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The Power of Sewage
Eridanis writes ""The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home. So say researchers at Pennsylvania State University who last week revealed they have developed an electricity generator fuelled by sewage." Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!"
Let me at it after a night of Fort Garry Dark Ale and I'll power a city of 50,000 for 2 full days.
Trolling is a art,
an actual funny comment contained in the original post. RE: simcity
The most powerful country ever!
Quack, quack.
but eating all those eggs and onions to power the house just isn't worth the stomach aches.
[ Don't reply to this ]
Seriously, I went to school there. I thought it was all of the surrounding farmland that contributed to the odor, but this is indeed news to me!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
... in a total Matrix conversion. A poop to power machine, how wonderful!
Yes, engineers and technicians will be chomping at the bit to have an opportunity to work at a plant that will smell as good as these will.
you go on vacation or something? Would you have to pay someone to come over and use your bathroom to keep the fridge running?
Great... as if management didn't give me enough sh*t when they're trying to "enlighten" me, now someone had to go invent a machine to help them.
...I'd better hurry and trademark the Mr. Fusion(R) name!!!
How about:
-1, Asshat?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Quote: "Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!"
Or at least have the raw materials for another of their games...
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
..."clean" energy sources.
I am aware of Bio-Gas plants which are used in villages in India. The Animal waste is dumped into the "pit" Methane is released and it is used for cooking. But I guess this method is more efficent.
Good for farms where lot of animal waste is there
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Well, yes, but it would be pretty shitty lighting, wouldn't it?
http://www.switch2firefox.com/
Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Something similar has been around since the 50's called "digesters" that use natural waste and the methane byproduct to power generators. It may have been invented at Penn State as well, but they are expensive so there are only about 20 of them around the country.
I'm a 2000 man.
SCO stock skyrockets.
Will it be as cool as the pigshit powered system in Bartertown? And if I can acquire a home version, will I be supplied with a mentaly disabled giant so I can ride him and be refered to as "Master Blaster"?
light comes on unexpectedly...okay, who farted?
Well, I guess the Bastard will have to see about suing some more people. I may have to see about a lawsuit myself....
Enjoy!
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
If they try this with my excrement without a proper licence, I'll sue! Licences for my intellectual property can be bought for just $699. Sure, its shit, but its my shit. I thought about it, and my efforts went into creating it. Bofh Link
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"Dear, break out the refried beans, the lights are flickering again!"
Now we're going to have a war to liberate the sewers....
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
.... so do lots of other things. What happens when someone flushes a pint of paint thinner or weed killer or heavy metal organic compound down the old toilet?
This reeks of profiteering. We're to be overcome by the stench of people out to make a buck. We work our asses off while fat cats, flush with our hard-earned money, sit on their thrones and pooh-pooh the more environmentally sound ideas. I won't let them dump my money into their porcelain ideas.
Hope nobody tries something like this
The conspiracy theorist within me fears that these types of technologies will not take off because oil companies have so much power.
So what happens when the toilet backs up?
:)
You find this humorous, centurion?
Biomass technology (energy produced from waste) has been around since the 70's. Though more specific and more refined than its predecessors, there's nothing revolutionary about this.
Don't ask me why I remember this but I can remember a peice on the local news about this a couple of weeks ago, apparently the output (as in eletrical) from the bio-gas is only used to power the rest of the 'farm' and pumping as it stands, but it's hope they could make a contribution to the National Grid eventually.
Somehow I don't think this will replace the >25% of output we currently get from nuclear plants set to expire over the next decade.
If only we could shit uranium.
When my Microwave power plant's particle beam misses the target and breaks the Sewage plant open, which Sims am I going to call, Fire, Police, Military?
Probably military, since I don't like 'em
So what does this mean for the job security of this guy ?
...straight out of Back to the Future II. Anyone remember the mini-fusion generator that powered the Delorean? Now, if we could only get hoverboards , we'd be set...
'nuff said!
I didn't know we ran out of oil already!
My bodily waste is not public domain.
