what is a good alternative fuel?

[120ThingsIn20Years]

My lawnmower at present is a goat. She is a little rough on the edging but works out in the long haul.

By edging, do you mean where the lawn runs out and the veggie garden begins?

This is where goats go when you squirt them with a hose if you catch them eating your aquaponics system :)



But as people said, animals and their dung is an excellent alternative fuel source. Even without harvesting the methane or heat from compost, the dung burns really well. Many people around the world use it as their primary fuel source.

Ethanol/methanol (distillation/burning (actually there's probably not a lot of sugars left, but it does give me another opportunity to use nest parenthesis in an English sentence))
Fat (direct burning)
Compost (dung)
Methane (via special adapter)

I'd love to see a goat with a methane powered, head mounted Stirling engine.

I'm not sure why.

[120ThingsIn20Years]

120
I love those pop can ethanol stoves. I thought of having an air lock on a fermenter ,run that tube to a pop can ethanol stove. You would heat the bottom of the fermenter till the mash was 170f. At this point you would have a prestill. The ethanol would be pressurized gas to run the stove. You can get up to 20 percent ethanol .A five gallon fermenter would give you a long burn time. Then use this to heat your stirling engine.

I just checked, and the gas coming from the airlock on a fermenter puts a flame out.

[fullofhotair]

120
I had to think about your comment a bit. I believe if your final fermentation was done with an air lock, then you agitate the spent wort under a slight vacuum, you would release the co2. Just like shaking up a can of pop.

[fullofhotair]

120
You could probably use a solar trough and a thermal syphon to get the wort up to the required 170f to gasify the ethanol.

[brianhughes]

The best that I can think of is pallet wood burnt to charcoal. I only realised recently that pallets, according to ISPM15, have to be treated with something to prevent forest bugs spreading, and the only somethings that are authorised are heat treatment, and methyl bromide, which is being phased out. There's embedded energy in pallet wood, and it's effectively kiln dried. If you burn it to charcoal, you've got a supply of charcoal fines to use as biochar- what's not to like?

[Ian S C]

Brian, do you mean Pellet, as in small cylindrical things made of compressed sawdust, or Pallet, a (usually) wooden platform for transporting goods on, to enable lifting with a forklift, these make quite good fire wood. I imagine the former. Ian S C sorry to be picky