UK Cooking on Poop Gas

Biogas, Recyling at it’s Best

by Don Ames

Can biogas work in our favor to provide a low cost, renewable heating and cooking source. Is biogas naturally energy efficient because it is a by product?

I stand over an outdoor fire pit with a hotdog attached to the end of a fresh cut maple twig. Years of experience has taught me the art of a perfectly cooked, open flame, roasted hot dog. Just as I lower the dog over the flame, someone throws an old shoe recovered from the pond water, into the fire. I immediately draw my precious dog out of the contaminated flame. Question: will my hotdog get contaminated by the fumes coming from the stinky shoe?

Leaving the pond and the firepit, let’s check in on the United Kingdom and the new cooking fuel called biogas. Biogas is a term that, in this case, can better be discribed as poop gas. As poop gas is being recyled back into the heating and cooking business, people are wondering if their food will smell like a honey bucket.

Will my food be contaminated if I cook with biogas? Will my food smell funny if I use biogas to cook with? Can biogas make my regular gas dirty?

The need for renewable energy sources, that reduce the need for fossil fuel, may well dictate that we take a good long look at the poop gas business. Currently, in the United Kingdom, poop gas is being sold directly to the consumer. Households in Oxfordshire, are cooking and heating with their own sewage. I can imagine, that not all consumers are comfortable with this arrangement. Some people are turning up their noses at the “Real British Gas”.

Biogas has long been used around the globe to generate electricity. Large dairy operations have a ready and plentiful supply of sewage. The process is nothing new. An article in the National Geographic tells of how the natives used their pig poop to produce biogas to heat and cook with. The project to cook with biogas in the United Kingdom brings the cooking-with-poop-gas out of the rain forest and into developed households. In the case of Oxfordshire, the bio gas is converted to biomethane, which is then supplied to homes using the existing pipeline infrastructure.

Well, lets answer a couple questions:

1.  Is biogas naturally energy efficient?  Yes

2.  When the natives cook a monkey using biogas from pig poop, does the monkey taste like bacon? Not sure.

Thanks for stopping by, come back soon, but I won’t be leaving the light on for you…Don Ames