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Posted on Fri, Apr. 28, 2006

ILLINOIS STYLE: UI researcher makes crude oil from pig manure
DAVE ORRICK
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald
HAMPSHIRE, Ill. - Can the other white meat's manure make black gold?

They say you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, but University of Illinois researchers are working some interesting magic at the other end of the animal.

"We are the first to actually do this," professor Yuanhui Zhang says proudly of his team's ability to turn swine manure into crude oil. He's a bio-environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has led the 10-year research project that recently announced a breakthrough in porcine petroleum.

That neat trick may sound crude.

But it also sounds good to a pork industry swamped with oceans of swine manure, and it sounds like the national anthem to those looking to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

A typical pig produces about 6 gallons of waste a day.

For a hog farmer like Pat Dumoulin of Hampshire, who has about 1,200 sows, that's enough stinky and potentially hazardous fumes that he has a pair of 500,000-gallon tanks to properly store the stuff.

Like most farmers, much of the manure from Dumoulin's hogs winds up as fertilizer.

"Most of the farmers in our area are open to taking the hog manure," says Dumoulin, whose farm has been in his family for more than 50 years. "Sometimes it's done for no cost, sometimes they pay us a fee to spread it on their fields."

Either way, scientists have agreed for years that the chemical and capital potential of pig manure, like almost all organic waste, could have other uses.

Zhang's breakthrough wasn't that he and fellow researchers had become excrement alchemists; in about 1998, he figured out how to convert some of a pig's byproduct to an energy source. Turning garbage into natural gas, cow manure into fuel for power plants, and even fast-food grease into auto fuel are other examples of recent advances in the sub-field of icky-but-renewable energy.

Zhang's big breakthrough is that he's designed a more efficient process: a continuous reactor. Instead of converting hog waste one batch at a time, Zhang's lab, which is funded in part by the Illinois Pork Producers Association, has developed a method to feed waste continuously into a reactor, which is essentially an industrial-strength pressurized oven. And, Zhang boasts, "We don't even need pre-drying."

Chemically, pig dung isn't as different from oil as one might think. In Zhang's reactor, a process known as thermochemical conversion partially breaks down hydrocarbon molecules that make up most of the excrement, and voila: porky petrol.

Similar but not identical to the black gold it took Mother Nature eons to brew, Zhang's fuel behaves like diesel.

Now the plan is to move from the lab to a full-sized pilot reactor on a farm somewhere Downstate. Zhang predicts the process could get 3.6 gallons of crude oil a day out of each pig. Illinois brings some 7.2 million hogs to market each year and the nationwide industry is about 100-million hogs strong.

Theoretically, the resulting millions of barrels of crude a day could make a significant dent in America's dependence on nonrenewable, and often imported, oil.

But converting the nations automobile fleet to hog-oline isn't what Zhang or the hog industry is thinking about right now. No research has been done into how many current commercial vehicles could run on the fuel.

A typical pig produces about 6 gallons of waste a day.That sounds absolutely painful.

I went to UIUC and on a hot summer's day you could smell the south farms. Ughh....

However optimistic I am about this becoming a moot issue, I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea. They would essentially be using a waste product from the pig industry to produce an energy source. However, I would like to see the pig industry abolished but if the waste is going to be there, then you might as well use it fruitfully.

I wonder if this would worked with human waste. God knows we produce enough of it and as of right now about 60% of our biosolids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosolids) is used as fertilizer. After all we're not that different from pigs. Of course I could see people justifying overeating because gas prices are too high :lol:
Would you drive a fart-fueled car?
~Wonder :guitar:

Would you drive a fart-fueled car?
~Wonder :guitar:

A fart fueled car!:wayne:

Too funny

Wonder, I don't understand what you mean " don't necessarily think this is a bad idea." How can basing a new industry on a bad industry not be a bad idea? Just because a product can be made from the result of the bad industry doesn't make that industry not bad. In my opinion.

Of course it would work with human waste.

I already drive a crap car. Hey, here's a thought: park your pig's rear end over where ya want other stuff to grow, like food for example, and build a $1000 fence instead of a $1,000,000 crap reactor.

