14 DAY TRIAL // Greenheads are not big fans of cows, and not just because they hate the taste of beef patties. On the contrary, what they have against these animals is the fact that they represent a major source of methane emissions and, consequently, fuel climate change and global warming.
However, it appears that, thanks to a group of scientists in Argentina, cows might soon become a tad more popular among environmentalists than they currently are.
Media reports say that researchers in this part of the world are now working on perfecting a technology that would make it possible to collect the harmful emissions that these animals eliminate and use them to produce green energy.
Daily Mail informs that the scientists have managed to develop innovative and surprisingly big backpacks that can help trap cow farts and keep them from working their way into the environment.
These backpacks, whom some like to refer to as fartpacks, are said to be able to collect as much as 300 liters of methane originating from the average's cows digestive tract on a daily basis. Once collected, this methane can be converted into enough energy to keep a car up and running for a full day.
“Imagine a future farm with a couple of these cows used to provide energy to satisfy the farm’s needs,” specialist Pablo Sorondo with Argentina's National Institute for Agricultural Technology told the press in a recent interview.
In case anyone was wondering, these backpacks trap methane emissions that cows would otherwise release into the environment by means of a tube inserted into the animals' digestive tract, the same source details.
For the time being, this technology is not ready for use on a large scale. On the contrary, the idea to use backpacks to collect methane emissions from cows and then turn them into clean energy is just in its proof-of-concept stage.
Just for the record, it must be said that specialists are this interested in limiting the amount of methane that reaches our planet's atmosphere on a yearly basis due to the fact that this compound is a very potent greenhouse gas. Thus, studies have shown it to be several dozen times more potent than carbon dioxide.
According to evidence at hand, cows all around the world are responsible for about 25% of the global methane emissions. Given the urgency to limit global warming and climate change, it should not come as a surprise that specialists are trying to come up with ways to make these animals more environmentally friendly.