Posted on 10/13/2013 4:49:24 AM PDT by Wonder Warthog
Too bad those thousands of politcians and White Hut occupants couldn’t be fed into a machine that will propel our vehicles.
Wonder what boondoggle will evolve from this discovery?
“Wonder what boondoggle will evolve from this discovery?”
Certainly it must be a strategy of “clean energy” scientists to put out press releases that create over-excitement and fawning press coverage, all with the ultimate goal of securing more government grant money. My guess is that most of these ideas are completely impractical or unworkable when scaled up.
It's for the children and the Earth Mother, so you better get in line and do it right or else.
Sounds like a self-sustainable power/waste disposal system for cities. Anything to get us to local control of energy would be a good thing. Therefore this invention will go the way of the Doe Doe bird.
———an average rate of 0.05 m3/day———
Hmmmm......
I suppose they will institute “crap credits”.
True. But it would be so much more satisfying to burn the bureaucrats and politicians directly, even though that energy supply wouldn't last as long.
I’d like a tank of sewage and a bright sunny day please!
Often true. As Sturgeon's Law puts it "90% of everything is crap". But you've gotta do the research to find the 10% that are good ideas.
I suppose they will institute “crap credits”.
LOL! Why not? They’ll come up with any bogus notion to tax.
Any community above a certain size already has that. It's called "a sewer system". And those work just fine with "household toilets". But treating the wastes from those systems is not free.
Waste treatment costs cities and towns a LOT. If the waste treatment part has even reasonable efficiency, it can offset (or maybe even eliminate) those costs, and put out energy at the same time.
Not unreasonable for the small lab cell they tested (pic is at original article link). Next step is to test the scaling laws of the system with their forty liter prototype.
Its called a sewage treatment plant.
What do they plan to do with the hydrogen?
I would guess that they would probably use it in a fuel cell to generate electricity. It is, after all, the perfect fuel for such cells. Just making the wastewater plant "energy self supporting" would be a major plus in the budget of pretty much any city of size. If the overall process turns out not to produce "sludge" or even reduces the amount of same that has to be disposed of as solid waste would be another significant plus.
I think the correct way to look at this is as a way to make wastewater treatment much more efficient/less costly, not as a major energy producer.
It won’t work.
They will try to use genetically modified microorganisms.
No No GMO!
IMHO, if this process goes farther than a lab curiosity,, it will main be because it is used as a pretty bauble attract varieties of grant funds.
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