I expect to be compensated for my hard work.
Some day in the future someone will talk about his "Shitty" Electric Service and be 100% correct.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Is anyone else losing their appetite while reading this thread? Damn...
Biomass Energy is produced by burning the solid Biomass fuels (green plants, agricultural residues, carbonaceous waste, wood etc). Direct burning of Biomass in an efficient manner causes the energy loss. But through Gasification programme , Biomass is converted in to high quality of gaseous fuel through Gasifier power plants. In the Biomass Gasifier , Biomass (a solid fuel) is converted into gaseous fuel, called producer gas formed through a series of thermo chemical process. The producer gas mainly consists of carbon-monoxide, hydrogen and nitrogen gas. The gaseous fuel energy is used in several applications.
Another reason not to eat beef! Let 'em live and generate shit...err energy.(Just kidding, it's a joke, laugh).
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The permise is that sewage treatment plants need external power to run the aeriation blowers. The reality is that many plants use methane from the digesters to fuel engines that run the blowers. Old, simple technology that's relatively cheap and bulletproof.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Bio-gas (methane out of sewage) is well known source of renewable energy. From house sewage it isn't very effective, but applied to farms with lots of organic waste, profit goes into serious numbers. So far methane was used simply for heating houses, heating water and such, but using it to produce electricity seems like a simple and logical step forward.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
This is completely stupid. We can already use anaerobic digesters and produce methane from sewage. But why don't we buy these guys Porsches for a while, first?
"One way to think of this technology is that it is currently at the state of development that solar power was 20 to 30 years ago - the principle has been shown, but there is a lot of work to do before this is widely used."
In other words, in 30 years it will still not be practical, so let's spend some more money on it.
The latest Slashdot meme.
http://www.energy.state.or.us/biomass/digester/dig estech.htm
m )
s _diges ter.html#eco
Lots of places have these; I see someone say "There are only a few in production" fairly often, but this is incorrect; there are more and more every year. Dairy farms are using them in large numbers, but the city of portland has a fairly large one (see http://www.energy.state.or.us/biomass/fuelcell.ht
that processes the residue from 82 million gallons of wastewater a day.
As an example of the economics, see:
http://www.eco-farm.org/sa/sa_dairy_synopsi
Payback in 6 years. Not bad, considering lots of places give grants, as these help cut down on groundwater pollution. You can have payback in 3 years, and then start making money on the juice you sell.
Oil lobby that was behind conquering Iraq will take care it will never leave project desks.
Do I get a free IPee address then? I hope it is not static!
We discussed a similar high temperature conversion in the past. This alternative process uses high temperature/high pressure water to crack a wide range of complex molecules into simpler stuff. It can convert sewage, toxic waste, and animal byproducts into a mix of combustible hydrocarbons, salts, and water.
The new Microbial Fuel Cell method sounds interesting, but I bet it fails in the field. I'd bet that nasty substances (the odd pulse of heavy metals, detergents, or drain cleaner) would poison the microbial catalysts in this new fuel cell.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Don't worry "MrPoopyPants" you will have plenty of power, and a handy container to keep the leftovers in.
...or maybe just P-U for short.
So, if I they use my waste to power the "broadband over power lines", I can get bandwidth for shit?
heh... Mad Max 7 Way Beyond Thunderdome
e,.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
"Hi, can I borrow a cup of human waste?"
Man, and here I thought the quality of the electricity around here was crap now...
Your lightsystem realy is crap.
---
Seriously, I can't wait for the day when every home has a circady daffodil and a couple of wind turbines on the roof, and a geothermal heat pump in the basement alongside the sewage-power-generator.
It would be great -- the utility companies primary responsibilities would be to store excess power generated by people's homes, supply industrial power, and make up for shortfalls.
...at least until the verdict is announced and the last toilet is flushed at Lindon, Utah.
Combine this with Broadband over Power Lines technology, and Dilbert's Dream of passing IP packets via the sewer system will finally be true!!!
