Bobko D writes in Tips and Notes
Anthony,
One of the more ridiculous schemes how to save the world – a candidate for your “Craziness of the week”, perhaps – is the POO POWER! project from Melbourne, Australia.
I am tempted to believe the guy who dreamed it up, Duncan Chew, must be playing a joke on our environmentalists – yet he is now laughing all the way to the bank, with this $45,000 grant from Australian Government green schemes:
I’m tempted to agree, especially when the guy can’t even get the flowchart sequence right, i.e. which came first, the dog or the poo? 😉
This one’s a real stinker, even by green lunacy standards. Next I envision they’ll try to make catbox powered homes…Read on…
MEDIA RELEASE (see http://www.poopower.com.au/our-story/45000-grant-to-poo-power.html )
Poo Power! is one of … recipients from Inspiring Australia’s ‘Unlocking Australia’s Potential’ program. The $45,000 grant has been awarded to the Yarra Energy Foundation to turn dog poo from parks in the City of Yarra into renewable energy.
There is over 1350 tonnes of dog waste to be disposed of every day in Australia… Using this un-tapped resource, Poo Power! will engage Australians in its science through utilising an anaerobic digester to process dog waste into biogas that can serve as a local renewable energy source.
Within the City of Yarra there are approximately 6078 dogs that generate over 750 tonnes of waste every year… This waste can be diverted into a local an anaerobic digester to generate more than 3800 litres of biogas that can be used for heating, lighting or electricity.
This small but important amount of biogas will be used in a City of Yarra park in an interactive public installation as a community meeting place for use by dog owners and other citizens.
“This project has the potential to be groundbreaking, a whole lot of fun and will deliver value to the citizens in the City of Yarra, which is why YEF is involved.” Alex Fearnside, CEO of the Yarra Energy Foundation.
This project was instigated by Duncan Chew … Project and Science Engagement Manager for the Poo Power! Project…”
Media enquiries:
Poo Power! – Duncan Chew | 0418 513 240 | duncan@greennation.com.au
Yarra Energy Foundation – Alex Fearnside | 0434 990 108 | alex.fearnside@yef.org.au
—–
“What is Poo Power? We’ve found a way to unleash the power in the 1,350 tonnes of dog poo produced each day in Australia….”
and
“…On average, a dog produces 0.34 kilograms (kg) of feces per day. Consequently, there is approximately 1,350.48 tonnes (t) of dog waste to be disposed of every day in Australia; 492,925 tonnes (t) per year.
Therefore we want to build an anaerobic methane digester to process the dog waste … to create a biogas that can serve as renewable energy source…”
(http://www.poopower.com.au/what-is-poo-power.html)
This is amazing but it has given me an idea too ..
If we could link up hamster wheels together think of the power that could be generated from those things whizzing around. I think I may put in a request to build the first ‘Green’ Hamster farm.
“There are approximately 6078 dogs” – If they can count that accurately it’s hardly approximate!
Actually this could be a more reliable and consistent source of energy than either wind or solar. I was going through the UK Renewable Energy Foundation site list of generators, and the ones using sewage or landfill gas had Annual Load Factors typically twice as good…
http://www.ref.org.uk/roc-generators/index.php
Anybody out there live close to an anaerobic digester?
If thy build one close to this park, better check which way the wind is blowing before planning that picnic!
As if the project culling the farting burping feral camels wasn’t embarrassing enough …
Who was it had that idea of using the CO2 sequestering ability of urine? Hope that wasn’t here as well.
Whatever next. My father told me: ” … they don’t advertise jobs for idiots.” He was wrong about that …
The volumes look suspect for a start. Also, it seems to have escaped the attention of these confirmed anal-retentives, that dogs don’t crap (or baulk) on command. Also, (like their human counterparts) females tend to be a bit more discrete than males.
I once helped to build a methane digester at a pig farm. Yes, it worked. Not sure whether it was cost-effective. Didn’t last long enough to find out. There was a leak, explosion, and everyone around got a free sample of the raw material.
So I guess we should expect shortly to see brown collection bins on the Australian streets, alongside the black, green and blue ones.
At the risk of being a lone voice in a wilderness of derision, in the UK most public parks have bins where dog owners are supposed to put their dogs shit (apart from a few twerps, most do). These bins get emptied about once a week. I’d assume that the bin content heads to landfill. So, diverting it to a digester isn’t quite as barmy as it seems. No additional CO2 or fuel required.
