whatisthisidontunderst

Thanks!

Thanks. Good point on the worm gear clamps. Probably won't need nearly as many to keep things from wiggling around.

Good questions. My wife's nervous about compressed methane around the house too. Definitely won't proceed until I'm sure it's safe.

RE: temperature. It warmed up here the last few days from the 50s to the 70s and I saw a big jump in production. Painting the digester black would indeed help, and I have a heating element from an outdoor dog bowl I'll eventually fix to the underside of the digester.RE: pressure. The digester as designed provides only one escape route for the gas, so it should eventually build enough pressure to break the water seal in the collector. Similar concept to an airlock used in fermenting beer or wine (http://www.northernbrewer.com/bubbler-air-lock).

Excellent idea, thanks!

Great! Let me know how it works for you.

Thanks. It's a little more refined, but same basic concept.

Would love to see the one built by the guy in BC if you have a link.As for freezing, I took that into consideration with the drains in both the digester and the collector.

Good question. From everything I've read, digesters like this only need pumping out every few years. I'd presume that what's left over from digestion gets diluted in the liquid and only the real heavy solids settle out to the bottom. If that's the case, then by draining this every winter to avoid freeze-up will likely remove a good portion of the solids.Whatever the case, I'll update as I put this into use.

I am looking into how to compress the gas for later use, yes. If you have any ideas on methane compression and storage, I'd love to hear them.