Why do you think Dr. Evil, kept Fat Bastard around? To power his "Frickin Laser Beam".
Sig it.
will be more true than even
Will all the sewage that get's spewed from Slashbots and the "editorializing" from the "editors" get converted to energy too? Or would that overload the powergrid?
Now we can all help get the lights back on during a blackout!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Sty le=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS /2004/03/12&ID=Ar00100
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Man, this is like when they tell us to drink our own purified urine.
I, for one, will not use electricity with poo in it!
It bypasses the methane part, producing electricity straight from the anaerobic reaction.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
That idea sounds pretty shitty if you ask me.
So, as it is now, it can generate one-half watt per person using it. If it reaches theoretical performance, it would generate 5 watts per person.
Not exactly a lot of power.
Now, perhaps if this were used to process the lagoons near a hog farm or near a cattle feedlot...
www.eFax.com are spammers
this makes me think back to when I was young and my parents took me on a tour of a nearby dam where our electricity was generated. I thought it was a lot of fun. I shudder to think of the psychological effects of taking a small child on a tour of these power plants of the future.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
This is possibly old hat. Back in the 1960s, when my Dad was just a kid, he and his classmates went on a tour of a sewage plant in Worcestershire, England.
The methane they cracked off the sewage plant was used to heat the local swimming pool.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!"
I have a suggestion for the name of that new "house"....
The sustainable architecture movement will be happy about that. Especially the Earthship folks.
-1, "1337" speak
'Nuff said.
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Electrical Brown out".
Shouldn't Maxis be the ones adding stuff to their games?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Diarrhea pays off!
I don't think this qualifies as "clean power".
Stranded.org
I guess they'll have to rename it SimS*itty.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
The admins of Slashdot should look into this as there is no site in the world capable of spewing more crap out over the internet.
that is the question, maybe He is not a total asshole just a total gold digger
This signature was left intentionally blank.
We have been making power with sewage for a very long time, methane harvesting to run generators has been around for years, plants can power their equipment plus sell some surplus...
or with our product they can do it at a rate that is up to 60% more efficent...
Shameless plug: Premier Agritech, Inc.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
Master-Blaster runs Bartertown!
In related news, the US Government urges its citizens to consume more beans. "Not only do beans provide excellent nutritional value but they help us generate additional electricity", says Keester Izore, Deputy Assistant to the US Surgeon General.
The President added this comment in the Rose Garden to reportes this morning. "In these times of war, its good for the American people to help keep our industries fully powered to build all the stuff we need to fight evil."
Environmentalists groups such as the Earth Liberation Front have already claimed that additional bean consumption may destroy the ozone. While the recent torching of 6,750 acres of beans in the midwest has not been officially linked to the ELF, it is widely believed that the terrorist group is responsible.
I don't need no stinkin' sig!
Put this in series with SCO......
your comment got more attention... or .. if my fellow Americans understood what you're saying...I think I'll emergrate to Switzerland....or...Austria...Ooooo yeah, hot blond babes!!! No fat chicks!!
I knew this country was going into the toilet!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
If you run GNU Linux and want to get off the grid, this might be your solution. NWFW. Ok, it's a little SFW, but it might be embarassing if your boss walks up.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
Von Roll has a similar technology called a fluidized bed incinerator which is used to incinerate all sorts of waste, including human waste that is up to 70% water. This is currently being built at the Metropolitan Wastewater Plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is already in use in many other places to process organic wastes such as from corn and turkey processing byproducts.
The system essentially works by heating up tons of sand being blown around in a large cyclone tower, and injecting the fluid waste into the whirling vortex. A lot of energy is required to heat up the sand to start the process, but after which the system generates enough power to power the entire treatment plant, and sometimes then some. More info in the white paper.
Well this is the shittiest story i've ever seen, however it somehow seems to have brightened my day up.
well, the spanish authorities say eta or al-qaeda, but given the american CIA's history, it's at least as likely they did it!
