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Salt Lake City Plan May Turn Sewer Waste To Energy
tuxd00d writes "The question goes something like this: How many toilet flushes does it take to power a light bulb? There's really no answer, but Salt Lake City is exploring a pilot project that would convert sewer waste into energy to run a heating and cooling system in a downtown building, city water department official Jeff Niermeyer said."
This shitty heater never works!
The main sewage plants for London (Crossness and Beckton), has been burning most of the capital's sewage to make power for several years. According to the link below, they make a little more power than it takes to run the treatment plant. The Crossness station has a really pretty sinusoidal roof.
o nNarrative.153/chapterId/3192/Bazalgette-and-Londo ns-sewage.html
http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/C
As far as I figure this is just a heat pump, they put lines through sewage that is heating because it is decomposing.
It is a nice idea for sure, I wonder if this hasn't been done already though.
People here in Denmark are having heat pumps installed all over the place and people place these water/air lines all over the place to get air for their heat pump a little hotter than otherwise, burying the lines in the earth below frost depth seems to be a normal choice, but if you anyhow do have a dunghill or something like that why not let the pipes run through there.
Anyhow heat pumps sure is one of the many things that we need to use a lot more in the future, no one technology will be able to replace our use of hydrocarbons, but if we combine all the technologies we have a shot of actually significantly reduce our CO2 emissions.