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Oslo Buses to Run on Sewage
Mike writes "Rather than let their sewage go to waste, the city of Oslo recently announced that it plans to cut carbon emissions by converting 80 public buses to run on biomethane generated from raw sewage. The city plans to adapt two sewage plans with the technology this September, and the new biogas buses will be quieter and will cut 44 tones of C02 per bus per year."
I mean, if you're going to claim that something runs on X because you put Y into it and you get Y from X, then you might as well extend it back as far as possible.
Morons.
How we know is more important than what we know.
... and put the toilet right on the bus!
Gives new meaning to the verse "Buses farting up the street" in James Schuyler's legendary poem, A Few Days.
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PS - I AM NO COWARD
So that's where all my farts go. Into the bus. And I thought it was homeless people that made buses smell!
"I like it when the red water comes out.."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/jan/27/biomethane-energy
For now on, every time a Slashdot editor posts a link that isn't the original source of the story, I'll be posting the original link.
"the new biogas buses will be quieter and will cut 44 tones of C02 per bus per year."
I just can't get why this isn't used more than it is. I don't understand why we need to base the whole worlds economy on a few countries in the middle east with a democratic defecit.
Ethanol isn't bad but it does use land that could be used to produce food to grow fuel instead, which seems like a bit of a waste to me. Also the environmental benefits are questionable, I still believe this is better than oil, just not by much.
But methane is something that we all produce. Humans and animals alike. And methane is a very potent greenhouse gas so setting it on fire is actually a net gain for the environment (according to some), and it can be produced locally.
So it should be used more. It has a lot of benefits and very few drawbacks. Now if we could only get cars that would run on it properly and not those petrol-converted-dont-really-want-to-run-on-biomethane-but-will-do-so-for-20km-on-a-full-tank kind of cars.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
around the corner, we have a funicular powered by raw sewage (scroll down a bit). It's been in operation since 1899.
So no, sewage-powered public transport is nothing new, and those Norwegians would know that if they ever left the Fjord.
Word of advice to our cousins to the North: after a century of operation, it doesn't smell any better.
Gas-driven (not gasoline) buses has been around for at least a decade. It's just that they use a different type of gas.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Where can I send my voluntary contribution?.
LinkÃping in Sweden has driven their fleet of buses on sewage biogas since 1996 or so.
As if the public transportation system in Oslo wasn't shitty enough!
Could it be that Oslo can afford an expensive but green system like this because Norway has an enormous income from the export of oil and gas taken from the sea bed ?
it has a sliding toilet seat right under you so you can s##t, and help power the bus, of course you ned to bring your own toilet paper and it will have a tiny sink so you can wash up after.
HAHA
American television has been running on crap since the late 50s.
Exciting times. In my opinion electrical motor is the way to go though. The problem is the potential energy around us is not available as electrical power by itself, the latter needs to be produced and also stored. Which is where photovoltaics come in - given that Earth is radiated with about 50 - 250 watts of energy per square meter of land, our sun will give us all the power for electricity we need, even with our suboptimal solar panels of today. There is also hydrogen, the most abundand stuff in the Universe, and progress is being made there as well. The problem is our economy. Which slowly has to adjust, and that takes time. It takes time before the folks that profit from oil recovery collect enough money for their pension, and leave something for their sons and daughters and finally lay off that "gold mine" which is killing us slowly, and it takes time to collect the guts to start investing in something new and divorce our economy from oil, so that it does not collapse all too fast when oil is finally left alone where it rested for millions of years. It takes time to change the public perception of transport and consumption and the culture associated with it too. Speaking of the whatever non-scientific reasons for the slow change towards cleaner future, George Monbiots book "Heat" is a good read.
And just for some food for thought, Oslo where I happen to live, has bought two THiNK cars last year, the company behind these cars had to loan money from the government to make it to 2009. What I am trying to say is the mass of people is the last element you need to convince, and only after everything else is in place, do they start to think about alternatives to their combustion engine cars. And Oslo folks are really stubborn. They will not give up their family wagons all too easily or hastily.
If this is possible, then why was petrol such an issue in (the rather disappointing) Beyond Thunderdome?
.......just when i thought Oslo couldn't become a shittier place to live (i'm half serious, hate that placE)
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Both the technology to use sewage for bio-methane and methane burning cars are not new.