No longer will you have to recharge your laptop battery while on a long trip! Low Power warning? No problem! Just bring your laptop back with you to the "refueling station" (as bathrooms will hence be called) and you'll be back in business in no time. Well, maybe in 15-20.
You are the one who needs to read more carefully. The comment said, "Something similar". Similar means not the same. It's obvious he knows they are different.
Muhaha! While all of you are sitting here talking about the Power of Sewage, I am secretly developing the Sewage Of Power!! HAHAHA! The world shall be MINE!
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
When I saw this I immediately thought of a BOFH article I read recently.
BOFH: Protecting bodily waste in the public domain
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/36116.htmYou're not going to run even one room light from this. You could use it to keep your cell phone and PDA charged, but you could probably do that just as well with generators in the soles of your shoes and gain mobility in the bargain.
(Yeah, I know everyone's playing this for yucks. You can see me as a wet blanket or a straight man, your choice.)
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
What a load of horse shit!
"Sewage power!"
"Wind turbines!"
"Sewage power!!!"
"Wind turbines!!!"
. . . - The Day the Shit Hit the Fan...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
...to shut down a city would be to flush a bunch of antibiotics down the toilet.
Now this BOFH article takes a serious note: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/36116.html
...if someone cant shit for a couple days?
This is nothing new. Here in City of Calgary, at the Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant, the power requirement can be entirely self-sufficient.
All of the solids from the sewage is pumped into a digester, where anaerobic bacterias break down the solid and produces methane, which is burnt to produce power. All UPenn does is prouduce energy on a larger scale.
First of all, it converts waste product into electricity. But secondly, instead of sewage decomposing into methane, it decomposes into C02, which is a much less effective greenhouse gas. Additionally, the resulting by-products make a good, smell-free compost.
Here's a blurb about a biogas plant in Oregon
this idea is a load of crap.
Just like there's no Bullfrog or Origin.
EA has eaten them all.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I guess this means you could hook up the video out from your TV to one of these generators? ... )
Then: electricity runs the TV -- this produces the normal sewage out of the TV -- thus producing more electricity (to run the TV more I guess
I would like to see all kinds of technologies that allow private parties to generate electricity become more prevalent. You can decentralize the power grid and open it up as a peer to peer trading network. It's the logic of the internet applied to the outdated logic of the power grid.
Put solar, wind, sewage treatment, and other types of generators in your house. Use what you need and trade what you don't. If you've got a shortage then buy back what you need. In January, south africans can sell solar generated energy to russia. In june, russians can sell it back. Private and commercial ventures alike can create power in large amounts by any means and then sell it in the free market directly to end users and other public entities with large energy demands that are all then free to buy from the lowest cost sources.
Hydrogen fuel cells will also help enable this by allowing the banking of energy for later use and/or trade. Superconductors can improve the efficiency of the whole system and help the private sector economics reach critical mass. Are all of these kinds of technologies going to inevitably converge toward an energy revolution? Between all the bits and pieces it really looks like something is going to come together...
The question is if it takes more power to create the converter than you get back out. If it takes more power to make one of these devices than they can get back out, then it becomes little more than a battery or power distribution device.
It's sort of like hydrogen powercells... They don't actually "make" electricity because it takes more electricity to crack the hydrogen from water than you get from the cell, plus it takes energy to make the cell in the first place.
If this power from waste converter/cell actually generates more power than it took to make, it could be a big deal but otherwise it's just another way to get power from one place (the manufacturing plant) to another (the site where it's set up).
by simply harnessing all the crap being put out by the U.S. Government!!!
In my former part of the world, nearly all toilets in homes are dual flush to save water. They have two buttons, one gives a half flush, the other a full flush. Its not rocket science to figure out when you need which. An american visitor had not seen this before.
Now that I live in the US, I wonder why such technology doesn't exist here. It seems like a much better way to save water than the problematic 'low flush' toilets common the US.
I don't see why this wouldn't work, after all crap has been used to power an Internet website for years now.
Somebody had to say it . . .
Someone you trust is one of us.
