Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science Technology

The Power of Sewage 305

Posted by michael from the flush-your-problems-away dept.
Eridanis writes ""The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home. So say researchers at Pennsylvania State University who last week revealed they have developed an electricity generator fuelled by sewage." Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The Power of Sewage More

The Power of Sewage

Comments Filter:

  • Just doin' my part.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:49PM (#8546747) Homepage Journal

    Let me at it after a night of Fort Garry Dark Ale [fortgarry.com] and I'll power a city of 50,000 for 2 full days.
    • I"m off to White Castle... soon I will be holding a city hostage!!!! Bwahahahaha!
    • Man, sewerage is bad enough... Whats leftover from the waste? Super waste? and maybe you could do something with that... and then have super duper waste? So that eventually a leak in the pipes can wipe out half the city? Does this mean we will have to equip each house with high powered turd cannons to shoot last nights dinner into the sun?

    • Re:Just doin' my part.. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Marc Desrochers ( 606563 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:02PM (#8546941)
      So, are they going to wire the toilets to the power meter and reduce your rate accordingly?

      • Re:Just doin' my part.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by RLW ( 662014 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:40PM (#8547405)
        The FDA needs to get with the Energy Department and add labeling that indicates the average Kw out put per serving on your favorite foods.

        Eventually 'Power Diets' (copyrighted by me here and now :-) will arrive; these will be geared toward symbiotic foods stuffs that eaten (and crapped) together produce the best power for you home. Yeah!

        Electric Bran Flakes! - the cereal that makes you regular and powers your day!

      • Re:Just doin' my part.. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 ) * on Friday March 12, 2004 @07:18PM (#8548302) Journal
        As yet his design is only producing a tenth of what he calculates its potential power output could be. Even so, if scaled up, this system would produce 51 kilowatts on the waste from 100,000 people, Logan says. He hopes to be able to boost its efficiency by increasing the surface area of the anodes or by finding more efficient anode material.

        Hmm... that works out to about 0.51 watts per person. If he attains his promised tenfold increase it's a whole 5.10 watts -- or just about enough to charge my cell phone.

        Not saying it isn't cool but where's the value in this? To quote another line from the article:

        Many developing countries urgently need sewage processing plants, for example, but they are prohibitively expensive, largely because they use so much power. Offsetting this cost by producing electricity at the same time could make all the difference, says Bruce Logan, who led the development team at Penn State.

        Do they really think producing a whole 5.10 watts from one person's output is going to do anything? True it'd be neat to see that electric folded back into the grid (that's 5.10 watts that doesn't have be generated by burning coal or gas) but is this really going to pay for itself? I'm willing to bet that most sewage treatment plants use more then 5.10 watts per person's amount of waste.

    • Uh. (Score:5, Funny)

      by bad enema ( 745446 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:18PM (#8547170)
      That idea sounds pretty shitty if you ask me.

  • America.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by msimm ( 580077 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:50PM (#8546760) Homepage
    The most powerful country ever!

    • Re:America.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by msimm ( 580077 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @07:20PM (#8548311) Homepage
      It looks like more people took offense to this then I'd imagined. I was joking, but think about it a little. Americans may not 'all be full of shit' but as a wealthy consumer nation I think it would be hard to argue that we don't produce a good deal of solid waste.

      Moderation +1
      60% Funny
      20% Overrated
      10% Flamebait
      Extra 'Funny' Modifier 0

      My extra karma modifier didn't even bother to take effect! You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. ;-)
  • but eating all those eggs and onions to power the house just isn't worth the stomach aches.

  • Well THAT explains... (Score:5, Funny)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:51PM (#8546776) Homepage
    ...why the campus always smelled like shit!

    Seriously, I went to school there. I thought it was all of the surrounding farmland that contributed to the odor, but this is indeed news to me!

  • What if.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trystansr ( 757392 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:52PM (#8546797)
    you go on vacation or something? Would you have to pay someone to come over and use your bathroom to keep the fridge running?

  • EA, eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Apostata ( 390629 ) <apostata@hotmFOR ... m minus language> on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:53PM (#8546810) Homepage Journal
    Quote: "Hey, it seems that EA will have to create a new building for Simcity!"

    Or at least have the raw materials for another of their games...
    • It just means the infrastructure will be available to power the 3 TeraHertz processors needed to run SimCity 5 at a reasonable framerate.

