The basic technology is old and well understood, until extremely recently no one in the western world has paid much attention to it. India on the other hand uses it a great deal in its most basic form, common industry belief is Germany is the world leaders in it. This is wrong however, Both Bulgaria and Hungry have some of the best techniques but not the money to utilize it.
Most the big companies have become fixed on single batch systems, so much so they would find it hard to adapt to a sudden change. Then a short while back things did suddenly change, in the beginning it wasnt about producing more power, the focus was on fixing a few other issues like poor grass performance and high nitrates. Several small groups and a uni got together, we had worked on another problem the year before as a group.
Long story short we developed a artificial cow, most people assume most methane in cows comes from the back end. This is in fact untrue, cows belch way more methane than any other way. So armed with this we set about developing a continuous closed loop zero waste system. Each working on different aspects, but no one wanted the technology as all the money went into solar and wind. a few of us stuck it out and kept going, then at the end of last year at a Scottish Government energy planning meeting a couple of things happened.
I got invited by the guy in charge of energy policy for out authority, i had been looking after some community wind turbines for him. He was aware i had done alot of stuff on bio reactors and wanted me to go with him to put the Authority plan forward, he wanted something different and something to cut nitrate waste, i explained we could do way more than that. So at the meeting all these smart energy guys were discussing policy and i mentioned bio methane reactors.
The general opinion was they were inefficient and not worth bothering with, all the data presented was 15 - 20 years old. I showed them all our data and outlined the system. It was taken ok but not much got said, then after Christmas i got a call asking if i could put a plan together for a simulation of a full scale closed loop system for a small town (15,000 people). We did this sim and outlined everything, we got bombarded with questions and all the old arguments against these systems were raised.
I explained each part and how it was possible to overcome the problems, dont get me wrong the last system we built full scale was called the ADMK5, but it had a couple of small flaws to it, nothing major and way better than most on the market. We are now working on the next generation, hopefully in the next few months our new system (lab scale) will prove we just about have all the wrinkles sorted. Actually its thrown up another plus side and a few extra tricks, suddenly alot of people are interested because cheap clean energy and heat is almost just a side bonus to where the real money is with this newer system. It also solves some other target problems they have.
So this year Digesters that combine heat and power over a certain efficiency, are now eligible for the second highest RHI (its a kind of grant scheme) rate. So its really taking off, but alot of the main players are still a bit baffled how we achieve our figures and efficiency, turns out not to be rocker science. We expected to get called out as OU types or HHO type idiots, so we prepared and had the figures independently verified before we put them forward. And that brings you upto date pretty much.
The posts on the bio reactor control system the other month, are all to do with this next test we are doing to confirm our last batch of figures and add in the cheery on the cake. From here its a bit tricky, alot of pressure to publish or patent. But honestly i think we are not ready for that, if we gave the whole thing away the bigger guys with cash and clout would take us out, so for now we plan to build a full scale unit and get the Local Authority contract. Plus a few other people have shown interest for some large scale stuff if it works out. This however is our weak area, dealing with the actual business side and keeping our advantage, while at the same time getting our tech out there.
The science and tech side i have covered, the more tricky politics side and business side is not my thing, i got a business partner who is good. But at the moment we dont know exactly what we are up against or how to protect it. I would like to do what another team did, they crowd funded and raised loads for a system thats not that great. But crowd funding means we could well loose control of the tech, so we sticking with Local authorities and some of the potentially larger clients for now, how we fund a large system isnt clear at the moment, but i am not going to rush into deals i regret later.
Besides i am not ready to give up my soap yet
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