"...if scaled up, this system would produce 51 kilowatts on the waste from 100,000 people, Logan says." Hello. That's half a watt per person. I could produce half a watt by looking at something hard.
I must be missing something. I'm not an engineer. Please tell me why something that gets back this little energy is valuable at ALL?
If we were 100% efficient, all that would come out the other end would be something resembling ash, I would think.
When I was a kid, my dad worked as a mechanic at a sewage treatment plant. After the sewage comes in, it passes through a system called a digester where it sat. The fumes which were collected were mostly methane gas, that was pumped into giant diesel engines that ran generators that ran the digestion system that ran the engines that ran the... Oh dear I've gone cross-eyed. There was still some solid waste left behind however. It was loaded into large spreaders and spread out on large fields and then flattened out to dry. Though about 90% of the stink had gone local residents still complained. So they came up with an industrial perfume called Roto-ban that was sprayed on top to cover up the smell. Shortly after more people complained about the smell from the perfume than the waste, so they stopped using it. What was left over was collected and sold as industrial fertilizer. You could not legally (in the US) use it to fertilize vegitation used for human consumption, but you could use it to fertilize food used for animal consumption (and then they could legally sell the animals as food). So basically HAHAHA (pointing) You eat turds!
"EA will have to create a new building..." When I started to read that sentence I thought it was going to say "EA will have to release better games in the future or risk being classified as a powerplant".
(Because all they seem to produce is shit)
The power of sludge is a curious thing
Make one man reek, and another man stink
But take some sewage, just a little bit o' fudge
More than a nuisance, that's the power of sludge
You don't need diesel, don't take methane
Don't need plutonium to run this train.
It smells and it's nasty and it's rude sometimes
but it might just turn on your lights
That's the power of sludge
That's the power of sludge
Those who have the most shit have the most power.
You may have legal rights on all that shit.....go see http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/36116.html
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Homeless - Will release methane for food
When you shit you save lives.
Give shit a chance
Beans power the world
Where do you want to shit today?
We bring your shit to life
We've Got the Time, You've Got the Shit.
Where's The Shit?
Do the shit
Smart. Beautiful. Shit.
Ok since I'm appealing to the lowest commmon denominator I have to add one more hilarious dung related item....
Watch the movie Trainspotting with subtitles on and particularly the scene "The Worst Toilet in Scotland". When Mark Renton is on the toilet pay special attention to the words being subtitled and hilarity insues. One of the funniest things I've ever seen!
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Maybe now nature won't be pissed.
Check out this link, halfway down is a T-shirt of an Angry Daisy t-shirt that pretty much sums it up.
Note: I am in no way affiliated with this guys site, but I DO agree with a lot that he has to say.
Finally I can have a computer lab with all my PCs and monitors on 24x7 powered by shit.
Halaluya!!!
As anyone with a septic tank / field knows, powerful cleaners have a nasty tendency to kill bacteria - like those that this device uses to help generate electricity. So if this is going to work, people will have to stop using a lot of the popular cleaners out there.
William
I can swear that I've seen a waste-powered DeLorean somewhere before...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/36116.html
I already have shitty power at my house
To everyone who keeps saying digesters are nothing new; my greatgrandfather pooped into a digester and heated his house, etc. RTFA!
The article is talking about a microbial fuel cell (MFC) that directly converts the energy to electricity.
It is a first, since previous ones ran on glucose.
You know, I've always figured there was a problem with all those calorie counting books. A single chocolate doughnut takes a half hour of aerobics to burn off. Riiight! Sure it does. Calories in=Calories out sure. The books all assume calories out=background metabolism+exercise. However, calories out=background metabolism +exercise+waste. They miss this third component.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It's about time we put that shit to good use!