  • So much for... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:54PM (#8546813)
    ..."clean" energy sources.

  • slightly different approach.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:54PM (#8546815) Homepage Journal
    I am aware of Bio-Gas plants which are used in villages in India. The Animal waste is dumped into the "pit" Methane is released and it is used for cooking. But I guess this method is more efficent.
    Good for farms where lot of animal waste is there

  • Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by paul_pick1 ( 540613 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:54PM (#8546822)
    The waste you flush down the toilet could one day power the lights in your home.

    Well, yes, but it would be pretty shitty lighting, wouldn't it?

  • It seems Tom Lehrer was right... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rexz ( 724700 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:55PM (#8546837)
    Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

  • Electricity from Waste (Score:5, Informative)

    by eples ( 239989 ) * on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:55PM (#8546841)
    Something similar has been around since the 50's called "digesters" that use natural waste and the methane byproduct to power generators. It may have been invented at Penn State as well, but they are expensive so there are only about 20 of them [philly.com] around the country.

    • Re:Electricity from Waste (Score:5, Informative)

      by ross.w ( 87751 ) <rwonderley.gmail@com> on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:15PM (#8547125) Journal

      IAAWWE (I am a wastewater Engineer)

      Actually most sewage plants have a digester in them (or several).

      Most Sewage Treatment Plants that have anaerobic digesters (the kind that produce methane) simply flare the gas off, because the quantity of gas produced doesn't warrant the expense of setting up to re-use it.

      Seafield Sewage Works in Edinburgh, Scotland does though. It was completed in 2000. If you fly into Edinburgh airport over the Firth of Forth, you can see a row of six large pink tanks near the docks. These are the digesters at Seafield. (The reasons why they are pink are complex and architectural, not functional).

      Bondi STP in Sydney used to re-use methane for generating power the 1960s, but the the technology was primitive, and the sulphides in the gas made the engines expensive to maintain and they were abandoned.

      Now in Australia, with green energy credits on offer, many water authorities are having another look at making use of their methane.

    • Re:Electricity from Waste (Score:5, Informative)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:06PM (#8547714)
      Digesters have been around for about 100 years. During WWII with gas rationing they became quite common, one version even coming on a trailer you could pull behind your car while collecting manure, and then run your car from.

      During the gas crunch of the 70s digesters popped up all over the place and there was hardly an issue of Mother Earth News that didn't have some new design/application of a digester featured in it showing how you could power your farm/homestead on shitty methane.

      There are still thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of digesters scattered across Americas rural areas. Virtually all of them are built by the owners out of scrap materials for nearly nothing.

      Perhaps there are only 20 of this expensive commercial variety. A lot of companies like to make money by taking old ideas that people in general have forgotten about, plate them in chrome, and sell them as the latest technology for a premium price.

      Go to the library. See if they've got back issues of Mother Earth News from the 70s and 80s. Lots of good digesters ideas in there, although often a bit crudely implimented.

      The mere idea of excrement for fuel energy goes back to God only knows how long. It's certainly prehistoric. The Plains Indian relied on Buffalo Chips for fuel, and the Indian Indian still does today.

      Latrine Officer was one of the most important posts in Napoleon's army. His job? To retrieve human excrement. It was too valuable an energy source to waste. They used it to be able to make their own gunpowder as they traveled, which is one of the reasons that Napoleon's armies seemed to be able to pull off almost magical feats of translating themselves from one location to another and arrive ready to fight.

      Shit is energy. We know that. We've always known that. We've known that that energy can be extracted as natural gases and used to run combustion engines and turn electric generators for over a century. It's news so old it's boring.

      It's even a reasonably viable way to go about making energy, if you live on a small farm with lots and lots of animals producing lots and lots of shit you need to do something with.

      For city dwelling humans, well, it will never be anything more than a suppliment to other forms of energy. Something you can use because it's there, but nothing to be relied upon.

      Why? Well, how much did you shit today? Does that amount of shit convert into the electricity you used?

      Not even close.

      You'll need a lot of other animals who don't watch TV shitting for you as well. Like on a farm, say.

      And nevermind the fact that most of the shit (including human) is more valuable as a fertilizer (which is where much of the treated sewage is going right now) than it is as a fuel, so you're invoking the whole food for fuel argument. It may be better to burn that fuel we can't eat, or use for food production, and eat the fuel we can.