That sounds absolutely painful.

I went to UIUC and on a hot summer's day you could smell the south farms. Ughh....

However optimistic I am about this becoming a moot issue, I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea. They would essentially be using a waste product from the pig industry to produce an energy source. However, I would like to see the pig industry abolished but if the waste is going to be there, then you might as well use it fruitfully.

I wonder if this would worked with human waste. God knows we produce enough of it and as of right now about 60% of our biosolids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosolids) is used as fertilizer. After all we're not that different from pigs. Of course I could see people justifying overeating because gas prices are too high :lol:
Would you drive a fart-fueled car?
~Wonder :guitar:

oh man... i was there all last year. in the spring, the campus was perfectly downwind of the pig (and other animal) farms. the entire city smelled like poop for days at a time. the upside is that it might have made people more aware that the animals they eat actually do exist somewhere.

We don't need pigs for this. Why don't we use the run-off from dairy farms? All it's doing right now is ruining ground water, catching fire, and victimizing people in tar-pit fashion.

Wonder, I don't understand what you mean " don't necessarily think this is a bad idea." How can basing a new industry on a bad industry not be a bad idea? Just because a product can be made from the result of the bad industry doesn't make that industry not bad. In my opinion.

Of course it would work with human waste.
Your can let their crap rot or you can use it to make fuel. Whatever choice you make doesn't really affect the pigs and I'm sure they'd rather the crap not be around. Of course I don't approve of the bad conditions the pigs are raised in or in killing them for food and hope that one day very soon this horrible industry becomes history, thereby making this issue moot. But as long as people eat meat, there will be tons of crap just sitting around. You might as well turn it into something useful.
~Wonder :guitar:

My point is, making something useful out of a product of animal torture, makes people more dependent on the products of animal torture!

Theoretically, the resulting millions of barrels of crude a day could make a significant dent in America's dependence on nonrenewable, and often imported, oil.

Of course this is nonsense, it can't make a "significant dent" but that doesn't mean people won't try and thereby continue this horrific industry.

My point is, making something useful out of a product of animal torture, makes people more dependent on the products of animal torture!



Of course this is nonsense, it can't make a "significant dent" but that doesn't mean people won't try and thereby continue this horrific industry.

I think we need to be a little realistic here. Obviously none of us supports pork production, but we have to understand that it's going to continue indefinitely, and is increasing. Living in North Carolina, this is a pretty familiar issue. We boast the world's largest pork slaughtering operation, killing 40,000 of Smithfield's (the world's largest pork producer) 80,000 hogs at one facility. We are second in the country in pork production and are growing rapidly, whether we (veg*ns) like it or not.

An unfortunate side effect (even to omnis) of 10 million pigs is that there is a lot of waste produced. According to environmentaldefense dot org, "North Carolina's hogs produce a mind-boggling amount of waste: 19 million tons of feces and urine a year, or over 50,000 tons every single day. That's more waste in one year than the entire human population of Charlotte, North Carolina [our largest city - Max] produces in 58 years! To make matters worse, almost all of North Carolina's hogs are concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, an economically important and ecologically sensitive network of wetlands, rivers, and coastline."

Hurricane Floyd, in 1999, was a disaster for eastern NC in more ways than one. "For years, farmers had been free to build hog and poultry operations as big as they wanted and wherever they liked. They were allowed to dig huge pits for animal waste, without regard to the water table or the health and sensibilities of neighbors. In the hurricane, feces and urine soaked the terrain and flowed into rivers from the overburdened waste pits the industry calls lagoons. The storm killed more than two million turkeys, chickens and livestock in the region, and waste from the farms is expected to keep leaching into the water supply until next spring. " We currently have a moratorium on building new hog farms through 2007.

I know that's a lot of info and it only cements what all of us say about the various problems with meat production. So, with all that pig crap floating around here, I wouldn't mind seeing some of it used to reduce our dependence on petroleum.

As a further example, I have an article from Discover magazine that talks about how there is a factory in Missouri that produces oil from any organic material. It's located next to a Butterball plant and the bulk of the oil is made from feathers, bones, and internal organs. I'll spare posting the entire thing, especially because of the current length of this post, but if anyone is interested I can send it to them (it's online but members-only).

