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Wastewater Into Energy
fenimor writes "A lot of electric energy could be produced from a city's wastewater, researchers at University of Toronto have discovered. The research revealed that the wastewater contained enough organic material to potentially produce 113 megawatts of electricity - 5 times more than required to operate wastewater treatment plants."
About 10 years ago I was elected to the board of directors of a wastewater district. We captured the methane from the digesters and used it to drive the aereation (sp) blowers. Saved about $30k/month in electricity. Most of the time surplus methane had to be flared off.
Now some places also dewater the sludge and burn it to generate energy. Quite a bit more messy and polluting than just using the methane.
All this technology has been around for about 20 years. It's just complicated and sometimes polluting. There's almost always regulatory issues about who can sell power to who, who can burn what where and so on.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
I don't see any reason why dewatered sludge couldn't be fed through an anything-into-oil plant and converted to energy more cleanly than by incineration.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
When I went to the local water treatment plant, they had a set of turbines to burn the gas which they could extract from the wastewater. They weren't using them. It was cheaper for them to just buy electricity as they needed.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Anerobic decomposition makes things beyond A carbon and some hydrogen. You get a few Nitrogen/Hydrogens and more Sulfur/Hydrogens. Both of these gasses when oxidized will make acids that will eat up the equipment. You can ruin an internal combustion engine in less than a day, and a boiler in a week if you don't have the boiler lined. Alot of energy is imbedded in our sewage, from the machines in the field that prep and harvest the food we eat, to the trucks that move that food to the pumps that move the water then the sewage to be processed. With good engineering, some of that energy can be reclaimed, but the researchers make it sound like the process is 'simple' when it is not.