Banana Power!

ackthpt writes "What do you do with rotten bananas, assuming you don't have 1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread? Especially a bit of a quandry if you grow bananas and 30% of your crop goes to waste? Bill Clarke, an engineering lecturer at the University of Queensland has devised a way to generate electric power, potentially enough for 500 homes, from the waste of Northern Queensland banana plantations. Nuts and bolts issues like if it's ultimately practical to haul the bananas, decompose them to methane and disposal of waste have yet to be worked out -- don't expect this to power your laptop just yet."

Comments

So that's what you do with them

[Leffe]

What do you do with rotten bananas, assuming you don't have 1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

OK, I'm never eating banana bread again.

Re:So that's what you do with them

[RexDart]

Err, well bannana bread fodder is not rotten, per se... just mushy, soft and oxidized to where they turn brown. Give them a few days and they will start stinking up the place, though.

Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bannannas. - Groucho Marx

Re:So that's what you do with them

[tzanger]

I believe the correct quote is "Time flies line an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." - much better. :-)

Re:So that's what you do with them

[RexDart]

Hmm. This site has it "like the wind", but that's hardly authoritative. Can you cite a source? (Not that it really matters, but in future I'd like to know whether or not it's being quoted correctly!)

Re:So that's what you do with them

[piaqt]

In the '60's, they smoked the peel. Now we know what to do with the rest.

Re:So that's what you do with them

[jericho4.0]

Google has 4,480 pages with 'wind', and 7,220 for 'arrow'. I'm going with 'arrow'

Re:So that's what you do with them

[RexDart]

Ah, thanks. I think I'll switch myself. I appreciate the correction!

Will there still be bananas in ten years?

[Anonymous Coward]

This project might fail just as it gets going. Some people say bananas are going to die out.

Re:Will there still be bananas in ten years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, after reading the Common Dreams article, I just feel it was an attack on genetic engineering without any real proof. Fungus attacks bananas, therefore genetic engineering is bad. Sorry, that's not how it works.

But if bananas are going to disappear in the next decade, it shouldn't be a problem for this project. I'm sure lots of organic leftovers could be used.

Banana Drives...

[IamInsane]

Yeah I can see it now, the next MS Win hack, it now spits out all your old banana's from your laptop battery making a mess on the floor. Great.... I think I'll pass.

Re:Banana Drives...

[IamInsane]

Oh yeah forgot "WARNING: Your battery level is at 10%. Please insert banana then press okay to continue or press cancel now to allow windows to go into Hibernate mode."

don't expect this to power your laptop just yet...

[Shadow Wrought]

You tell me this with three, THREE! bananas already in the pcmcia slot. Dangnabbit!

1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

[Chasuk]

1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

Like, stirring a few ingredients together and throwing it in the oven?

If those are 1337 5k1ll2, then my cat, Fluffy, is a forking genius, I taught her to do just that this morning. Shit, she's been making me breakfast for years!

Granted, she really disliked mushing the bananas with her paws...

Re:1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted, she really disliked mushing the bananas with her paws...

...but she doesn't mind as much when she's just come from the litterbox, eh?

Re:1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

[jbrader]

You've obviously never had my banana bread noob

Re:1337 5k1ll2 in baking banana bread?

[linzeal]

I taught my cat to use the toilet, I just wish she would flush.

What about my time machine?

[cryptor3]

When will they perfect a way to use these bananas to power the flux capacitor in my Delorean?

Banana what?

[dacarr]

Beats the hell out of Banana phone any day, I suppose.

Re:Banana what?

[gangien]

that bloody song is played nonstop in every friggin cs server. They seem to have a slightly different version tho.

Re:Banana what?

[dacarr]

Yes, and it's also a ring tone now =O.o=

Re:Banana what?

[Solder Fumes]

I have that ringtone. The only purpose of having polyphonic or sampled ringtones is the pure annoyance power, but I have yet to find one more effective. Bananaphone-ringtone elicits visceral cringes of revulsion at the pure cheesiness, and somehow brings shame upon the listener for having heard it and for knowing the person who would use such a ringtone. The brutal finishing move, usually resulting in a mad rush to the nearest sharp object, is to answer the phone excitedly and say the caller's name followed by "-chan."

Re:Banana what?

[ackthpt]

Beats the hell out of Banana phone any day, I suppose.

