Wastewater Into Energy

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Posted by michael on Tuesday September 21, 2004 @10:53AM from the stand-upwind dept.

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."

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Splashplop! by contagious_d · 2004-09-21 11:00 · Score: 5, Funny

According to the article, "Any recovery of potential energy above that can be returned to the grid.". I wonder if there is any way you could set this up so that you get credits on your power bill when you exceed a certain amount of waste. That would be awesome! Like getting paid for your hard work in the bathroom! Oh yeah, another thing... this is a story about poop. That is also awesome.

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- /home is where the food is.
Pretty old news by HotNeedleOfInquiry · 2004-09-21 11:02 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Re:sad truth by cpeterso · 2004-09-21 11:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

if it doesn't turn out to make (or save) money, it will go nowhere. Capitalism (and consumism) is ruining the planet.

Actually, capitalism will SAVE our planet. If people value living on a nice, clean planet, they will pay for such benefits. The problem is not capitalism. The problem is the environment is a market externality. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: everyone uses (up) the environment, but no one PAYS for it. This is usually because governments disallow or dismiss environmental class action lawsuits.

The Soviet Union was on of the world's worst polluters. Today, the US government is the worst polluter in the country. Why are they allowed to pollute? When you write the rules, they don't have to apply to you. For some reason, most environmental and endangered species protection laws DO NOT apply to the US government or military! >:(

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cpeterso