Hi,
I thought I had already posted something along these lines here but I couldn't find it - and I thought this was interesting enough to warrant putting up:
I was watching a programme on Sky the other evening about the production of methane from cow (and other manure) and was prompted to look on the web.
As an introduction for those of you unware of what is involved here is one site I found (complete with a link to a High School science project type model):
http://www.re-energy.ca/t-i_biomassbuild-1.shtml
Along with some more technical data:
http://www.clemson.edu/agbioeng/bio/...as-Summary.pdf
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/renewable/waste/default.htm
And some engines designed to operate with gaspower (although normal petrol engines can be adapted very easily):
http://www.clarke-energy.co.uk/gas_engines.html
And some statistics for the USA from 1997:
http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/cens...LIVSTCKNPOLTRY
Obviously, a GM would need to put in a bit of effort to come to some conclusions about how farm production in his area had fared. The key questions would be (off the top of my head):
1) How many animals were still alive? While the units in the examples owned hundreds of cows smaller scale collection of cowpoo (and indeed human, pig or chicken droppings) would also work.
2) Ability to collect the droppings and put them in the digester.
3) Source of water to add to the droppings to create a slurry (apparently an 8% solution of poo is best).
4) Ability to maintain the digester at the optimum temperature (the bacteria work best within certain temperature ranges).
Once you have the methane then obviously it can be used to generate electricity, power vehicles or (possibly best option) burnt directly for heating purposes. The slurry once it has gone through the digester can be used as fertiliser.
One of my first campaigns was based upon the attempt by a village to produce a large still to provide fuel for a large generator (which was another whole set of adventures) - obviously a biogas digester like this would be another option for a group to utilise.
I thought this was one of those alternative technologies which is basically simple enough to translate into TW2000 situations. I see agriculture as much less of a business and more a part of a medieval style subsistance economy in 2000. A village co-operative might have the cattle, pigs etc to produce the poo needed (although this is a technology that can be done on a very small scale) to run large scale bio-gas production but in my mind's eye I cannot see many farmers still owning a 100 cattle in 2000 as individuals.
I could see it as a source of adventures - being hired to stop cattle rustling, transporting cattle to a village expanding it's bio-gas facility. Or it could be one of the details adding colour to your game - young children being given the job of gathering up poo from fields to power the digestor, families putting out buckets of wee for collection by the "Petermen", that kind of thing.