The bio-methane production is called anaerobic digestion, check wikipedia for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion
Although I applaud every initiative, this is not news.
Well the bus shouldn't smell any different.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Petroleum has to be harvested from the ground in viable locations and then transported (sometimes long distances) to the end-user
Methane-related gas, however, is produced pretty much everywhere, and is pretty damn local.
While it might not be solved by a "porta-pottie at the bus-stop", it's not that far-off to think that individual cities could have a waste reprocessing plant locally, cutting out a lot of the transportation costs. At that point the main cost is the plant, but hopefully one that would pay for itself.
Yes, but oil-drilling rigs and refineries are often located even farther away, yet gas still get in from them...
Biomethane is the shit!
This is nothing new. I work at a sewage treatment plant, and granted we don't use this "biomethane" just because don't use digesters to capture it.
In treatment plants that do have digesters, they capture the methane and use it to run their power generators. Look at Hyperion Treatment Plant in LA.
In the end, I say congrats to Oslo for doing something with the sh*t that their population produces, but there is much more to this equation that they could also be doing, but that is topic for another day.
Man, and I thought it sucked to be stuck behind a bus before! Who could have predicted that all those experiments my Norwegian friends did with lighting farts when they were younger would actually lead to a viable energy source?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And I thought the bus system here in Fresno was shitty.
Please feel free to leave (or stay away) if you don't like it here.
Rough translation in italics. YouTube clip
Artist: Delillos
Song: Suser avgårde
Det er grålysning og ikke en lyd i byen
Og jeg er på vei hjem, til en oppredd seng
Lille Oslo er en egen planet
Alle gatene er forskjellige land
Hvert strÃk en verdensdel
Og vi suser avgårde, alle mann
It is twilight and not a sound in town
And I'm on my way home, to a ready-made bed
Little Oslo is a planet of it's own
Every street a different country
Each hood a continent
And we're speeding about, every one
Og jeg er ganske full
Og jeg gÃ¥r midt i bygdÃy allé
Og mitt eneste mål er å komme hjem og sove
Men fÃr jeg gjÃr det
Er jeg nÃdt til Ã¥ se
At solen kommer og at et menneske står opp
Da er jeg trygg, da kan jeg sove godt hele da'n
And I am pretty drunk
And I walk in the middle of bygdÃy allé
And my only goal is to get home and sleep
But before I do that
I need to see
The sun rising and somebody waking up
Then I'll feel secure, and I'll sleep well all day long
Men kanskje blir jeg vekket av en fly alarm
Selv om det bare er en test, sÃ¥ gjÃr den meg helt kvalm
LÃper opp og skrur pÃ¥ radio'n hver gang
But perhaps I'll be awoken by an air raid siren
Even if it's just another test it makes me ill at ease
I run and turn on the radio each time
Det er grålysning og ikke en lyd i byen
Og jeg er på vei hjem til en oppredd seng
Lille Oslo er en egen planet
Alle gatene er forskjellige land
Hvert strÃk en verdensdel
Og vi suser avgårde, alle mann
It is twilight and not a sound in town
And I'm on my way home, to a ready-made bed
Little Oslo is a planet of it's own
Every street a different country
Each hood a continent
And we're speeding about, every one
Yeeeah - Yeah
Yeeeeeah - Yeah
Yeah - Yeah
Suser avgårde, alle mann
Speeding about, every one
Yeeeah - Yeeah
Yeeeah - Yeeah
Yeeeah - Yeeah
Suser avgårde, suser avgårde... alle mann
Speeding about, speeding about... every one
I don't know anything about chemistry, but you'd think that someone seemingly interested in it (as the submitter presumably is) would know at least this. I'm also surprised that I'm the first to point this out!!1two
The net emissions from a biomethane operated bus are zero, because the carbon originally came from the atmosphere rather than fossil fuels, but electricity is used at the sewage plant to convert the gas from the waste into fuel for the buses. Oslo city council is taking the electricity used to generate the fuel into consideration and calculate that carbon emissions per bus are 18 tonnes per year, a saving of 44 tonnes of C02 per bus per year.
Why not generate electricity from the Biogas? If it's so easy to modify a diesel engine to use the gas, couldn't they just use an ordinary diesel generator?
No, I will not work for your startup