Turkish engineers to produce electricity from cows’ intestinal gas

Sadi Özdemir ISTANBUL

Three Turkish engineers have developed a system that produces electricity from intestinal gases collected from cows in barns. They aim to enable farmers to create additional revenue from this energy, which will be generated in 4,000 barns.

“Our project is based on collecting and decomposing intestinal gases from cows to produce an energy resource. Cows produce more gas than other animals due to their unique intestinal system. For instance, a human produces 0.5 liters of gas a day, but a cow is able to produce up to 580 liters of gas,” said one of the engineers, Şafak Karatepe.

Yalçın Öztürk, Mert Çakman and Karatepe from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) aim to create additional income for Turkish farms by selling their system, called BioCower, to be used in more than 4,000 barns with over 100 cows.

The engineers said a news story about the explosion of a barn in Germany with no healthy ventilation system due to high levels of gas had inspired them to develop the system.