I keep getting ads saying things like “landfills produce more methane pollutants than 56000 cars” or “tell Congress to fix this one methane leak.” I also hear people bring up farming cows as a counter-arguement for any climate action (but not as a “let’s fix this” type arguement sadly). So my thinking is why aren’t people trying to harvest methane and use it for something? Is it inefficient? Are they stupid?
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a couple of the larger cattle operations near me actually do have the manure go to a ‘digester’ where the methane is captured and pumped into the natural gas distribution system.
Methane was rebranded as natural gas and is used to generate electricity, heat homes, and cook food. Among other uses.
afaik it’s used as fuel a lot, natural gas stuff like LNG and CNG
It’s too bad we can’t get animals (including ourselves) to hold it all day then dispense it into a fuel tank for home use.
what if we kept the animals in a big dome
Because methane is a byproduct of the petroleum industry, it’s very cheap. They have so much gas, they torch of a whole lot of it all the time. Which is a good thing, because releasing it as CO2 is actually better than releasing it as methane, obviously releasing it at all is a really bad thing.
It being so cheap makes it really hard for alternative sources to be viable, since it would be more complex and thus more expensive. It is done, but mostly because of regulation, subsidies and as an environmental measure.
Methane does break down fairly fast (still takes years), we keep releasing so much of it, it does contribute a lot to climate change. We are adding more than gets broken down. And even after it breaks down, it’s still contributing to the amount of CO2, so better but not good.
90 years is quite a long time.
Harvesting methane from landfills and livestock waste is done, it’s just not nearly as efficient as getting it from the ground.
And while it’s a potent greenhouse gas it breaks down much faster than CO2 in the atmosphere
And while it’s a potent greenhouse gas it breaks down much faster than CO2 in the atmosphere
Incorrect. Methane breaks down into CO2. After it causes the atmosphere to retain significantly more heat. As CO2 it continues to contribute to climate change.
isn’t it more like methane creates CO2 if burned (CH4+2O2->CO2+2H2O)? methane released from cows for example wouldn’t be burnt, how would that change to CO2? (i don’t know much about this, please correct me if i’m wrong)
Yep, methane creates CO2 when burned. Atmospheric methane reacts with atmospheric OH to also make CO2 and water.
