Rwandan poop prison

Benwa · #1 07-18-2005, 09:16 AM

http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2...w=wn_tophead_1

A prison in Rwanda is using the prisoners poop as fuel. Its converted into biogas. If it can be done there, certainly it can be done anywhere. And like the article I posted about the military developing new laser weapons... I find the science fascinating. Yet its a bit disturbing that so many are in prison that they produced enough poop to find the need to use it. Of course most of them were participants in the genocide. So I don't feel too horrible. If you decide killing a bunch of people with a machete is a good idea, then maybe you should lug around buckets of your poop. Side note: If you haven't seen Hotel Rwanda yet you should.

samender · #2 07-18-2005, 10:02 AM

That is pretty interesting.

And that is an excellent movie.

GetMeOuttaDC · #3 07-21-2005, 10:21 AM

Awesome!

Don't you wish they could use biogas to power cars??? $2.40 a gallon my ass!

Deadend · #4 07-21-2005, 11:00 AM

I speant all last summer working with a pilot scale biogas reactor. This really is not news, other than they've got a co-generator at a prison (whoopie). They've got cogens at municiple wastewater plants all over the place. Most of the time the biogas is just flared off though so all the power is wasted. Depends on the capital investment and if it's worth it, biogas tends to be pretty dirty (but burns cleanly, the crap in it winds up in the engine). What is for certain is that millions of litres of this gas is produced at pretty much EVERY sewage treatment plant in the world.

In the winter I'm going to be trying to develop a system that converts the fuel electrochemicaly, using the same metabolism to directly generate a current rather than biogas.

Bruiser · #5 07-21-2005, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadend

I speant all last summer working with a pilot scale biogas reactor. This really is not news, other than they've got a co-generator at a prison (whoopie). They've got cogens at municiple wastewater plants all over the place. Most of the time the biogas is just flared off though so all the power is wasted. Depends on the capital investment and if it's worth it, biogas tends to be pretty dirty (but burns cleanly, the crap in it winds up in the engine). What is for certain is that millions of litres of this gas is produced at pretty much EVERY sewage treatment plant in the world.

In the winter I'm going to be trying to develop a system that converts the fuel electrochemicaly, using the same metabolism to directly generate a current rather than biogas.

I visited a landfill back in 1996 as part of a class I was taking. In one part of the landfill, they were flaring off the escaping methane and other gases, and one of my fellow undergrads asked of the poosibility of running a boiler fired by the flare to generate steam to drive a generator. The facility coordinator looked at us as if we all had 3 heads, and dismissed the idea as pure fantasy. It sounds like others have jumped on this idea, and that it isn't a fantasy. Maybe that guy deserves a follow-up visit