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Mar. 6th, 2009 08:33 amThe office is almost entirely empty but for me today...it feels like a saturday. Coincidentally I am wearing my trusty Blue Man Group cap and yesterday's shorts. I think the office scooter is going to get a bit of a workout today.
We do a lot of work here with biological waste treatment. Lots of bugs make methane...historically the methane would just go up a flare stack, but with increasing economic and energy pressures there is a renewed incentive to clean up this "biogas" and use it in energy or steam production. It's not as easy as it sounds on its face - there are sulfides present which can create nasty acidic corrosion problems, and an excess of CO2 and moisture which make combustion efficiency and energy density lower than that of natural gas. Still and all, we are getting involved in more and more projects to take the bug farts over to a boiler or generator and get them to shake hands.
Having been spanked again for the umpteenth time by gaps in my knowledge, I did what I typically do in that situation: noodle around on Amazon and ABE for books that I can buy and put on my technical library shelf, and never actually take the time to look at or learn from. I found what seems to be an excellent state of the art text from last year (score!) but also found, no joke, a pulp thriller novel from the late 90's called Biogas! I read the back matter posted on Amazon and can barely connect the plot to the title...who knew methanogenic bacteria could be so exciting? It must be set someplace gory like a rendering plant or similar.
So, at least now I have my secret santa gift for the year sorted out early.
We do a lot of work here with biological waste treatment. Lots of bugs make methane...historically the methane would just go up a flare stack, but with increasing economic and energy pressures there is a renewed incentive to clean up this "biogas" and use it in energy or steam production. It's not as easy as it sounds on its face - there are sulfides present which can create nasty acidic corrosion problems, and an excess of CO2 and moisture which make combustion efficiency and energy density lower than that of natural gas. Still and all, we are getting involved in more and more projects to take the bug farts over to a boiler or generator and get them to shake hands.
Having been spanked again for the umpteenth time by gaps in my knowledge, I did what I typically do in that situation: noodle around on Amazon and ABE for books that I can buy and put on my technical library shelf, and never actually take the time to look at or learn from. I found what seems to be an excellent state of the art text from last year (score!) but also found, no joke, a pulp thriller novel from the late 90's called Biogas! I read the back matter posted on Amazon and can barely connect the plot to the title...who knew methanogenic bacteria could be so exciting? It must be set someplace gory like a rendering plant or similar.
So, at least now I have my secret santa gift for the year sorted out early.