      KFG

      • So that's where it goes... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by uberdave ( 526529 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:55PM (#8548112) Homepage
        You know, I've always figured there was a problem with all those calorie counting books. A single chocolate doughnut takes a half hour of aerobics to burn off. Riiight! Sure it does. Calories in=Calories out sure. The books all assume calories out=background metabolism+exercise. However, calories out=background metabolism +exercise+waste. They miss this third component.
        • Yes, there is something woefully wrong with those books. They are oversimplified for their ignorant target market, oftentimes by members of that target market themselves who have no deep understanding whatsoever and are merely cribbing from other such books with no deep understanding.

          They do ignore waste, such as that found in excrement and the the heat put off by the body, but that's because that waste is of no interest to them.

          Nontheless they do manage to get some of the crude details right. Those chart

      • Re:Electricity from Waste (Score:3, Informative)

        by qtp ( 461286 )
        And nevermind the fact that most of the shit (including human) is more valuable as a fertilizer

        The biogas fermenters produce fertilizer as well as gas, and it's much higher in nitrogen content than if it had not been reduced in the fermener.

        It's not an either-or proposition.

        The using the fuel cells to convert the energy is far more efficeint than burning natural gas. Even the most efficient gas burning plants (gas turbine engines driving alternators for generation) are only 40%-45% efficient (at most 4

  • SCO stock skyrockets.

  • bright idea (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    light comes on unexpectedly...okay, who farted?

  • BOFH (Score:2, Funny)

    by dJCL ( 183345 )
    Well, I guess the Bastard [theregister.co.uk] will have to see about suing some more people. I may have to see about a lawsuit myself....

    Enjoy!

  • Not with my excrement... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:57PM (#8546876) Homepage
    If they try this with my excrement without a proper licence, I'll sue! Licences for my intellectual property can be bought for just $699. Sure, its shit, but its my shit. I thought about it, and my efforts went into creating it. Bofh Link [theregister.co.uk]

  • Eat your bean! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RDosage ( 694318 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:58PM (#8546879)
    "Dear, break out the refried beans, the lights are flickering again!"

  • Oh, great.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:58PM (#8546885) Homepage
    Now we're going to have a war to liberate the sewers....

  • Shit Happens, but .... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BrownDwarf ( 615206 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:58PM (#8546887)
    .... so do lots of other things. What happens when someone flushes a pint of paint thinner or weed killer or heavy metal organic compound down the old toilet?

  • Out to make a buck (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nick of NSTime ( 597712 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:59PM (#8546898)
    This reeks of profiteering. We're to be overcome by the stench of people out to make a buck. We work our asses off while fat cats, flush with our hard-earned money, sit on their thrones and pooh-pooh the more environmentally sound ideas. I won't let them dump my money into their porcelain ideas.

  • Reminds me of an article in Discover (Score:5, Informative)

    by MrPoopyPants ( 146504 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:59PM (#8546901) Homepage
    This [discover.com] article got me pretty excited about the future of waste/energy. I'd love to see those piles and piles of junk and biowaste turned into useful energy.

    The conspiracy theorist within me fears that these types of technologies will not take off because oil companies have so much power.

  • So what happens when the toilet backs up?

    :)

  • Biomass (Score:3, Interesting)

    by apoplectic ( 711437 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @04:59PM (#8546904)
    Biomass technology (energy produced from waste) has been around since the 70's. Though more specific and more refined than its predecessors, there's nothing revolutionary about this.

  • Bio Plants in the UK (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't ask me why I remember this but I can remember a peice on the local news about this a couple of weeks ago, apparently the output (as in eletrical) from the bio-gas is only used to power the rest of the 'farm' and pumping as it stands, but it's hope they could make a contribution to the National Grid eventually.

    Somehow I don't think this will replace the >25% of output we currently get from nuclear plants set to expire over the next decade.

    If only we could shit uranium.

  • Atomation Killing Good Jobs! (Score:3, Funny)

    by pavon ( 30274 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:00PM (#8546915)
    So what does this mean for the job security of this guy [homestarrunner.com]?
  • Some day in the future someone will talk about his "Shitty" Electric Service and be 100% correct.

    LK

  • Biogas (Score:4, Informative)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:03PM (#8546956) Homepage Journal
    India's been using cow dung and other cattle waste to make biogas [eastindiavyapaar.com] for a while now. The greatest benefit is that it's clean and a renewable energy resource.

