Jean Pain

Jean Pain (1930–1981) was a French innovator who developed a compost based bioenergy system that produced 100% of his energy needs. He heated water to 60 degrees celsius at a rate of 4 litres a minute which he used for washing and heating. He also distilled enough methane to run an electricity generator, cooking elements, and power his truck. This method of creating usable energy from composting materials has come to be known as Jean Pain Composting, or the Jean Pain Method.

Life

He married Ida Pain (maiden name not yet known) and lived near Domaine des Templiers, on a 241-hectare timber tract backed on to the Alpes de Provence. He died in 1981 at the age of 51.

Jean Pain Composting

Pain's compost power plant supplied 100 percent of Pain and his wife Ida's rural household's energy needs. A compost mound of tiny brushwood pieces (3 metres high and 6 across) was made of tree limbs and pulverized underbrush. Pain spent considerable attention developing prototypes of machines required to macerate small tree trunks and limbs; one of these, a tractor-driven model, was awarded fourth prize in the 1978 Grenoble Agricultural Fair. The 50 tonnes of compost was then mounded over a steel tank with a capacity of 4 cubic metres. This tank was 3/4 full of the same compost, which had first been steeped in water for 2 months. The hermetically sealed tank was connected by tubing to 24 truck tyre inner tubes, banked nearby for the methane gas to collect. The gas was distilled by being washed through small stones in water and compressed. Pain used the gas for cooking and producing electricity. He also fueled a truck. Pain estimated that 10 kilos of brushwood would supply the gas equivalent of a litre of petrol.

It took about 90 days to produce 500 cubic metres of gas - enough to keep two ovens and three burner stoves going for a year. The methane-fueled combustion engine drove a generator that produced 100 watt-hours of electricity every hour. This charged an accumulative battery which stored the current, providing all the light needed for the household. Some skepticism has been leveled at the quantities of methane Pain was able to extract from his system, and it is not known if anyone has been able to reproduce this quantity of the same system.

Hot water was generated through 200 metres of pipe buried inside the compost mound. The pipe was wrapped around the methane generator with an inlet for cold water and an outlet for hot. The heat from the decomposing mass produced 4 litres per minute of hot water heated to 60 degrees Celsius - enough to satisfy the central heating, bathroom and kitchen requirements.

The compost heap continued fermenting for nearly 18 months, after which time the installation is dismantled, with the humus being used to mulch soils, and a new compost system is set up at once to assure a continuous supply of hot water.

External links

• Copy on Youtube of a German documentary about Jean Pain's method
• Digital reproduction of 1981 Readers Digest article
• Comite Jean Pain - Belgium organisation established to promote the methods of Jean Pain]
• European bioconversion projects and realizations for macroalgal biomass : Saint-Cast-Le-Guildo (France) experiment - references Jean Pains method of breaking down woodchips in relation to composting of macroalgal biomass
• Another Kind of Energy or ComPost-Modernism - An essay by Peter Bane for the journal, Permaculture Activist.
• DIY Water Heating with Compost - article in Mother Earth News July/August 1981
• Ida and Jean Pain Composting - Article in Tribe Net September 2007
• A collection of articles innovating on the method - Build It Solar magazine
• Jean Pain 's official website
• Appropedia project page on Jean Pain methods - Talk page includes a skeptical critique of Pain's claims of methane production