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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,
The most powerful country ever!
Quack, quack.
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
you go on vacation or something? Would you have to pay someone to come over and use your bathroom to keep the fridge running?
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
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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.
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!"
The conspiracy theorist within me fears that these types of technologies will not take off because oil companies have so much power.
http://www.energy.state.or.us/biomass/digester/dig estech.htm
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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.
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.
heh... Mad Max 7 Way Beyond Thunderdome
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That idea sounds pretty shitty if you ask me.
You'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
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.
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!