Biogas Handbook, 4th edition

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Author: David William House House Press PO Box 167 Aurora, OR 97002 http://www.completebiogas.com Released: October 5, 2006 Pages: 288 $40 USD ISBN: 9780915238470
Strengths: All about capturing methane. Weaknesses: So much effort went into the book, that only one kind of generator was actually created by the author. But how many biogas generators do we need in our back yards?

 

Introduction

The first edition of the book quickly established itself as the book on biogas generation. Now in a newly revised edition, David House brings together all the information, from the most theoretical scientific research to grassroots homescale trial and error.

 

Here are the detailed designs for generators and the knowledge, encouragement, imagination, and humor you will need to build a generator of your own. While biogas may not yet be a household word, you should consider it seriously if you believe in the future of alternative energy.

 

Use biogas for illumination, cooking, water heating, refrigeration, space heating, and to fuel vehicles.

 

There is much in this book in its 51 chapters and 21 appendices. It also has 90 figures and almost 60 tables, an index and two tables of contents (one brief, one comprehensive) for ease of finding items. As well, it contains information about growing algae for producing biogas (Chapter 18), and some possibilities regarding biohydrogen (Appendix 2).

 

What I Learned

We are certainly throwing away much of what the earth would use to renew itself as we consume. It would be sooo easy to make bathroom humor about this book, because it deals with all those things we tend to shy away from (understandably) that stink, smell and generally get in the way, as we have sanitized and cleaned up anaerobic messes around us (think sewer scum, dirty diapers and other methy things).

 

But guess what? These biomasses carry a lot of energy and we have relearned how to reharness much of that energy from biomass and turn it into biogas. The other name for it? Natural Gas.

 

I'm tempted to say most of this book is charts, graphs and appendices. In reality, as a textbook, it also is chock full of other things for beginners, novices and newbees to the world of biomass regeneration and energy absorption.

 

There are 8 sections beginning with the basics of energy, math and biology, then going into how to "be good to our little bitty buddies" with parameters related to production, next up are substrates available for production, scrubbing out unwanted gases and leaving the end product sought for – Methane, working with anaerobics and troubleshooting and development of cultures, designing biogas generators, literally "grassroots" research into plans for small scale generators and a whole host of appendices (yes, 21 of them) on gas analysis, biohydrogen, effluent uses, gas production math, specific gravity, drill statistics, burner design, gas vital statistics, K and C values, steam treatment, heat transfer, decimals, fractions, geometry, trig, metric conversion, a simple method for temperature conversion, terms, chapter ending answers (yes, there were questions), a bibliography, an author afterword, contents, figures and tables and an index and authors (see, David didn't write it all himself!).

 

Conclusion

Go ahead and digest the whole thing and see for yourself what comes out in the end. You don't need an antacid for biogas!