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Methane
Tue May 20, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
While, as a greenhouse gas, methane is not as prevalent a greenhouse gas as CO2, a U.N. panel
found it to be 21 times more potent and harmful. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather
Notebook's weekly segment on global climate change. Curt Nickisch reports on how burning
methane may reduce its impact.
At this laboratory at South Dakota State University, Christopher Schmit is
researching more cost effective ways to capture methane before it goes into
the atmosphere.
CS: This room here is what we call the anaerobic room. It's a special
room we've designed to do anaerobic research.
Decomposing organic material produces methane gas. Livestock waste and
landfills are two of the largest sources of atmospheric methane in the U.S.
If the gas is captured before it escapes, methane can be burned as a fuel.
The combustion does put carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, into the
air. But Schmit says it's the lesser of two evils. What's more, the
carbon released from methane combustion came from the atmosphere in the
first place -- not from inside the Earth like when fossil fuels such as coal
and oil are burned.
CS: In fossil fuels, you're releasing stored carbon. When you burn
methane, which is created from the waste, that carbon is not a stored
source. It's a source that started in that atmosphere, went into the
plant, went to the animal, out the animal, to the bacteria, to methane, to
burn, to carbon dioxide.
Schmit says that makes methane from livestock waste a more sustainable
energy source than fossil fuels.
CS: Take waste and convert it to energy, obviously that sounds like a
good idea. The question then is: Do the economics work out? We have the
technology -- that's not an issue anymore. We know we can do this. It's
just a question of how one wants to get their energy.
In Sioux Falls, I'm Curt Nickisch.
Our series on global climate change is funded by the New England Science Center Collaborative
and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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