The average person defecates how many times per day? I didn't see it in the article, so I'm assuming that this was the projected measurement of 1 defecation per person. That means you get .51 watts from 100,000 feces. Assume that upon average, those 100,000 people defecate once per day. It is possible that some people defecate less than once per day and others defecate more than once per day. You basically get 2.04 Mw a day for a city of 4 million. That would be electricity bought and paid for by the sewer system that could be used to assist in the operation of the treatment facilities. Perhaps the savings would get passed on to the home as a reduced sewage handling fee.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
I inadvertantly pressed "submit" instead of "preview". The post should read as "you get .51 watts per feces" instead of "you get .51 watts per 100,000 feces".
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Lets see, it seems we occationally wage war now over oil. What does that say about what will happen once sewage, not oil, is the predominant method of generating power?
Will we wind up in 2030 with the President trying to launch a specious invasion against China, and college students running around chanting "NO BLOOD FOR POO"?
Last summer I went on a field trip to a sewage treatment plant. The power to run the plant comes solely from the methane they harvest. I asked about whether they sent any of the power back out to the grid and the guide said that they didn't generate nearly enough to do that. So, unless suburban New Yorkers have a lower methane output than everyone else I'm pretty skeptical that this would be really feasible.
don't they already have the waste to energy plant in sim city?
Hey, I've also discovered that if I give myself a large electric shock I crap myself - what goes around comes around.
AT&ROFLMAO
The article suggests that the by-product of methane-electricty might justify the cost of a western style sewage system to 3rd world countries. But surely given the scarcity of water in so many countries of the world water-wasteful sewage systems shouldn't be adopted where no system exists but rather earth closets, which, as the name suggests don't require water and are cheap to boot!
Place this centrally in a Marketing Department, and our energy needs are solved!
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
There is so much unused food out there in the United States that could be used for fuel purposes, and it would produce much more than the pitiful 50KW/h per 10,000 of this system. Of course, many would argue that this food could be used overseas to feed the hungry nations out there, but really, that's all a myth, because if you give them food, local farmers suffer, governments lower subsidies, and they get screwed over even more.
that's the shit!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So even if humans are leaving behind perhaps 10% of their energy intake in their waste products it would appear that you are going to need something like the waste of 10 humans to power even a single 100W light bulb *if* you can get 100% conversion efficiencies (doubtful). It would seem that you would need a houseful of people lined up outside the bathrooms if you wanted to power the house using human waste products. Of course it would be nice to see a detailed thermodynamic analysis of these topics but that doesn't appear to be forthcoming from the popular press.
This seems to be a case of "hype" over "substance".
Here:
. ht m
http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/fuelcell/fuelcellcam
The main sewerage treatment plant in the city I live in burns methane to generate electricity, and generates more electricity than it consumes. The plant was built some time proir to 1980.
If there was a battery you shoved up your ass for recharging, it would come in several sizes: A, AA, AAA, and AAAAAARGH!
It's called E-Mail Spam.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
...when they find out that this device 'wrests' electrons from bacteria? Do bacteria have human rights too? Hope activists don't get 'The Matrix' idea (we're just going to make copper-tops out of these poor defenseless microorganisms)....
Nother Another Windows Article...
"Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!" I think you meant: "Hey, now we'll have something to do with the next crop of EA games!"
404 Error:
...I thought it was going to be another SCO article...
...you can see a row of six large pink tanks near the docks. These are the digesters at Seafield. (The reasons why they are pink are complex and architectural, not functional.
Not functional? Most bulk storage tanks for fuels are painted white since it reflects sunlight. Explosive offgases tend to build up in these tanks and you don't need extra heat buildup in there (a friend of mine was killed in an explosion some years back due to this). One safety measure is to positively pressurize the tanks' vapour space with GN2.
Co-gen is big business these days.
You can have payback in 3 years, and then start making money on the juice you sell.
So THAT's where Budweiser comes from.
The Hyperion Sewage Treatment facility, down over Dockweiler Beach, dumps out sewage-related gasses to the Scattergood Power Station.
The best document I can find online today suggests that Scattergood generates 50 Megawatts. I seem to recall having seen other online documents that provided a lot more detail -- it's possible that those documents have been taken down for "security" reasons.
