Cows could power cars, WWU speaker says

KIRA MILLAGE - THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

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BELLINGHAM - The solution to petroleum dependence in Whatcom County? Cows, according to the director of the Western Washington University Vehicle Research Institute.

Eric Leonhardt, also an associate professor of Engineering Technology, told a group of more than 100 community members packed into the Bellingham City Council Chambers on Tuesday night, Nov. 18, that methane from cows in Whatcom County could eventually fuel a significant number of cars that people drive.

"One thing to understand is that petroleum has been a great thing," he said during his lecture, which is part of WWU's Science in the UniverCity lecture series. "Nothing we do in the modern world, in this society, is untouched by it. It's been an incredible ride." But he also added that petroleum has many challenges against it - supply, environmental impact - making it time to find a different fuel source.

Leonhardt and students at the VRI have been experimenting with creating biomethane gas and cars that can run on it.

Waste from cows can be turned into biomenthane gas by putting it through an anaerobic digester, which breaks down the waste and creates gas, slurry for fertilizer and a solid product that is missing the pathogens.

Such a digester was installed in Whatcom County a few years ago.

The biomethane gas produced by a digester can't directly be used in vehicles, due to hydrogen sulfide, which damages the engine, and carbon dioxide, which doesn't add any benefit. Methane, the useful part, only makes up about 60 percent of the gas from a digester, Leonhardt said.

But he and WWU students created a cleaning process that removes the carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, making the fuel useable for a properly converted engine.

"Bottom line, we figure we can make between 9 and 11 million gallons of gasoline equivalent energy per year," he said. "That's only a day or two (production) at BP (Cherry Point Refinery), so for global (output), this is not tremenedous amount. But for Whatcom County this is tremendous amount." But, there are challenges to putting Whatcom County cars on biomethane fuel, he warned. There are large costs in building digesters, converting engines and creating a distribution system that would allow people to fill up their vehicles at places other than the digester that produced the fuel.

But once those hurdles are cleared, biomethane is about four times cheaper than petroleum-based gasoline, and emissions from a biomethane-powered car are less than those from common hybrid cars on the market, Leonhardt said.

He and VRI students hope to have a pilot project up and running by this spring.

"The key question is not when are we going to run out oil, but rather, if have increasing demand will the production of oil meet that demand and at what price?" he said. "There are some significant opportunities out there to be able to make change, improve things and create better ways of living."