One of the problems that will occur if the Swine Flu pandemic, (that's right Peacenik is calling it a pandemic), takes a more deadly turn, is that people are going to be afraid to go to work. The people who maintain electric and water systems will stay home, and your poop will stay in your toilet.
Peacenik is interested in how to handle poop on a local level. Peacenik wonders if there is a consumer friendly device for turning poop into barbecue brickets. Peacenik seems to recall that in many countries cow or camel poop is used for fuel. Peacenik will need to think about this. How would Peacenik's neighbours feel if Peacenik starts barbecuing with poop for brickets? How would Peacenik feel?
By Josh Harkinson | Fri May 22, 2009 12:32 PM PST
More than half of the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is processed into sludge that gets spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. But sludge-based as fertilizer can contain anything that goes down the drain—from Prozac flushed down toilets to motor oil hosed from factory floors. That's why an increasing number of cities have begun to explore an alternative way to dispose of sludge: advanced poop-to-power plants. By one estimate, a single American's daily sludge output can generate enough electricity to light a 60-watt bulb for more than nine hours. Here are the six most innovative ways that human waste is being converted to watts:
Poop-Eating Bacteria
Digesters similar to brewery casks house anaerobic bacteria that eat sludge and belch out methane. This technology is the oldest, cheapest, and most proven poop-to-power method. Even so, fewer than 10 percent of the nation's 6,000 public wastewater plants have the digesters; of those, just 20 percent burn the methane gas for energy (the rest simply flare it off). Flint, Michigan, and several other cities use the methane gas to fuel fleets of city buses. The problem with anaerobic digesters is that they only reduce sludge's volume by half and capture a portion of its embedded energy.
Read on...
Peacenik is interested in how to handle poop on a local level. Peacenik wonders if there is a consumer friendly device for turning poop into barbecue brickets. Peacenik seems to recall that in many countries cow or camel poop is used for fuel. Peacenik will need to think about this. How would Peacenik's neighbours feel if Peacenik starts barbecuing with poop for brickets? How would Peacenik feel?
By Josh Harkinson | Fri May 22, 2009 12:32 PM PST
More than half of the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is processed into sludge that gets spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization. But sludge-based as fertilizer can contain anything that goes down the drain—from Prozac flushed down toilets to motor oil hosed from factory floors. That's why an increasing number of cities have begun to explore an alternative way to dispose of sludge: advanced poop-to-power plants. By one estimate, a single American's daily sludge output can generate enough electricity to light a 60-watt bulb for more than nine hours. Here are the six most innovative ways that human waste is being converted to watts:
Poop-Eating Bacteria
Digesters similar to brewery casks house anaerobic bacteria that eat sludge and belch out methane. This technology is the oldest, cheapest, and most proven poop-to-power method. Even so, fewer than 10 percent of the nation's 6,000 public wastewater plants have the digesters; of those, just 20 percent burn the methane gas for energy (the rest simply flare it off). Flint, Michigan, and several other cities use the methane gas to fuel fleets of city buses. The problem with anaerobic digesters is that they only reduce sludge's volume by half and capture a portion of its embedded energy.
Read on...
