A - were retired at the end of 2006 and then two larger ones - Hartlepool 2 and Heysham 1 - were laid up with boiler (steam generator) problems, leading to a drop in output of almost 12 TWh.


In Germany, there was a drop of 25 TWh due to the Brunsbuttel and Krummel nuclear power plants being shut down in June due to short circuits in the electricity grid, removing about 2000 MWe of capacity. In addition, the Biblis A and B nuclear plants, totalling 2400 MWe, remained offline due to regulatory issues for part of the year.

However, several countries reported increases in nuclear generation: Bulgaria (up 32% to 13.7 TWh); China (up 14.5% to 59.3 TWh); Russia (up 2.5% to 148.0 TWh); South Africa (up 24.7% to 12.6 TWh); and the USA (up 2.5% to 806.6 TWh) - the last amounting to 19.4 TWh.


France remained the country most reliant on nuclear energy for its electricity, producing some 420 TWh, accounting for almost 77% of its total electricity output. Lithuania followed, with 9 TWh of nuclear electricity accounting for almost 65% of its total electricity output.


According to the IAEA's Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) database, three new nuclear power reactors were connected to the grid in 2007: Kaiga 3 in India, Tianwan 2 in China and Cernavoda 2 in Romania. In addition, the Browns Ferry 1 reactor in the USA returned to service after a long-term shut down.


Also in 2007, construction of five reactors commenced: Qinshan II-4 and Hongyanhe 1 in China; Shin Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 in South Korea; and the Flamanville 3 unit in France. Construction of two floating reactors was also begun in Russia. In addition, construction was also resumed in 2007 of the USA's Watts Bar 2 unit.

Theft in Trombay, Chernobyl

A week ago thieves stole a swathe of telephone cables connecting Anushaktinagar, (the residential complex in which most of the scientists working in various units of the Department of Atomic Energy live) with the outside world. The Banks at the premises and schools and a few other institutions did not have phone service for a week

Almost two weeks earlier the following news appeared in the Russian paper RIA Novosti 30 May


Chernobyl chopper café plan thwarted
A gang has been arrested in Ukraine for planning to smuggle contaminated wood and scrap metal, including a helicopter, from the 18-mile exclusion zone surrounding the damaged Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In a statement, the country's security service reported that it had "identified and put a stop to the unlawful activities of a criminal gang, which had been illegally removing from Chernobyl radioactive scrap metal, automobile spare parts and timber." The statement said that the timber was usually reprocessed at covert plants and later sold as construction materials, while the metal items were usually melted down for scrap. However, the security service said the gang had also "tried to take an Mi-8 helicopter out of the exclusion zone to use it as an original coffee shop in one of Ukraine's cities." The Mi-8 helicopter was the workhorse of the Soviet armed forces and is capable of carrying up to 28 people. It was not made clear how many customers the gang had been hoping to seat.

Interesting nuclear news!!