Organic Farming Part II – ‘Cow dung to biogas’

Posted on January 19, 2018 6:31 am by Joan Robertson

Organic Farming Part II – ‘Cow dung to biogas’


A new more colourful film on biogas, see https://youtu.be/N_JBavF726Q
Like many organic farmers, Jose Elanjhimattam is both a practical and abundantly resourceful man. Starting with cow dung, Jose has created an ingenious system that simultaneously captures and separates nitrogen-rich organic manure and methane gas. Unlike dried cow dung, which tends to lose nitrogen throughout the drying process, the liquefied organic manure produced through Joses slurry provides soil with far higher levels of nitrogen. Additionally, the methane gas removed is used as a form of fuel. Jose estimates that the dung from two cows is sufficient to provide enough biogas to support the cooking requirements of a family of four. Resourceful, intelligent, simple great stuff!
Thanks to www.organicguide.com for this summary!
see also
Part I ‘Organic Farming’
Part III ‘Organic pesticide and fungicide



  • how bout this: they take all the vegetation and grain the bull eats in a year and dry and prepare it for fuel bricks. And get some boots to walk around in the dung.

  • Interesting. Is it sloped downwards towards the exit or is the floor of the dome tank area and exit channel completely horizontal?

  • I am not 100% sure, I think it is horizontal and the pressure from the gas pushes it out. I will see if I can find out and get back to you.

  • @ukiahhaiku
    The gas pressure generated in the fermentation tank will push on both input and exit channel. I think it will be important that the pressure needed to push out the exit channel is much lower than that of the input channel, so a sloping floor could assure that. Looking forward to your further info.

  • YOUR A HAPPY MAN…..
    Pls watch my biogas digester use pig dung… small digester…..

    nice presentation….

  • @svtuition
    The gas collected in the dome of the tank. There was no storage. The pressure from the tank pushed the gas the 50m distance to the kitchen. The flow of the gas was regulated by a tap on the kitchen wall.

  • Well, if this video had captions it would be way more useful…. could barely understand the guy…….

  • No it doesn’t smell because the gases are contained in the underground system. The gas is only let out as methane gas to a burner, and when methane is burning it doesn’t smell unpleasant.

  • Now thats being resourceful!
    Want to sell organic food? check out my blog – trybeyondorganic {dott} com

  • Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a self sustaining farm like this in the USA? I want one!

  • Nice video! At Rakum we do organic farming and have around 50 cows. We use heir dung to make Bio-fuel. At Ashram whole surrounding is surrounded by greenery and few Turkeys, we have fish aquarium, birds. Visitors come to stay at our Ashram to rejuvenate their tired soul.

  • heavens, it’s been such a while that I had to go back and read what it was I wrote ^^;

    Yeah? Fascinating, well, with all the dung that goes through the system, I imagine they’ll be adequately supplied quite a while prior to that.

  • When using old dung, a lot of nitrogen has already escaped into the air. You need the dung to just become methane, so that the nitrogen can stay in the slurry,

  • But when dried with straw the manure would be still contain most of the nitrogen. Would there be any advantage in using old dung?

  • Organic farming started to disappear in India due to so called ‘AGRICULTURE UNIVERSITIES’, all the bought and paid for by MONSATO, DUPONT, and SYNGENTA. The agriculture universities brainwashed Indian farmers into believing that the only way to farm is, to use pesticides, herbicides and GMO seed.

  • Organic farming started to disappear in India due to so called ‘AGRICULTURE UNIVERSITIES’, all bought and paid for by MONSATO, DUPONT, and SYNGENTA. The agriculture universities brainwashed Indian farmers into believing that the only way to farm is, to use pesticides, herbicides and GMO seed

  • @Dalton Kp Human waste would produce kitchen gas, the only problem is the slurry may need to be quarantined a while before being applied to crops.

  • Require information for a scince project, please provide email address.