The Alternative "alternative" lifestyle.

[JerryCarr]

The Bear and I visited a rural village in Rajastan State in India where they had a small generator powered by cow manure. They had several covered vats which they partially filled with a slurry made of manure and water. The vat covers were collecting hoods for the methane gas the slurry produced. The hoods fed the gas into an engine which powered a small generator. This produced enough power to light the village school where they had night adult education classes and homework help sessions for the school children. It also powered some outdoor lighting, a communal TV set, and some minor dairy processing equipment. They mostly ran the system at night, but there was some daytime use for the dairy co-op. We were told that there was enough manure to power much more than they were using, but that most of the manure was dried and sold as fuel for cash. It seems that with deforestation, cow manure is used by many in that region for cooking fires. I can attest to cow manure's usefulness for fires, since we used it when I was a kid on the ranch in Texas to smoke out bees and occasionally heat branding irons.

Cheers,
Jerry