Poop Gas

[Spartana]

My former employer is now the first in the world to have a hydrogen fueling station that converts human waste into fuel. I fortunately worked as an environmental compliance officer in the industrial (chemical) waste dept and never got near all the stinky stuff!!
From the OC Registar Newspaper:

"An experimental fuel cell – the first of its kind in the world – is turning the Orange County Sanitation District into a filling station for hydrogen cars.

The fuel cell, which produces both hydrogen and electricity from waste gas at the Fountain Valley sewage treatment plant, began a three-year demonstration run June 1; a “grand opening” was held Tuesday.

If it proves useful, the project could be expanded in coming years.

In any case, the Sanitation District should soon become a major stop on California’s “hydrogen highway,” which, despite a lull in public attention, is gradually taking shape.

“This is totally unique,” said Jeffrey P. Brown, a senior engineer at the Sanitation District. “Nobody else is doing electricity and vehicle fuel at the same time.”

[loosechickens]

hey, neat to see.....poop is stinky no matter what, so it's nice if it's stinky AND useful. ;-)

[CathyA]

Would the gas still end up in the sky?

[Spartana]

Yeah, not sure how they are getting the stink out of the fuel :-)! Actually there is no stink-factor because, unlike other biofuels that directly convert used cooking oil to fuel where you get that nice french fry smell, the process of converting methane gas from human waste to hydrogen fuel cells takes place at the wastewater treastment plant (and that same methane gas is used to run the treatment plant) which use air scurbbers to remove the smell. The hydrogen fuel cell themselves have no smell since the only exhaustion by products are water. Clean fuel! Or at least clean smelling fuel ;-)!

[Spartana]

Would the gas still end up in the sky?

No, the gas (methane) made by human waste products are reused (recycled) to power the eqiptment to run the treatment plant. The hydrogen fuel cells are basicly made the same way at the plant and then any left over methane gas would be recycled back into running the plant - which takes a huge amount of energy (electricity) to run if it was on the grid.

[Spartana]

Of course to be able to use this you need to have a car that uses hydrogen fuel cells instead of gaoline. I think they cost somewhere around $100K right now - might need a loan :-)! Of course that's down alot from the million dollar price tag for a Toyota hydrogen car a couple of years ago. A bargain!

[Dharma Bum]

My 8 yr old son would love it if we had a fart powered car.

[lhamo]

This is going to be the wave of the future, I think. One of my grantees last year was looking at the biogas industry in China. Lots of stuff has been done small scale, but I think the real future is going to be in agroindustry -- lots of stuff that is currently causing huge waste problems has great potential as renewable fuels.

I am all for turning as much of our own waste back into energy as we can. Silly how we think very little of how absurd it is to drill mines deep into the earth to extract various mineral resources while we have so much we could be making use of that is causing disposal problems already. Talk about win-win situations. Kudos to your former employer, Spartana!

lhamo

[Spartana]

This is going to be the wave of the future, I think. One of my grantees last year was looking at the biogas industry in China. Lots of stuff has been done small scale, but I think the real future is going to be in agroindustry -- lots of stuff that is currently causing huge waste problems has great potential as renewable fuels.

I am all for turning as much of our own waste back into energy as we can. Silly how we think very little of how absurd it is to drill mines deep into the earth to extract various mineral resources while we have so much we could be making use of that is causing disposal problems already. Talk about win-win situations. Kudos to your former employer, Spartana!

lhamo

Agreed! This is one of my "hobbies" - working with some volunteer professional engineering groups to find ways to mass produce alternative fuels and alternate energy/water resources for use on a large scale - for cities and large manufactering plants and power plants. There are so many wild, yet workable, ideas for things that's it's unbelievable. Unfortunately they are expensive but costs are coming down. And as fossil fuel prices rise and become scare and harder and harder to extract, alternative energy sources will become more viable. Now, back to working on my plans for a new and improved space shuttle that runs solely on space poop and Tang-scented pee :-)!

[Spartana]

My 8 yr old son would love it if we had a fart powered car.

Gas powered AND wind powered! Talk about proper recycling :-)!

[Mrs-M]

LMAO! Lots of funnies. Very encouraging news.

[razz]

Interesting to read as I didn't realize that the development was that advanced.