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

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.

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...

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: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

[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

[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.

Wait for it..

[adeyadey]

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

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.

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.