No linked challenges.
No linked visions.
Methane could be gathered for industrial needs
Agricultural and landfill produced methane could be used in replacement for natural gas, and as ingredient for biopolymers.
Methane is a greenhouse gas which has 21 times stronger warming potential then the carbon dioxide. Most important sources for methane that comes from human activity are agriculture and the landfills. In the agriculture one important source of methane is raising livestock, producing nearly 40 % of all human-induced methane. On the landfills methane is produced by methanogens in anoxic conditions from organic matter. Landfills produce about 20 % of all human-induced methane. Methane could be valuable resource for us if gathered effectively, and used to fill the needs of our industry.
Methane can be used in energy production, but it has other uses, like manufacturing the polymers. This would offer interesting opportunity for biopolymer industry, because methane is unwanted greenhouse gas and it wouldn’t compete with other raw materials that could be used as food. Using methane as biopolymer ingredient might also be good for marketing nature friendly products. Gathering and transportation of methane should be investigated more and a cost-effective way should be designed. Also more cost-effective way of cleaning and separating methane from other gasses should be found before the waste methane could be used cost-effectively.
On the other hand methane can also be used to replace natural gas in energy production. In this case also the effective way to gather and clean the gas is required before it is cost-effective if compared to using natural gas. But in this case it also has advantage of being renewable energy, and actually being part of unwanted greenhouse gas emission. So it will also offer good PR opportunity for companies willing to use it for some minor energy production while major scale collection in near future might not be likely.
Opportunity: Agricultural and landfill produced methane could be used in polymer and energy production.
Threat: No cost-effective way to gather the methane is found.
Do you have ideas for this vision?
or
Would you like to comment?
Log in or Sign up
Comments