May/June 2009 Living Now
Turning Cow Power into Horsepower

by Jennifer Cox

Many hybrid cars run on a combination of gasoline and a battery, but if dairy farmers in Washington have it their way, in the future methane produced by cow manure will replace gasoline.

Eric Leonhardt, director of the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University, built a hybrid car that runs on biomethane and electricity. But what makes this car especially sweet is that its fuel emissions are so low that Leonhardt touts it as the cleanest car in the world that runs on fuel. In fact, its emissions are a hundred times below the federal limit.

For dairy farmers, the hybrid car represents the possibility of capturing additional revenue from what is now an environmental headache - cow manure.

Research has found that on average, one cow can produce 70 gallons of methane daily. In an area like Washington where Leonhardt is based, 66,000 cows generate the biomethane equivalent of 10 million gallons of gasoline every year. An important benefit of using biomethane from cow manure instead of gas is that biomethane is a renewable source of energy.

We may not see these cow-powered hybrid cars popping up over night, but this type of research has opened new doors in power resources. Other new advances include combining E. Coli bacteria and sugarcane to produce an alternative form of biodiesel fuel.

Sources: www.capitalpress.info and www.popsci.com.