Biogas from human waste, safely obtained under controlled circumstances using innovative technologies, is a potential fuel source great enough in theory to generate electricity for up to 138 million households - the number of households in Indonesia, Brazil, and Ethiopia combined.
A report today from UN University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health estimates that biogas potentially available from human waste worldwide would have a value of up to US$ 9.5 billion in natural gas equivalent. And the residue, dried and charred, could produce 2 million tonnes of charcoal-equivalent fuel, curbing the destruction of trees.
Finally, experts say, the large energy value would prove small relative to that of the global health and environmental benefits that would accrue from the safe treatment of human waste in low-resource settings.
http://phys.org/news/2015-11-vast-energy-human-university.html
[Video]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=807RtubRyF0
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:04AM
is never trust a fart.
Trump's Grave will be the world's most popular open air toilet.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:45AM
Well, not an old fart, like me, anyway. Anyway, I'm willing to donate to this project. Anything I can do to help my fellow man/woman. :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:52AM
Not me, I'm holding out.
It worked with mom, it will work with these guys too.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:48AM
Is "waste" meaning poop? Because my dogs generate a lot of steaming piles.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:33AM
Makes me remember flame toilets, I was considering one of these for our cabin:
http://www.storburn.ca/ [storburn.ca]
but before I bought it, the factory burned down - I took that as a sign.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:42AM
Maybe their misleading marketing should have been a sign.
http://www.storburn.ca/info.html [storburn.ca]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 04 2015, @04:16AM
Depends on your definition of pollution and harmful gas, I suppose. They're supposed to smell like singed hair when "cycling" and they can't smell too good between cycles. All in all, I think the composting approach is better, if conventional septic systems aren't an option.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:38AM
This sounds sort of like some energy fantasy. If I understand this correctly, if we collected the crap of every person on the planet, we could provide enough energy for 1.9% of the world's population. Of course to get all of that crap, you'd have to drive bazillions of miles through remote locations and use way more energy than you'd ever get back.
If this was limited to just those people who live in cities where the poo can be conveniently collected, then you'd get enough gas for just under 1% of the world's population ( http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_urban.aspx [geohive.com] ). This would be after investing a lot of energy into infrastructure (cement for example is an energy intensive process, as is mining the materials). Surely there are options that have a better return on energy investment than this idea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:57AM
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday November 04 2015, @01:27PM
It's already being done in many places. NYC does it, though, the exact percentage of solids used for fertilizer isn't listed: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/wastewater/biohome.shtml [nyc.gov]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hankwang on Wednesday November 04 2015, @06:13AM
If you claim (or suggest so) that this won't pay off, you should support it by numbers. How much infrastructure do you actually need per unit of energy production?
Also, you may not need to add new infrastructure that would otherwise not be built. If a sewage treatment plant needs to be upgraded anyway, you could replace it by a biogas plant.
TFA actually states in the summary that sewage discharge in open water without any treatment is a major health issue in developing countries. Turning sewage into something that can be sold makes it economically feasible to build sewage treatment plants.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 04 2015, @06:21AM
Well then make it a health issue and deal with that, but don't feed us BS about what an amazing energy source this would be, because it isn't when it is so widely distributed that the extra 1.9% in usable gas you'd get by collecting it all, would be consumed by the vastly greater amount of energy obviously involved in collecting it. Seriously, who is going to drive 200 miles out into the middle of the rain forest to collect the poo of disparate bands of tribal folk living there and think that is somehow energy conserving?
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:14PM
Title of TFA:
WASTE TO WEALTH: Sustainable Wastewater Management in Uganda.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 04 2015, @08:18PM
Then why mention the fact that IF we collected worldwide poo production, we could generate gas for 3 countries? That statistic is stupid because we'd have to spend the gas of 10 countries to get there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @01:21PM
This UN(?) outfit is making the proposal, they are the one that must come up with numbers, convincing numbers instead of some vague aggregates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @09:16AM
you'd have to drive bazillions of miles
Everyone knows that you can't drive bazillions of miles! Everyone knows that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:38AM
Conservatives were right all along: green energy is full of shit!
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Wednesday November 04 2015, @12:25PM
Not sure what you been eating, I'd call mine more like brown energy.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:31PM
To me closed loops are more appealing from an efficiency perspective. NYC produces a lot of sewage, and instead of being flushed out to sea it would be good to use it as an input into another useful application, like producing electricity, biogas, or for composting into fertilizer. Naturally doing that has implications for sustainability here on Earth, but it also serves as a sort of trial run for human habitation on other worlds where we can't just go out and mine or grow whatever we want.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:14PM
At the Hyperion plant, which treats much of the sewage from the Los Angeles area (and where a scene from Soylent Green was filmed), "about 80% of the power needs for Hyperion are met from methane gas generated on-site from all that poop." [healthebay.org] If I recall correctly, the facility was extensively rebuilt in the 1990s, with new digestion (fermentation) tanks. It also produces dried sludge which, according to the rumor I heard, was being trucked out to Arizona and passed off as fertilizer. If true, the "farmers" were probably being paid to accept the so-called fertilizer, which (as of the 1990s) had notable levels of heavy metals, attributed to the area's light industry such as chrome-plating operations and film developing. Since then, the presence of pharmaceuticals in waste water has come into the public eye. Also, people discharge household cleaners, paint, pesticides and the like into the sewers. Heal the Bay (link above) tells of "compost that is used in Kern County farms and Griffith Park."
Extrapolating from that example, if modern sewage treatment plants were built for the world's other major cities, nearly enough energy could be recovered from biogas to run the plants themselves. If the solids were burnt as the UN proposes, additional energy could be obtained. A reason it's not done in Los Angeles is because of the region's air pollution regulations. Smog is already a problem in some other urban areas too: Mexico City, London and Beijing come to mind.