In any case, it's converting one set of pollutants (sewer gas, methane, etc) into another (CO2, NOx), and generating power in the meantime.
Without knowing all the details, it seems like a pretty good idea to me; there are probably aspects that I don't understand that might change my views.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Energy happens.
Robort knows all.
At 5.1 watts output per person in a 110 volt system thats works out to 21 amps. Thats one breaker in your your breaker box of your home.
So somebody DID follow the wise words of Bug-eyed Earl: "If life gives you poop, make poop-juice."
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
Here in New York City the DEP Is going to install generators at its Redhook plant in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The idea is to cut down on the shitty oders while cutting the plants need for energy. A friend of my fathers is a machinist at the plant near JFK airport (used to be in Redhook too)and he said it won't make much of a difference since most of the motors there are huge and have horse power ratings as high as 1000(745.7kW). Also allot of very large plant pumps run on large diesel engines. But it is a step in the right direction and it certainly will help all those poor people who practically live near the plants.
This isn't a new idea - there are rural homeowners who do it. Micro-turbine hydro seems to be the most popular tech for it now, probably because it has the highest return on investment.
Go find some issues of Mother Earth News, Countryside & Small Stock Journal, or Backwoods Home. There have been literally hundreds of articles over the last twenty years.
Fuel Cells (and you don't necessarily need hydrogen, there are FC's that can utilize methane, natgas, LP...) are really going to revolutionize small projects like this, once the bugs in the FC tech get ironed out and it gets into mass production.
What we really need right now to make this all take off in a huge way is better battery technology. Right now electrical storage efficiency sucks. If someone could come up with a really efficient way to store electricity, we could practically eliminate oil usage for energy production in a couple of generations.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
That is some cool shit.
Hard Hat Area: Sig Construction Zone
This sounds like a good idea to me.
The way I figure it, if 1 million people were regular (once a day) in a city, that would produce 5.1 million watts per day.
What about china with 1 billion people, say they were all regular aswell. Thats 1 billion watts per day to add onto your power grid.
What about non-human waste aswell? Cows, pigs, etc.. Surely you can produce energy out of that aswell?
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
A german company Mibrag is doing simillar things. Mixing sewage with coal.
http://www.mibrag.de/
anyway, are we talking about firedamp here ?
the small village where my grandma lives in china was doing that 6 or 7 years ago.
though it's not everywhere but it's definitely being used. to power the eletricity etc.
This kind of crap (pun intended) has been around for some time.
Sorry, that's P = I*V
Power (watts) = Current (amps) * Volts (volts)
5.1W = 110V * I
I = 5.1 / 110
I = 0.046 amps
DO THE MATH RIGHT!
After all they're full of crap and they're continually spewing out more all the time!
cow's fart is more powerful than human turd.
Sounds like Mad Max!
All those piggies in the underground slop center producing methane for those wacky demo derby racers!
Oooh...I can see the future now...
I suspect that environmental regulations don't allow them to simply dump raw methane (with other nasty gases) straight into the atmosphere from the waste plant, however. Considering the BIG PIPE sewer project in Portland has a pricetage of $300 million just for the West side, $1.3 million is a bargain to get some (basically) free electricity without building another damn or something.
Sewage power!
...Crikey, going OT a bit but I immediately though of the Spice Girls!
Well, if you mix their Girl Power slogan and the fact that they were shit, then voila... "Sewage Power".
:)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I know of at least one power plant in northern CA that uses a combination of natural gas and sewage gas. The gas turbines used in a lot of power plants now are quite capable of running on different kinds of fuel without running like crap.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Take a class you bickering pissants! It's RESEARCH. Take a look at the ENIAC or the first transitor...better yet, finish off that GED you've been working on.
If you can get power out of poop with a suitable electrode, the space aliens abducting folks and using alien probes must just be recharging their batteries.
uses the Methane from digester's to power the pumps and for internal electrical production usualy there is a small surplus. Wheeling charges usualy make it uneconimical to sell it
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers