The Top 6 Ways to Convert Poop Into Electricity

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The Top 6 Ways to Convert Poop Into Electricity



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.

Turd Cell Smashers
Destroying the cell walls in sludge—by heating it under pressure, zapping it with ultrasonic waves, or pulsing it with electric fields—boosts its methane production by 50 percent or more in anaerobic digesters. On the downside, researchers have found that some of these processes can unleash nasty odors and even a "chemical attack" on sewage machinery.

Geological Toilets
Last summer, Los Angeles began injecting sludge into a mile-deep well, where pressure and heat are expected to release enough methane to power 1,000 homes. The well also dissolves and sequesters carbon dioxide that the sludge would normally release, removing the equivalent exhaust of about 1,000 cars per year. "This renewable energy project is absolutely electrifying," Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the LA Times. "It will save money and make money."

Feces Ponds
As a cheaper green option, some 50 waste plants in 20 countries have installed versions of UC Berkeley professor William J. Oswald's Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems Technology--large open-air ponds that primarily rely on anaerobic digestion and photosynthesis to break down sludge and convert it into a fertilizer or animal feed of nitrogen-rich algae. The algae in turn can be used as a feedstock for biofuels. Rich Brown, an environmental scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, sees an obstacle in the ponds' huge footprint: "For rural areas it’s great," he says. "For San Francisco it wouldn’t work so well."

Gassifiers
Sludge gasification plants are popular in Europe and especially Germany. A low-oxygen reaction transforms the solids in sludge into a carbon-rich "char" similar to BBQ briquettes. Next, the char is gasified in the presence of air to produce a syngas that can be burned for energy.

Poop Pyrotechnics
Last year, Atlanta-based EnerTech built the world's first commercial sludge "pyrolysis" plant in Southern California. Its patented SlurryCarb process converts sludge from a third of Los Angeles and Orange Counties into char pellets that replace coal at a nearby cement kiln; its ash is mixed into the cement.

One Small Poop for Man. . .
With billions in stimulus funds slated for wastewater improvements, is the time right for poop power? Such efforts, which reduce landfilling and emissions, have earned praise from some anti-sludge groups. Caroline Snyder, the founder of Citizens for Sludge-Free Land, calls it a "win-win situation."

The EPA says sludge power holds promise, but it's not ready to quit pushing sludge as a wonder fertilizer. This hasn’t deterred the sewage industry, which sees a chance to get into the renewable energy business and put a stop to the stream of health complaints and costly lawsuits. "After almost 40 years of working in biosolids," a sewage industry official wrote in a recent newsletter. "I never thought I’d say this: it is an exciting time for sludge!"

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/200...oop-electricity

[JazzRoc]

Ahead of them all - thermophilic composting.

Composting at 50 deg C using thermophilic bacteria (you don't have to look for them - they're ON and IN you) not only kills ALL pathogens, but ALSO breaks down ORGANIC and INORGANIC materials (the sturdiest plastics, the most toxic metal salts) into their constituent parts, and in the case of heavy metals, their most insoluble (and therefore non-toxic) salts.

After your poo (and a 3:1 mix of cellulosic material and kitchen waste) has spent 1 year in a compost heap you could EAT it with no harmful consequences (except jealous criticism from hungry plants).

So stop pooing into your drinking water, carry your poop to your compost heap, and grow your own food with your own poop. This will all save the fuel expended to get your food to you. Keep the rest of the world out of your loop. But get them to poop into YOUR poop as well.

It's quite likely it'll keep your friends away from your dinner table - but more fool them - they'd be people STILL pooing into their drinking water.

There's NO way you can be accused of being a USELESS EATER either. Each person needs no more than about 20 square metres for near-food-self-sufficiency, and a loose association with others can keep you in fish, chickens, ducks, goats, and pigs.

Then a few sales of surpluses and preserved foods at the local veggie market can buy you your solar cells and white and black goods.

Taadaa, governments and councils are out of the loop - to a great extent.

(I found the idea that the council/water board OWNS RAINFALL (and thus can charge you water rates even if you are out of their loop) to be ABSOLUTELY intolerable).

[~Wheres Raven~]

Agreed, easier. And you don't even need to turn it, just be sure to add straw, hay, weeds, and the like to create interstitial air spaces that are trapped by the compost.

I've read conflicting estimates reguarding ideal temperature. Some say 50-60deg C (will break down %40 if sludge solids in only seven days), some say maximum biodegration occurs between 45-55, some say 50deg C for a certain thermophilic strain with maximum benifits. I don't think you have to get to precise, as long as you control the excess heat.

The Humanure handbook is a great resource, chock full of tips from tommy turd. It even shows how to build an indoor sawdust compost toilet (convert your old toilet right on the spot)
which I found very easy and interesting.

Quote:(I found the idea that the council/water board OWNS RAINFALL (and thus can charge you water rates even if you are out of their loop) to be ABSOLUTELY intolerable).

I'd like to see "the water board" try... who is this waterboard? in the uk? I live in Canada and afaik there's no waterboard that owns rainfall. There's gotta be a hole in that law too, like all laws.
The water board does not control the means of production and transfer of rain, they also don't control evaporation and condensation and gravity, they are not providing any service.
If someone from the waterboard came around everyday and opened up a giant umbrella over my property when it rained, then okay... I guess I would need to pay them to close the umbrella:)

Are you out of their loop and are they charging you?

[blove8.]

<div align='center'>HUMANURE!!!</div>

[JazzRoc]

Quote:Agreed, easier. And you don't even need to turn it, just be sure to add straw, hay, weeds, and the like to create interstitial air spaces that are trapped by the compost.
I've read conflicting estimates reguarding ideal temperature. Some say 50-60deg C (will break down %40 if sludge solids in only seven days), some say maximum biodegration occurs between 45-55, some say 50deg C for a certain thermophilic strain with maximum benifits. I don't think you have to get to precise, as long as you control the excess heat.
The Humanure handbook is a great resource, chock full of tips from tommy turd. It even shows how to build an indoor sawdust compost toilet (convert your old toilet right on the spot) which I found very easy and interesting.

Quote:(I found the idea that the council/water board OWNS RAINFALL (and thus can charge you water rates even if you are out of their loop) to be ABSOLUTELY intolerable).

I'd like to see "the water board" try... who is this waterboard? in the uk? I live in Canada and afaik there's no waterboard that owns rainfall. There's gotta be a hole in that law too, like all laws. The water board does not control the means of production and transfer of rain, they also don't control evaporation and condensation and gravity, they are not providing any service. If someone from the waterboard came around everyday and opened up a giant umbrella over my property when it rained, then okay... I guess I would need to pay them to close the umbrella:)Are you out of their loop and are they charging you?

It's UK law. They charge you water rates even if you don't take their water. They claim the water that falls on your property. I bet that even if you ran off all the water into a tank and said "here's your damn water!" they'd take you to court for your rates - although I don't think that's been tested in a court of law.
I'm not testing it. I live on Tenerife, and here the island's richest families own the land and artesian mines from which all of Tenerife's (snow-melt) waters pour. So I pay THEM for my water. However, in my next move I shall move up the hill to a thousand square meters property which I shall underlay with a plastic film leading to a run-off tank of some considerable size. It rains hard about once every two years (1.5 metres), which is more water than one needs over that period of time. I shall filter and pump it up to my own header tank, separating some off for washing, and some for drinking. I shall also recirculate grey water as the first run-off, washing off with my filtered tank water.
Then I'll get to work on the poo...:)