    Biomass Energy is produced by burning the solid Biomass fuels (green plants, agricultural residues, carbonaceous waste, wood etc). Direct burning of Biomass in an efficient manner causes the energy loss. But through Gasification programme , Biomass is converted in to high quality of gaseous fuel through Gasifier power plants. In the Biomass Gasifier , Biomass (a solid fuel) is converted into gaseous fuel, called producer gas formed through a series of thermo chemical process. The producer gas mainly consists of carbon-monoxide, hydrogen and nitrogen gas. The gaseous fuel energy is used in several applications.

    Another reason not to eat beef! Let 'em live and generate shit...err energy.(Just kidding, it's a joke, laugh).

  • Article is based on a false premise (Score:3, Informative)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:03PM (#8546961)
    The permise is that sewage treatment plants need external power to run the aeriation blowers. The reality is that many plants use methane from the digesters to fuel engines that run the blowers. Old, simple technology that's relatively cheap and bulletproof.
  • Bio-gas (methane out of sewage) is well known source of renewable energy. From house sewage it isn't very effective, but applied to farms with lots of organic waste, profit goes into serious numbers. So far methane was used simply for heating houses, heating water and such, but using it to produce electricity seems like a simple and logical step forward.
    • The local wastewater treatment plant has generators to produce electricity from the gas they collect. But, as I was informed while on a tour of the facility, they don't use them. It is actually cheaper for them to buy electricity from the power company than to use these generators which they already have in place.

      This says something about the cost-effectiveness of current electricity solutions.

  • This is completely stupid. We can already use anaerobic digesters and produce methane from sewage. But why don't we buy these guys Porsches for a while, first?

    "One way to think of this technology is that it is currently at the state of development that solar power was 20 to 30 years ago - the principle has been shown, but there is a lot of work to do before this is widely used."

    In other words, in 30 years it will still not be practical, so let's spend some more money on it.

  • Old News for those in rural areas (Score:5, Informative)

    by backtick ( 2376 ) * on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:05PM (#8546989) Homepage Journal
    http://www.energy.state.or.us/biomass/digester/dig estech.htm

    Lots of places have these; I see someone say "There are only a few in production" fairly often, but this is incorrect; there are more and more every year. Dairy farms are using them in large numbers, but the city of portland has a fairly large one (see http://www.energy.state.or.us/biomass/fuelcell.htm )
    that processes the residue from 82 million gallons of wastewater a day.

    As an example of the economics, see:
    http://www.eco-farm.org/sa/sa_dairy_synopsis _diges ter.html#eco

    Payback in 6 years. Not bad, considering lots of places give grants, as these help cut down on groundwater pollution. You can have payback in 3 years, and then start making money on the juice you sell.

  • Another Version of This Concept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:06PM (#8547003)
    We discussed a similar high temperature conversion [slashdot.org] in the past. This alternative process uses high temperature/high pressure water to crack a wide range of complex molecules into simpler stuff. It can convert sewage, toxic waste, and animal byproducts into a mix of combustible hydrocarbons, salts, and water.

    The new Microbial Fuel Cell method sounds interesting, but I bet it fails in the field. I'd bet that nasty substances (the odd pulse of heavy metals, detergents, or drain cleaner) would poison the microbial catalysts in this new fuel cell.

    • I'd bet that nasty substances (the odd pulse of heavy metals, detergents, or drain cleaner)

      It's simple, like the current methods it will not be a one step process. Floculation and gravity seperation can get rid of heavy metals, and high concentrations of petroleum products or detergents can be dealt with too.

      Some oil companies use various bacteria to deal with their waste water, and they have methods to stop spills into their waste water system from killing all their bacteria.

  • Mixing Stories (Score:3, Funny)

    by 1WingedAngel ( 575467 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:08PM (#8547029) Homepage
    So, if I they use my waste to power the "broadband over power lines", I can get bandwidth for shit?

  • Master Blaster Run Barter Town! (Score:5, Funny)

    by enrico_suave ( 179651 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:09PM (#8547041) Homepage
    heh... Mad Max 7 Way Beyond Thunderdome

    e,.

  • Man, and here I thought the quality of the electricity around here was crap now...
  • These ideas are nice and all, but when are some of them going to be implemented? I'm fortunate enough right now to live in an area with cheap, abundant hydroelectric power, but that's not possible in a lot of places. Reading about these kinds of developments is cool, but I just wish we could actually hear about them being widely deployed.

