Hi David,
I am not seeing a contact/interaction path other than to start a discussion thread, so here goes...
What a delight to find your work. I have been lookiing into community economic development via waste stream recovery for sometime. I was starting to think I would need to find a design from Africa or Isreal and make adjustments for our temperate environment. I have found answers to most of my questions as I search the site and have ordered the book. I am not seeing the client sales pitch on how to utilize the gas created with the Cube or even the capture and delivery specifics for doing so. Can it be used concurrent with Propane to reduce Propane consumption? I live in the mountains and the Propane market is our target market. Also, how difficult is compression/bottling? Thanks.
Bucky,
Sorry to be so delayed in responding. [The_Cube] generates biogas, of course, and so as such it can be used as any other biogas is used: lighting, heating, cooking and so on. For the most part, biogas can provide heat through combustion facilitated by a standard burner designed for natural gas. However, raw, unscrubbed biogas burns with a fairly low flame velocity, so if pressures are too high, the flame can 'blow off' the burner.
Propane burners use a different air/fuel ratio, which may work for biogas, but which would not be optimal.
Compression is easy, so you can put biogas in standard propane or butane bottles, getting, say 10x the STP volume, but to liquify biogas, whether scrubbed or unscrubbed is very hard. That requires special pumps and low temperatures. It is fairly common in developing countries, primarily in cities, for biogas to be compressed into small bottles and sold, and if you Google 'biogas backpack', you will see another option for transport.
Let me know if you have other questions.
David