Don't talk about "being realistic" here on a veg forum. Promoting vegetarianism isn't "realistic."


There is NOTHING good coming out of factory pig production.


Producing pig poop fuel to make us "independent of oil" (ha ha) just makes people more dependent on this cruel and horrific industry, for NOTHING, since this amount of fuel will not in any way make us "independent of oil." It is a lie.

Ok, let's be idealistic then. Pig farming will increase if we make pig poop fuel. If we don't make pig poop fuel, then pig farms will go out of business. People will see the error of their ways and stop promoting animal exploitation.

I think vegetarianism is perfectly realistic. There are many very real and practical health and environmental reasons, even if not everyone shares the ethical sentiments (disclosure: I do share them). Attempting to make a logical argument that pig poop fuel leads to increasing animal cruelty only makes "the cause" look sillier to people who are already so inclined.

The reality is that industrial processes create very real and very problematic waste byproducts. Period. You can make an attempt at mitigating the risks of such processes, or you can be an idealist and hope that the pig poop will go away.

No, I don't "hope the pig poop goes away." I don't promote the factory farming of pigs for ANY purpose.


If you say factory farm pig poop should be used to make fuel to "help us be energy independent" you are PROMOTING factory pig farming.

Not promoting factory pig farming isn't "silly."

Do you know what could really help us be "energy independent"? Moving away from the factory production of food, especially meat, which is extremely wasteful of energy and resources.

But I guess that's "unrealistic" "idealistic" and "silly."

Even though, apparently, vegetarianism is "realistic."

Moving away from factory farming has the same "realistic" results as vegetarianism - improved health, more efficient use of resources, better for ecosystems. So why is discouraging factory farming of pigs "unrealistic" and vegetarianism "realistic"?

Why not just cut to the chase and go straight for vegetarianism, or at least small scale locally grown (not factory) food? Why screw around with factory pig poop?

Because it "isn't realistic"? But vegetarianism is "realistic."

No, it doesn't make any sense to me.

I guess I'll stick with being an idealist.

If you say factory farm pig poop should be used to make fuel to "help us be energy independent" you are PROMOTING factory pig farming.

"Reducing energy dependence" is not the same as using waste to create energy independence. But I think we're getting the cart ahead of the horse here. No one knows if this is feasible on any kind of useful scale. More importantly, it's not going to promote (i.e. advance) an increase in factory farming. If we want to produce more oil from pig waste, we have to have more pigs, barring impressive technological advancements in pig digestion throughput. What are we going to do with all those extra millions of pigs? Have a fire sale on pork chops? Regardless, I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on your point above.

Do you know what could really help us be "energy independent"? Moving away from the factory production of food, especially meat, which is extremely wasteful of energy and resources.

But I guess that's "unrealistic" "idealistic" and "silly."

I think that's a great idea, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. I believe you're trying to knock down a straw man here so there's no point in going into details on your question (which I believe is rhetorical on this board). As for the smug statement at the bottom, environmental concerns were my biggest reason for becoming a vegetarian. In some respect, I know that it's idealistic, and I can live with that. The removal of meat from my personal diet isn't going to bring down the meat industries. But if you want to argue about good ways to reduce energy dependence, personal changes are at the top of the list. I feel like I'm being more personally responsible for my share of the world's wellbeing, and I see tangible results for doing so.

Until you personally provide some benefit/detriment to the average person, they're simply not motivated to do anything about anything. I guarantee you that if beef was $50 a pound, we'd have a lot more vegetarians around. That's why personally becoming a vegetarian is a “realistic” option, and why the complete and sudden removal of factory farming is not.


Moving away from factory farming has the same "realistic" results as vegetarianism - improved health, more efficient use of resources, better for ecosystems. So why is discouraging factory farming of pigs "unrealistic" and vegetarianism "realistic"?


I'm not arguing that the results aren't realistic, only the odds of a substantial change on a certain level. I don't think you'll get any debate on this board about discouraging factory farming. Again, the personal conversion is entirely realistic. Hoping that a $125+ billion industry is going to disappear is not.

=( poor lil piggies