    Seriously, I can't wait for the day when every home has a circady daffodil and a couple of wind turbines on the roof, and a geothermal heat pump in the basement alongsi

  • ...at least until the verdict is announced and the last toilet is flushed at Lindon, Utah.
  • Why do you think Dr. Evil, kept Fat Bastard around? To power his "Frickin Laser Beam".
  • will be more true than even
  • Now we can all help get the lights back on during a blackout!

  • No way! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:15PM (#8547139) Homepage Journal
    Man, this is like when they tell us to drink our own purified urine.

    I, for one, will not use electricity with poo in it!

  • As yet his design is only producing a tenth of what he calculates its potential power output could be. Even so, if scaled up, this system would produce 51 kilowatts on the waste from 100,000 people, Logan says.

    So, as it is now, it can generate one-half watt per person using it. If it reaches theoretical performance, it would generate 5 watts per person.

    Not exactly a lot of power.

    Now, perhaps if this were used to process the lagoons near a hog farm or near a cattle feedlot...

  • this makes me think back to when I was young and my parents took me on a tour of a nearby dam where our electricity was generated. I thought it was a lot of fun. I shudder to think of the psychological effects of taking a small child on a tour of these power plants of the future.
  • This is possibly old hat. Back in the 1960s, when my Dad was just a kid, he and his classmates went on a tour of a sewage plant in Worcestershire, England.

    The methane they cracked off the sewage plant was used to heat the local swimming pool.

  • Why EA? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:21PM (#8547201) Homepage
    Shouldn't Maxis [maxis.com] be the ones adding stuff to their games?
  • Diarrhea pays off!

  • I don't think this qualifies as "clean power".
  • I guess they'll have to rename it SimS*itty.

  • I work in the sewage industry and this is old news (Score:3, Informative)

    by Phelan ( 30485 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:26PM (#8547264)
    We have been making power with sewage for a very long time, methane harvesting to run generators has been around for years, plants can power their equipment plus sell some surplus...
    or with our product they can do it at a rate that is up to 60% more efficent...
    Shameless plug: Premier Agritech, Inc. [premieragritech.com]

  • A miniature Von Roll fluidized bed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by og_sh0x ( 520297 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:32PM (#8547316) Homepage
    Von Roll has a similar technology called a fluidized bed incinerator which is used to incinerate all sorts of waste, including human waste that is up to 70% water. This is currently being built at the Metropolitan Wastewater Plant in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is already in use in many other places to process organic wastes such as from corn and turkey processing byproducts.

    The system essentially works by heating up tons of sand being blown around in a large cyclone tower, and injecting the fluid waste into the whirling vortex. A lot of energy is required to heat up the sand to start the process, but after which the system generates enough power to power the entire treatment plant, and sometimes then some. More info in the white paper [vonrollinc.com].

  • Conflict scenario... (Score:3, Funny)

    by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:45PM (#8547475)

    "Sewage power!"

    "Wind turbines!"

    "Sewage power!!!"

    "Wind turbines!!!"

    . . . - The Day the Shit Hit the Fan...

  • So all a terrorist would need to do... (Score:3, Funny)

    by blamanj ( 253811 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:50PM (#8547525)
    ...to shut down a city would be to flush a bunch of antibiotics down the toilet.

  • Biogas is tripleplus good (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jeremiah Blatz ( 173527 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:58PM (#8547626) Homepage
    First of all, it converts waste product into electricity. But secondly, instead of sewage decomposing into methane, it decomposes into C02, which is a much less effective greenhouse gas. Additionally, the resulting by-products make a good, smell-free compost.

    Here's a blurb about a biogas plant in Oregon [portlandgeneral.com]

  • Decentralize the power grid and generate your own (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kenjib ( 729640 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:08PM (#8547728)

    I would like to see all kinds of technologies that allow private parties to generate electricity become more prevalent. You can decentralize the power grid and open it up as a peer to peer trading network. It's the logic of the internet applied to the outdated logic of the power grid.

    Put solar, wind, sewage treatment, and other types of generators in your house. Use what you need and trade what you don't. If you've got a shortage then buy back what you need. In January, south africans can sell solar generated energy to russia. In june, russians can sell it back. Private and commercial ventures alike can create power in large amounts by any means and then sell it in the free market directly to end users and other public entities with large energy demands that are all then free to buy from the lowest cost sources.

