Gas Crisis Threatens Britain's Supplies

greyteam1959

On my farm we have a large ( and I mean large ) plastic sheet over the area that our milk cows live in.
When the cows errrmmm 'pass' wind the methane is collected and piped to our central heating boiler in the farmhouse.
Using this method we have what you might call 'free' heating and hot water all year round.
So Mr Putin can turn the gas off for all I care !!!

BlondeHeadOn

mervyn11 wrote: »

On my farm we have a large ( and I mean large ) plastic sheet over the area that our milk cows live in.
When the cows errrmmm 'pass' wind the methane is collected and piped to our central heating boiler in the farmhouse.
Using this method we have what you might call 'free' heating and hot water all year round.
So Mr Putin can turn the gas off for all I care !!!

Now that's what I call real moneysaving.....

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

1echidna

mervyn11 wrote: »

On my farm we have a large ( and I mean large ) plastic sheet over the area that our milk cows live in.
When the cows errrmmm 'pass' wind the methane is collected and piped to our central heating boiler in the farmhouse.
Using this method we have what you might call 'free' heating and hot water all year round.
So Mr Putin can turn the gas off for all I care !!!

I have to say sounds really odd to me: putting plastic over the area the cows live in. Surely the cows need oxygen and it is really difficult to collect cows' wind without suffocating the cows. I can understand if you mean over the area where the manure is collected.

tesuhoha

Gas cuts like power cuts are not possible. Its either turned off or on. If the gas was turned off it would be an incredibly time consuming and complicated matter to reinstate it which would take many months, perhaps years. You may have seen what happened when the explosion took place recently before Christmas and several thousand people lost their gas supply. They brought in engineers from other areas and it still took a long time just to reconnect each house. They had to visit each house individually and check each appliance before reconnecting it. This would have to happen countrywide if we lost our supply and we would not have extra engineers working in any one area as they would all be in their own.

As the main gas pipes are so big the gas would have to be brought back down the pipe with nitrogen. It would not be possible to use air as the mixture would be highly explosive and one spark would be enough to set it off. It would be a highly dangerous situation so lets hope that it never happens. I have no idea what percentage of gas Britain receives from Russia.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

I know I may sound stupid but a genuine question if I may.
Do we need gas to help produce electricity.It's just I'm sure I heard them mention it the other morning on the news.
If we do could we see power cuts,electricty wise.Thanks.

CLAPTON

yes about 45% of electicity is generated from gas

mewbie_2

Gas Crisis Threatens Britain's Supplies

On the other hand it's just a scare story from a discredited paper that didn't have a Diana story to post. Same paper that spent most of the first months of the House crash claiming there wasn't one.

It's a fun bit of hysteria, but largely rubbish. End of the world postponed.

1echidna

Yes a large proportion of UK power is generated from gas which used to be cheap. We had the 'rush to gas' in the eighties and nineties replacing many coal fired power stations. Combined cycle gas/steam turbine power stations are relatively cheap and quick to build, are very thermodynamically efficient and have low carbon emissions relative to coal. This country was able to boast that it met its Kyoto obligations, in reality due to a switch over which would have happened anyway, and certainly not because of any brave or painful decisions by gov't.

Paul_M_5

1echidna wrote: »

I have to say sounds really odd to me: putting plastic over the area the cows live in. Surely the cows need oxygen and it is really difficult to collect cows' wind without suffocating the cows. I can understand if you mean over the area where the manure is collected.

Since methane is lighter than air, I can only assume there is some kind of plastic covering on the ceiling that directs the methane to a tank for storage, purging the air from the tank. It won't have much (any?) effect on the air available at ground level, as I expect there is some other pre-existing source of fresh air.

mardatha

...and meanwhile there's years & years & YEARS of coal under the ground in the UK... but coal, like miners, is dirty and bad and out of favour.
Is much much more sensible to smirk and tell ourselves how green we are, while the Russians switch the gas off and the French over-charge us like hell for the elect .
Erm. isnt it ?