Aaaaaarrrggghhhhh!!! A curse! A curse upon thee! It's in my head and it won't go away!

ringringringringbananaphoneringringringringringban anaphone!!!

Re:don't expect this to power your laptop just yet

[RexDart]

Think of the possibilities for other electronics devices:

Introducing the new bPod from Apple! No need to send in for a new battery... just let the old one decay, then peel yourself a new one!

Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[(H)elix1]

Not hard at all...

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup macadamia nuts
Pinch of cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Oil and flour a 9x5x3-inch loaf pan.

Using an electric mixer, cream the shortening and sugar. With the mixer running on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas and mix well. Add the baking soda, salt, flour, nuts and cinnamon and mix thoroughly. The dough will be sticky.

Pour the dough into the prepared pan and bake about one hour or until the center is brown and set.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0 ,, FOOD_9936_9722,00.html

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[linzeal]

I like Cardamom with any high fat nut. I suppose it is the fact that I ate a lot of danish pastries with pecans which use it.

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[RobertB-DC]

Not hard at all...

So you say, and indeed, I can follow your directions very closely and come out with something approaching an edible loaf (cake? lump?) of Banana Bread.

But for someone with 1337 b@k1n6 5k1llz, watching me attempt this feat would be painful! To me, the phrase "Using an electric mixer, cream the shortening and sugar" is as meaningless as "Using a text editor, replace carriage returns with HTML paragraph tags" to a non-geek. Where do I turn the knobby dealie for "cream"? Why do I have to put those angle thingies around the "p"?

We'll both produce acceptable product. But next time, you'll probably let the baker do the baking, and let me code the HTML.

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[aethera]

I believe there is no recipe calling for any mixture of fruit and sugar that can't be benefitted by the addition of a good shake of Kentucky Bourbon.

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[Solder Fumes]

Sheesh. It's easy as pie!

Forgive me, that was cheap. But really, even I have absorbed enough cooking knowledge to know what creaming butter and sugar together is. And it's really not hard to figure out, just like it's not that hard to figure out what new command you'll have to master to get that script working.

If anything, the Internet has probably affected the world of coding first, and the world of cooking next. Both fields require judicious application of ingredients and basic formulas, and both allow room for infinite creative variations from those formulas. In order to share this creativity, each has evolved a standard jargon that practicers of the art will learn. Both have benefitted amazingly from the free trade of information that the internet allows. A search on Google for practically any aspect of cooking or coding will produce thousands of examples and opinions, source code and recipes.

So a coder mentions doing a "simple quicksort algorithm" and a pastry maker mentions "cutting the flour into the butter until pea-sized." Neither indicates the methods or tools required. But in both cases, the barest of inquiries will reveal the meaning and logic behind them.

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. Although they lost me on line 1:

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

I have no idea what shortening is, even less what it should look like. I'm guessing it's in the baking isle of the supermarket on the top shelf (there's a lame joke in there somewhere), but I think you underestimate the detective work required to locate and aquire many of these ingredients.

Re:Banana Bread, recipe courtesy of Emeril Lagasse

[stonecypher]

Oh baloney. Putting a p inside angle braces isn't obvious. Mixing two things together with a blender is. How many ways can you think of to get that incorrect?

Wait for it..

[adeyadey]

"I will show you the power of my banana" jokes in 3.. 2.. 1..

Banana bread

[DieNadel]

Can anyone post a good banana bread recipe?
OK, so this is Slashdot and I should say something technical about it, so:
the BananaKernel

Re:Banana bread

[keller]

Look above and you'll see...

Bananadine!

[Anonymous Coward]

What to do with tons of left-over bananas? Simple, take the peels, extract the bananadine, and smoke it!

Wait, you say that musa sapientum bananadine isn't real? That it was brought about by a combination of too many drugs and an over-active imagination? But it has to be true, I read it on the Internet!

Re:Bananadine!

[MyDixieWrecked]

I tried that a couple years ago in college when we couldn't get any pot.

it did nothing but give us headaches. first we rolled it in rolling papers and smoked it, nothing happened, so we loaded up the bong... still nothing.

tasted nice, though.

Scientists need some common sense

[MarkGriz]

Not trying to troll here. It's a clever use of an otherwise wasted resource. But common sense tells you this isn't commercially viable on such a small scale. Lets use some rough numbers:

500 homes * $100/month electicity * 12 months = $600,000/year income generated.

That wouldn't even cover the salaries of the employees running the plant, nevermind the cost of construction.

