| 1999 |  |
YEAR BOOK |
| 1999 | |
YEAR BOOK |
Daniel Roche, Connor Rooney & Jamie Fitzgerald Cow pat power
Jamie, Conor & Daniel. |
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| Daniel Roche, Connor Rooney & Jamie FitzGerald won second prize in the Junior Group Section in the Chemistry, Physical & Mathematical Sciences Category at the Esat Telecom Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in January 1999. They also won a Special Award presented by The Teachers’ Union of Ireland. Their teacher was Ms Angela Rahill. | |
| In the first stage of our project to produce alternative electricity using energy from cow manure, we have a digester sitting in a water bath set to 44oC. The digester is a five litre vessel containing four litres of cow manure with an air space above it to allow for frothing during the fermentation process. The digester provides an anaerobic environment in which the methane producing bacteria (methanogens) can work. The digester has an outlet pipe to a gas storage vessel where the biogas is collected by the displacement of water. We use this method because methane forms an explosive mixture with air. The methane can be used in two ways. One method is to burn it directly to heat water or to provide lighting. The other involves converting the chemical energy of the methane into electricity. We chose the second. Because of the small quantities of gas produced by our digester, we decided to use a steam engine to generate steam to turn a small motor which then lights an LED. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that: "Energy cannot be created or destroyed - it is converted from one form into another". But in the conversion heat is lost, so there cannot be a total conversion to another form of energy. It is inefficient from an energy point of view to use a steam engine to generate power, as a lot of energy is lost to heat, and due to friction due to the mechanical workings of the engine. A lot of energy is consumed before any energy is converted because water has a very high specific heat capacity and a very high latent heat. We were not allowed to bring naked flames and explosive or toxic materials to the exhibition so we made a model of a biogas producing unit. Our model could be scaled up to meet some of the power needs of a farm, an average household or a small community. Conclusions On a farm with dairy cows a lot of water is used every day to wash the animals in preparation for milking and to wash the milking machine. If the energy from the manure produced by these cows was harnessed, the farmer could cut down on detergent and have a more hygienic and efficient cleaning system. In our research we found that this process is used in third world countries like China and India. We think that the project has a lot of potential and could be developed much further.
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