| Title | Process Converts Human Waste into Rocket Fuel | |
| Date | Saturday November 29 2014, @04:14AM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the but-I-still-can't-say-his-name dept. | ||
As a follow-up to the "poop-powered bus", the Univerity of Florida claims:
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Buck Rogers surely couldn’t have seen this one coming, but at NASA’s request, University of Florida researchers have figured out how to turn human waste -- yes, that kind -- into rocket fuel.
Adolescent jokes aside, the process finally makes useful something that until now has been collected to burn up on re-entry. What’s more, like so many other things developed for the space program, the process could well turn up on Earth, said Pratap Pullammanappallil, a UF associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering.
[...]“We were trying to find out how much methane can be produced from uneaten food, food packaging and human waste,” said Pullammanappallil, a UF Institute Food and Agricultural Sciences faculty member and Dhoble’s adviser. “The idea was to see whether we could make enough fuel to launch rockets and not carry all the fuel and its weight from Earth for the return journey. Methane can be used to fuel the rockets. Enough methane can be produced to come back from the moon.”
Abstract can be found here, along with the paywalled full research paper.
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printed from SoylentNews, Process Converts Human Waste into Rocket Fuel on 2024-04-16 06:36:26