Poop power, the old dream revisited

By | April 5, 2009, 4:53pm PDT

Somebody always has some clever plan to turn chicken #^%t into methane power. Here’s the latest effort, in Georgia. Do you suppose that’s means they have more than their fair share of … ?

At the University of Georgia they’re working on a process to mass produce “biochar.” A form of charcoal from from organic waste, ranging woodchips and corn husks, to peanut shells (a Georgia speciality), or even chicken manure. Heating the raw material up to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit cooks it into the highly porous biochar. That in turn is perfect soil additive, locking in carbon and adding to the soil’smoisture rentention abilities. In areas of traditional agriculture where bochar has long been produced from local animal waste the soils there have been among the richest on earth, say researhers.

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Harry Fuller

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Harry Fuller

Harry Fuller is a media veteran, having spent decades in TV news in the San Francisco Bay Area. As GeneralManager of KPIX-TV (CBS) he founded one of the nation's first TV station websites in early 1995. He was News Direcor at TechTV when it was founded in 1998. In 2001 he moved to London to become Executive Producer for CNBC Europe. Four years later he returned to San Francisco as Executive Editor for CNET's news.com.

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Gotta wonder if..
mykmlr@... 8th Apr 2009
nuclear power can pass the 'net gain' test, given the energy costs to guard the wastes for 96,000 years.
Figure a minimum 4 tons grain per year / guard x 1 guard / 100 lbs finished reprocessed waste x 96,000 years.
Hmm, lot of lost energy there!
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Mother Earth News
Brent R Brian 6th Apr 2009
They could save some research and read that mid-70's favorite of the hippies counter culture - The Mother Earth News.

TMEN also published an article about a hydraulic regenerative energy system for a VW beetle that got 107 mpg ... University of Oregon did the work (I believe).

Next they will be recommending a "new" glaucoma cure.
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I know. Coal is cheap, let's use that.
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Better...
Jkirk3279 6th Apr 2009
Use methane gas from landfills
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Biofuel would be better. Grow the plans to make fuel to heat the plan stems to stick it all back into the ground. Or, maybe we could just not grow the crop in the first place?

The original idea is not bad, but it has to break even on an energy-footprint basis.
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Yup, Mother said it already......
Anonymous Gearhead 6th Apr 2009
Well, it's already been said. Read the old Mother magazines. BTW you don't need to heat the poop, anaerobic processes will heat themselves. That's why the snow melts over your septic tank first. That's not to say a little heat won't help, but that is what the sun (solar?) is for. On a tangent Mother also published plans for a Electric Hybrid car. It was an Opel GT and got 79 MPG. So why is it that the 'new' hybrids can only get 50 or so at best? Creating methane gas like this is a really good idea even if it is not new, there are a lot of sewage treatment plants that could be bottling gas yaknow.
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why the 'new' hybrids only get 50 mpg?
MAKsystems 6th Apr 2009
Safety (= weight).

That old Opel GT would never pass today's crash test standards.
so does biochar meet this most basic of criterion?

only if this question is answered can this report be considered less than drivel.

happy

.
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Yes this is the way to go!
stillgolfing 6th Apr 2009
Even the North Korean Army is recycling turds. They are training their troops in a new form of martial art. It's called Tai Kwan Doo Doo!
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Gotta wonder if..
mykmlr@... 8th Apr 2009
nuclear power can pass the 'net gain' test, given the energy costs to guard the wastes for 96,000 years.
Figure a minimum 4 tons grain per year / guard x 1 guard / 100 lbs finished reprocessed waste x 96,000 years.
Hmm, lot of lost energy there!

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