Posted on 10/08/2021 10:36:02 AM PDT by Red Badger
What do aliens, ghosts, and cow manure all have in common? Apparently, they’re all something to be shot with plasma. Yes, in an unconventional bid to tackle the ever-developing climate crisis, scientists have been shooting cow poop with plasma beams. The aim? To strip the matter of its most damaging components – namely ammonia and methane.
The unusual experiment is unfolding on a picturesque farm in Buckinghamshire, UK, where cow dung is in no short supply. Using ”artificial lightning” made of a plasma bolt – a super-heated stream of atoms capable of shattering molecules – scientists got to shooting the sh!t to see if it could break up the poop’s contents.
Analyses of the feces revealed that the plasma poop treatment was successful, obliterating ammonia and breaking it down into pure nitrogen. This is an added win for the farmers, who use nitrogen as a fertilizer. By blasting the poop into the next dimension, they in turn create a highly fertile slurry that can be used right there on the farm. According to a report from the BBC, the treatment is so effective it’s able to zap 90 percent of the ammonia into nitrogen.
As for methane, artificial lightning got rid of 99 percent. This is a huge win for cow farming from an environmental perspective, as traditional practices which see the manure mounting up have been identified as a significant contributor to global emissions. Methane has a direct effect of warming on the Earth, something we certainly don’t need any more of right now.
Ammonia toxic, so blasting it to smithereens is good for the environment and will rid the countryside of that characteristic stank that lingers around farming communities. These ammonia clouds also present a potential threat to cities – should they drift into busy urban environments, they can react with other air pollutants, creating toxic combinations that can have serious health implications.
While the results of the tests in the UK have been positive, the technology isn’t without its limitations. In an ideal world, the tech would be rolled out globally, but its practicality in terms of affordability has yet to be determined.
The plasma poop treatment comes at a time of rediscovery and innovation for cattle farming, as it was announced recently that elsewhere cows had been successfully taught to use a toilet. By gathering all the cow poo-poo and pee-pee into a convenient latrine, the approach hopes to secure waterways that can become contaminated when you have too many animals gathered in one spot, as is the case in a lot of cattle farming settings.
Plasma bolts and cows on the loo? Farm trips just got a lot more exciting.
[H/T: BBC]
LOL! Well hey, since it's humor break time, why don't we all just sit back, pop a cold beer and shoot the sh*t for awhile?
ok...
q) what do you call a vegetarian that has diahrea...
a) salad shooter...
The whole topic/issue is a shit show. This just aligns with it all.
that’s better than a cowfart powered generator
How much CO2 does it take to heat up a plasma bolt?
My late father was as a semi-country kid in a small town in southern IL. He and his friends became totally familiar with the entertainment possibilities of cow pies. One relied on a kid’s ability to judge the dryness of a cow pie. Dry enough, and one could step on it barefoot with no trouble but not dry enough and the stepper would have his whole foot soaked in cow poop. They’d catch ignorant city kids and get their victims to step barefoot on the not dry enough cow pies.
A healthy forest is a forest that is harvested on a regular basis. Chop down the trees for the forest products industry. And replant the area with baby trees. A forest that is left alone will eventually catch fire and burn down. Massive air pollution and millions of dollars of destruction and many deaths of wild life and of humans. Plant trees and harvest the forest. Repeat. I do not like forest fires. Forest fires are not healthy.
Dried, you can burn them in the stove.
You must be pulling my utter.
No, I wasn’t going to say my middle leg.
5.56mm
You obviously don’t understand how this plasma process works. It increases the fertilizer value of the manure not destroys it. In addition to eliminating harmful free ammonia and free methane neither of which is good to spread all over an open field nor have in a pile that could explode due to spontaneous combustion as manure piles do from time to time.
More.scientific backing of the process. Which looks to be a winner.
For plasma municipal trash waste disposal the energy used vs energy produced is 3 to one as in it take one third of the produced energy from combustion of the plasma reactors off gasses to power the plasma and 2/3 are sold has next power to the grid. The same ratio would be expected with any carbon and hydrogen based material such as grasses, cellulose or hemicellulose which is what biomass is made of and cow faeces is just partially digested grass nearly 100% composed of cellulose, lignin and hemicellulose.
https://www.manuremanager.com/implementing-innovative-technology/
“Treating manure and biogas with plasma gas
George Bingham runs 750 cows on his dairy farm and tested this innovative technology from Norwegian company N2 Applied in 2018. This technology treats manure or biogas digestate with a plasma gas. The N2 manure processor fixates nitrogen from air by splitting the N2 and O2 molecules in air into N and O atoms forming nitrogen oxides. The nitrogen oxides are absorbed into liquid manure or biogas digestate and combined with free ammonia to form ammonium nitrate. The process improves the agronomic and environmental characteristics of the product by reducing ammonia emissions and making the nitrogen available for direct plant uptake.”
No, I obviously don’t. And at least, unlike most FReepers, you explained the process, so kudos to you.
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