Korean Job Discussion Forums

[dulouz]

Im always interested in alternative energy and its fuels. I go off the deep end for a few days and learn about its components. I was reading about aquaculture, a practic whereby plants are feed fish waste. Fish waste is the poo/feces but actually its the undigested waste plus ammonia.

I wanted to collect the ammonia and use it for cooling so you have vegetables, fish and AC.

There is some wishful thinking on behalf of the aquaculture folks in that the waste fert will be as a good as hydro ferts but it really can't be. If it works its by luck due the unpredictable nature of poo, natural ponds and various contaminents.

That being said, you need to hone the system enough to know whet you have. With animals, esp fish you get ammonia. Then how to capture it? You can distill it. After that you can use it for cooling.

Ammonia goes to liquid under pressure and vaporizes at lighter pressures. CO2 can be used to provide the pressure but thats kind of tricky.


So, you ferment to get ethanol. Ethanol runs the steam engine/ac generator for electricity. CO2 is used to help the plants. The fish make ammonia used for cooling without CFC's.

[Wrench]

I think you would loose way to much energy converting the waste to get amonia. Unless use your urine for the amonia.

[dulouz]

Aquaculture can use fish but it can aslo use turtles. Turtles make plenty of ammonia or at least more than fish. I can smell the ammonia. The ammonia that is discharged from the animals reacts in the water. It breaks down but there is a saturation point where it can't react anymore so it escapes as gas. You can smell it then. I'd like to try to capture that.

[mindmetoo]

This web page has been around for a billion years and always an interesting stop:

Bill Beaty's famous "weird science" page:

http://www.amasci.com/weird.html

[khyber]

[Bulsajo]

Anyone who has ever had an aquarium knows that amonia build up kills fish- it would be great to build some sort of balanced system whereby you could siphon or filter off the amonia before it reaches fish killing concentrations. Having to replace your entire fish populations doesn't sound very productive, and I imagine the whole idea would be to create something of a closed cycle that doesn't require the reintroduction of fish on a regular basis... pie in the sky: wouldn't it be great though to see dual-use (or more) aquariums sprouting up in every municipality?

[dulouz]

[khyber]

[dulouz]

Khyber,

[Bulsajo]

[dulouz]

TY for the link

So it seems that if I want to have ammonia gas, I'd have to hurt the fish. I could use the turtles, they cope with ammonia much better. I need a chemical test for ammonia.

[Bulsajo]

[dulouz]

Buls, there are quite a few turtle farms in SE Asia but they are run by Chinese. The farms produce food turtles for export to Asia. They aren't nice places. I have a day dream about having one but since turtles take 8 years to mature enough to eat, its an awkward proposal.

The gov't or other bad people could seize the whole outfit on day 364 of the 7th year. I might want to put it in New Mexico or Louisiana.

[keninseoul]

I have NO idea how you would collect the gas from a fish farm - sounds rather impractical. The cost of a collection method would far exceed the cost of commercial ammonia - besides you use a closed system for cooling, so why bother with a continuous source.

You CAN collect manure from a livestock/poultry operation and run a bio-gas unit from it. The methane can run whatever; heater/cooking unit, or an ammonia fridge(!), though a steam engine would be impractical except for very large operations.

The effluent from the bio-gas makes great crop and aquatic fertilizer - significantly better than composed or aged manure.

I know of no cost-effective by-products from fish-farming save using the water for occasional partial irrigation or the fish by-products as animal feed or fertilizer.

I am planning an integrated farm in the tropics - have 9,000 sq m, currently used for rice.

Will engage in some cash crops and animal feed crops (by dedicated fields and by rotation). The animal feed crops will help feed the pigs. Pig manure will go to the bio-gas unit, etc - as above.

There is a smallish canal which runs thru the farm - planning on installing a small watermill to provide electricity for charging a battery bank. The batteries will provide power for lighting and light appliance use. Wind is not constant enough, nor strong enough (at my location) to consider it as a power source. Solar power is just too darn expensive, (from what I recall they are USD 8 to 12 a Watt) still, I did ask the PV companies in Korea, but none do retail. Too bad, Korea is so DIY backward.