    Hydrogen fuel cells will also help enable this by allowing the banking of energy for later use and/or trade. Superconductors can improve the efficiency of the whole system and help the private sector economics reach critical mass. Are all of these kinds of technologies going to inevitably converge toward an energy revolution? Between all the bits and pieces it really looks like something is going to come together...


    • This isn't a new idea - there are rural homeowners who do it. Micro-turbine hydro seems to be the most popular tech for it now, probably because it has the highest return on investment.

      Go find some issues of Mother Earth News, Countryside & Small Stock Journal, or Backwoods Home. There have been literally hundreds of articles over the last twenty years.

      Fuel Cells (and you don't necessarily need hydrogen, there are FC's that can utilize methane, natgas, LP...) are really going to revolutionize sm

  • OT question: Why not dual flush toilets in USA? (Score:4, Informative)

    by tetranz ( 446973 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:09PM (#8547738)
    In my former part of the world, nearly all toilets in homes are dual flush to save water. They have two buttons, one gives a half flush, the other a full flush. Its not rocket science to figure out when you need which. An american visitor had not seen this before.

    Now that I live in the US, I wonder why such technology doesn't exist here. It seems like a much better way to save water than the problematic 'low flush' toilets common the US.

  • Not a completely new idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:14PM (#8547780) Journal
    When I was a kid, my dad worked as a mechanic at a sewage treatment plant. After the sewage comes in, it passes through a system called a digester where it sat. The fumes which were collected were mostly methane gas, that was pumped into giant diesel engines that ran generators that ran the digestion system that ran the engines that ran the... Oh dear I've gone cross-eyed. There was still some solid waste left behind however. It was loaded into large spreaders and spread out on large fields and then flattened out to dry. Though about 90% of the stink had gone local residents still complained. So they came up with an industrial perfume called Roto-ban that was sprayed on top to cover up the smell. Shortly after more people complained about the smell from the perfume than the waste, so they stopped using it. What was left over was collected and sold as industrial fertilizer. You could not legally (in the US) use it to fertilize vegitation used for human consumption, but you could use it to fertilize food used for animal consumption (and then they could legally sell the animals as food). So basically HAHAHA (pointing) You eat turds!

  • Phewey Lewis and the News: the Power of Sludge (Score:3, Funny)

    by goodmanj ( 234846 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:24PM (#8547858)
    The power of sludge is a curious thing
    Make one man reek, and another man stink
    But take some sewage, just a little bit o' fudge
    More than a nuisance, that's the power of sludge

    You don't need diesel, don't take methane
    Don't need plutonium to run this train.
    It smells and it's nasty and it's rude sometimes
    but it might just turn on your lights
    That's the power of sludge
    That's the power of sludge

  • New Ad Slogans (Score:3, Funny)

    by felonious ( 636719 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @06:32PM (#8547921) Journal
    Homeless - Will release methane for food

    When you shit you save lives.

    Give shit a chance

    Beans power the world

    Where do you want to shit today?

    We bring your shit to life

    We've Got the Time, You've Got the Shit.

    Where's The Shit?

    Do the shit

    Smart. Beautiful. Shit.

    Ok since I'm appealing to the lowest commmon denominator I have to add one more hilarious dung related item....

    Watch the movie Trainspotting with subtitles on and particularly the scene "The Worst Toilet in Scotland". When Mark Renton is on the toilet pay special attention to the words being subtitled and hilarity insues. One of the funniest things I've ever seen!

  • Los Angeles does this (Score:3, Informative)

    by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @09:31PM (#8549155) Homepage Journal
    The Hyperion Sewage Treatment facility, down over Dockweiler Beach, dumps out sewage-related gasses to the Scattergood Power Station.

    The best document I can find online today suggests that Scattergood generates 50 Megawatts. I seem to recall having seen other online documents that provided a lot more detail -- it's possible that those documents have been taken down for "security" reasons.

    In any case, it's converting one set of pollutants (sewer gas, methane, etc) into another (CO2, NOx), and generating power in the meantime.
    Without knowing all the details, it seems like a pretty good idea to me; there are probably aspects that I don't understand that might change my views.

Slashdot Top Deals

Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse

Close