What might make more sense is to use the bananas along with other biowaste in a large scale plant.
Or how about just donate them to the zoo. Monkeys don't care about small/bruised bananas

Re:Scientists need some common sense

[jbrader]

The results of a science experiment don't always have to be immediatly practicle. The world needs a new reneable source of energy, if not to replace oil then at least to supplament it. Research and experamentaion like this and the sunflower oil fuel cell story from yesterday may not be commercially viable themselves but who's to say what they might lead to.

Re:Scientists need some common sense

[xiopher]

You are forgetting you will be able to sell the banana pulp as an added profit.
If this is automated or small enough to be on the plantation it would be economic.

Re:Scientists need some common sense

[nuview]

Other biowaste: exactly. My city has been doing this for years. Pipes stuck into the public dump syphoning methane into a co-generation plant (i.e. using both clean natural gas and waste-generated methane), and supplying power to our local grid. It consoles me to know that as I shovel my rotton leftovers into the garbage (and grass clips, and leaves, and I guess they mix it with sewer solids too, those geniuses) it will all return to me as light in the not-to-distant future...

Re:Scientists need some common sense

[stonecypher]

It's actually relatively common for a power plant (pardon the pun) to take years to pay itself off. That said, you're making a whole bunch of assumptions about how the plant works and how much it would cost to operate. If it's based on something as incredibly dangerous as rotten bananas, I'd say you could probably run it with no more than one or two people.

Unfortunately, your numbers omit one observation that might make you quite correct: the cost of banana transportation. If it takes 60 kg of bananas to power a fan heater for 30 hours, how do we validate the cost of gasoline?

No, no, no!

[adeyadey]

Bananas are Evil!

and if you dont believe me, read this (http://antibanana.8m.com/ )

bananapocalypse

[Tom7]

But what about the bananapocalypse?

Question about the soil...

[Thrymm]

Normally they are just left to rot on the ground, but Dr Clarke says this damages the soil - and wastes a potentially useful resource. Wouldnt it re-enrich the soil with nutrients? Composts are used to fertilize, what makes bananas any different which destroys the soil? Great idea though if they can keep it cost effective.

Re:Question about the soil...

[nelsonal]

Potential damaging agents are microorganisms on the banana that kill or displace helpful soil organism or something similar to nitrogen burn (like dog spots in a yard). Generally composts have already been broken down before application.

Make sure that you know what ripe means.

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Ripe doesn't mean yellow. Ripe means black and squshy. If you make a banana bread with bananas that aren't ripe enough, you'll get a flavorless bread.

Let those things get some nice big black spots on them. That's the full banana flavor developing.

Take it from the experts - the fruit flies. If you give them a choice, they will always pick the squishy banana over the not-ripe-enough yellow ones. And you should too.

Re:Make sure that you know what ripe means.

[stonecypher]

You misunderstand the reason the fruit flies go for the older bananas. It's the same reason that lions go for the rotten meat before the fresh kill: as long as you eat the out of date one, you've got food supply for next week, and you're far less likely to face a starvation path during times of thin.

Besides, it's probably much easier for a creature that simple to digest.

Something tells me fruit flies aren't gourmands.

With tears in my eyes

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I have to say this thread has produced some of the most entertaining links I've seen in months.
Special thanks go to adeyadey for the Antibanana link, and to dacarr for the bananaphone link. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

--
I always wanted an iPod how about you?

Re:With tears in my eyes

[Uh!cleJack]

yPuss also available at http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp

Just do a quick search for the word "apple"

"How do you like dem apples?"

it's QUANDARY, you insensitive clod!

[nusratt]

quandAry

Nobody said this yet? C'mon

[docbombay]

"Is that a banana in your power plant, or are you just happy to see me?"

Last time, it was gonna be a source of PAPER...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, gang, I once fell for a report on the ABC
suggesting that banana trees could be made into
high-strength paper... enough & cheaply enough
to enable all the world's plastic shopping bags
to go south...

Nope... 'didn't happen... all we could find (for
a potentially large overseas investor) was a very
amateurish web site, suggesting that the trees
could be made into [furry-like] business cards.

Couldn't even get a sample of either "miracle"
paper product from anybody even remotely con-
nected with the inventors.

We're very wary of claims from Aussie sources...
so, if you haven't seen this puppy happening
in front of your own eyes... BUYER BE WARE! :-/

PS Your milage with Aussie claims may vary...