Mysterious Pig Poop Foam Has Explosive Properties

[Initech]

When you hear about foam in the context of food, you might think of molecular gastronomy, the culinary innovations of the Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, who's famous for dishes like apple caviar with banana foam.

But this post is about a much less appetizing kind of foam. You see, starting in about 2009, in the pits that capture manure under factory-scale hog farms, a gray, bubbly substance began appearing at the surface of the fecal soup. The problem is menacing: As manure breaks down, it emits toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide and flammable ones like methane, and trapping these noxious fumes under a layer of foam can lead to sudden, disastrous releases and even explosions. According to a 2012 report from the University of Minnesota, by September 2011, the foam had "caused about a half-dozen explosions in the upper Midwest…one explosion destroyed a barn on a farm in northern Iowa, killing 1,500 pigs and severely burning the worker involved."

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/05/menace-manure-foam-still-haunting-huge-hog-farms

[MADem]

1. They need to USE that methane--they should shunt the shit off to a processing area, and

find a way to capture the methane to reduce costs around the farm.

I know lots of landfills do this; they light and heat the building the landfill and processing workers are in.

[siligut]

2. Is that why they called it Thunderdome?

I've always wondered

[Javaman]

3. So, in this case...

stiring the shit would actually be a good thing.