{"id":4502,"date":"2012-01-13T11:57:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T17:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=4502"},"modified":"2012-01-13T12:08:18","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T18:08:18","slug":"how-1000-pounds-of-butter-can-power-a-home-for-3-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/13\/how-1000-pounds-of-butter-can-power-a-home-for-3-days\/","title":{"rendered":"How 1,000 Pounds of Butter Can Power a Home for 3 Days"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Flickr user Robert S. Donovan(Creative Commons)<\/p>

Believe it Or Not: Butter Can Be Used to Power a Home<\/p><\/div>\n

Don’t tell Paula Deen, but butter can be used for something other than making fried butter balls<\/a>. Turns out that in addition to making everything taste better<\/a> (yes, even bacon<\/a>), butter can also make energy.<\/p>\n

And not just any butter, but a large sculpture of it “showing a boy lead\u00ading his prize-winning calf through a county fair,” according to our sister site StateImpact Pennsylvania<\/a>. The sculpture is an annual tradition at the Pennsylvania Farm Show<\/a>, and this year a farmer is taking the butter, converting it to methane, and running his home and farm off of the energy for three days.<\/p>\n

StateImpact Pennsylvania<\/strong> has the fatty details<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Turns out, but\u00adter becomes gas through the work of a methane digester. Glenn Cauff\u00adman, the man\u00adager of Penn State University\u2019s Farm Oper\u00ada\u00adtions,\u00a0said the but\u00adter will be dumped into a big heated tank where microor\u00adgan\u00adisms will feast on it. \u201cThose microor\u00adgan\u00adisms can break those fat mol\u00ade\u00adcules apart into the less com\u00adplex mol\u00ade\u00adcules,\u201d he explained. \u201cThen fur\u00adther take that to pro\u00adduce a gas called methane, which burns read\u00adily in an engine, and can be con\u00adverted into\u2026electricity.\u201d”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So go quickly grab a piece Texas Toast (and a Lipitor), and then sit down to read all about the buttery wonder<\/a> over at StateImpact Pennsylvania<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don’t tell Paula Deen, but butter can be used for something other than making fried butter balls. Turns out that in addition to making everything taste better (yes, even bacon), butter can also make energy. And not just any butter, but a large sculpture of it “showing a boy lead\u00ading his prize-winning calf through a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":4503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[30],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4502"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4512,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4502\/revisions\/4512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}