I have been working for years, on turning human waste into electricity and other energy resources. It is nice to see, that others have joined in this most logical of endeavors. It does not look like our future is going to have any shortage of raw material from which to derive abundant energy.
Just think, your poop could actually end up being worth something.
Human waste is an abundant and thus far, mostly untapped source of fuel, that we could be using to power our homes, vehicles and industries. The fact that we are not already using this renewable energy source truly baffles me. We spend billions to find and develop oil and gas fields in far distant lands, in order to extract the finite amount of crude fuel we can find there, but we ignore the (pardon the expression) crude that lurks just above our chair.
(Note, this article is not yet finished. doc)
In an article written by Tinker's Plague author Stephen B. Pearl, he says that, "In short, we've largely ignored a major resource for too long. This won't solve all our problems but it can alleviate them reducing our reliance on non-local energy and drastically reducing a major source of greenhouse gasses."
ReplyDeleteHow it Works
Let us begin with our toilet where we flush waste that at present, in most municipalities, is treated then dumped into the environment taking energy and money out of the system as a whole.
From the toilet... the waste will flow to the treatment plant as it does today. Here the solids and liquids will undergo a separation process, basically straining the waste. Let's follow the solids that at this point are a sticky semi liquid sludge. This sludge is directed into fermentation tanks where it is allowed to rot generating methane gas, as it would anyway. This gas is collected and used to fuel methane powered electric generators. This electricity is sold to the electricity grid supplying a source of revenue to the community. The waste heat from the generators is shunted into the fermentation tanks maintaining them at the optimal temperature for methane production. Additional waste heat can be used for supplying hot water and heat for the treatment plant in general. This is done through a simple radiator and pipe system not unlike the one in most of our cars.
CLICK HERE for more.
Associate professors at the University of Calgary Schulich School of Engineering, Ian Gates and Michael Kallos, won a $100,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges Explorations initiative to help them produce electricity, fertilizer, heat, methane gas and purified water from human feces.
ReplyDeleteCLICK HERE for more.
The Top 6 Ways to Convert Poop Into Electricity
ReplyDelete—By Josh Harkinson
More than half of the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is processed into sludge that gets spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. But sludge-based as fertilizer can contain anything that goes down the drain—from Prozac flushed down toilets to motor oil hosed from factory floors. That's why an increasing number of cities have begun to explore an alternative way to dispose of sludge: advanced poop-to-power plants. By one estimate, a single American's daily sludge output can generate enough electricity to light a 60-watt bulb for more than nine hours. Here are the six most innovative ways that human waste is being converted to watts:
Poop-Eating Bacteria
Digesters similar to brewery casks house anaerobic bacteria that eat sludge and belch out methane.
Turd Cell Smashers
Destroying the cell walls in sludge—by heating it under pressure, zapping it with ultrasonic waves, or pulsing it with electric fields—boosts its methane production by 50 percent or more in anaerobic digesters.
Geological Toilets
Last summer, Los Angeles began injecting sludge into a mile-deep well, where pressure and heat are expected to release enough methane to power 1,000 homes.
Feces Ponds
As a cheaper green option, some 50 waste plants in 20 countries have installed versions of UC Berkeley professor William J. Oswald's Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems Technology--large open-air ponds that primarily rely on anaerobic digestion and photosynthesis to break down sludge and convert it into a fertilizer or animal feed of nitrogen-rich algae. The algae in turn can be used as a feedstock for biofuels.
Gassifiers
Sludge gasification plants are popular in Europe and especially Germany. A low-oxygen reaction transforms the solids in sludge into a carbon-rich "char" similar to BBQ briquettes. Next, the char is gasified in the presence of air to produce a syngas that can be burned for energy.
Poop Pyrotechnics
Last year, Atlanta-based EnerTech built the world's first commercial sludge "pyrolysis" plant in Southern California. Its patented SlurryCarb process converts sludge from a third of Los Angeles and Orange Counties into char pellets that replace coal at a nearby cement kiln; its ash is mixed into the cement.
One Small Poop for Man. . .
With billions in stimulus funds slated for wastewater improvements, is the time right for poop power? Such efforts, which reduce landfilling and emissions, have earned praise from some anti-sludge groups. Caroline Snyder, the founder of Citizens for Sludge-Free Land, calls it a "win-win situation."
The EPA says sludge power holds promise, but it's not ready to quit pushing sludge as a wonder fertilizer. This hasn’t deterred the sewage industry, which sees a chance to get into the renewable energy business and put a stop to the stream of health complaints and costly lawsuits. "After almost 40 years of working in biosolids," a sewage industry official wrote in a recent newsletter. "I never thought I’d say this: it is an exciting time for sludge!"
CLICK HERE for more.
Even more examples of people getting their shit straight.
ReplyDeleteTHIS new British car blows the opposition away — it's powered by human POO.
CLICK HERE for more.
Japanese bike uses poop for fuel.
CLICK HERE for more.
Park Spark transforms dog doo into light.
CLICK HERE for more.