However, most people collect the shit in little plastic bags to put it in the bins, don’t know what the digester would make of that…
Another use would be to sun-dry the feces until hard, then use for shotgun target practice.
Call it either a poop-shoot or a crap-shoot.
“This small but important amount of biogas will be used in a City of Yarra park in an interactive public installation as a community meeting place for use by dog owners and other citizens.”
Question: Who is going to want to go hang out next to this thing?
Retrofit the municipal sewage treatment plant with an anaerobic digester and flush the dog poop down the toilets.
Now send me my $45,000
Yarra Council should immediately register every dog in the area. Dog owners should be issued with a small sealable bucket and be required to order bio-degradable doggie bags, in which all waste produced by the dog should be collected, from the Council at a sustainable charge. The containers should be weighed and emptied on a weekly basis. An owner whose bucket is lighter than normal has clearly allowed his dog to foul a public space, spreading excess Carbon into the atmosphere and will be required to purchase carbon credits and also be fined up to A$1000.00 for each offence. Any owner whose bucket is heavier than expected will recieve an illuminated scroll detailing his public-spiritedness and will be included on a monthly roll of honour to be published in the Council news letter.
Just in case, /sarc.
3800 litres per year? That’s certainly what that implies. And I checked, that is indeed the language in the original press release says.
So at the current price of ~$100 $Aus/1000 cubic metres, that 3800 litres would net you a cool $0.38/yr. The Aussie government would get its (Aussie taxpayers that is) money back in roughly 118,000 yrs.
OK, so let’s give ’em a break and assume they meant 3800 L/day. That cuts their payback to a mere 335 years or so.
Of course, with collection, transportation, capital and processing costs…
rogerknights said
“To make this workable, the poo would have to be picked up by the regular trash or recyclable truck and put in a separate compartment.”
Well in the Surrey Hills UK we we told we had to separate paper and plastic bottles and that existed for years. Now we are told we have to include paper and plastic in the same bin! I suspect that the majority is just burnt/tipped/buried.
How much recycling is actually recycled?
My dog eats cat poop. I’m not sure which has a higher potential Methane content, dog probably are fed more fiber, cats likely don’t digest plant materials as well as dogs. Need $$$ for study.
My vote is to provide electricity for an electric vehicle to bring raw poop and dispose of the digested effluent. Lessee, we Americans have no idea what to do with a liter of methane other than explode it in the back yard. We deal in hundreds of cubic feet:
$ units 2438 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units You have: 3800 liter You want: 100 feet^3 * 1.3419573 / 0.745180171 1/3 100 cu ft. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent , I should have just stuck with liters:
A gallon of gasoline is equivalent to:
Compressed natural gas (CNG) = 126.67 cu ft (3.587 m3) at 900 BTU/cu ft
(I think this really refers to natural gas compressed to 1 bar).
So 3,800 liters of biogas (I assume nearly all methane and no water) is a bit more than a gallon of gasoline. I should’ve stuck with liters, call it 4 liters. Per year. About 1 liter of gasoline per year per $10,000 investment. Capital idea!
David Ross says:
August 19, 2012 at 3:38 am
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of global warming;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth : )
____________________________
For it’s doggie do this and doggie do that and “chuck it down the chute”
but it’s savior of the country when we turn it into loot…
I am battling with my town supervisors to get them off TDC and to build an anaerobic biodigester, so some of us have looked more or less deeply into the economies of such. We have about 100 head of cattle and likely as many other large barnyard animals, a dwindling farming economy and ~1000 humans waste from which to benefit. If we carefully loaded our entire waste stream, even straw and stalk, then we can juust make economic amounts of fuel gas, enough to run the digester and not use power from off Island.
Well done Luther!
Yesterday I noticed a tourist’s personalized auto license plate, WU CHI, ’embrace power’ if i remember my pidgin.
Anthony,
How could you post up this item without referencing this classic?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/25/ben-santer-elected-agu-fellow/
I wonder if Santer will claim precedence, or at least squatter’s rights.
He probably does deserve his cut of the biogas.
A few points. In Australia most responsible dog owners in the inner city pick up their dog’s poo and dispose of it in containers in the park, so the cost of collecting it is effectively nil.
It’s not a unique idea. It’s already happening in Cambridge MA http://parksparkproject.com/artwork/1591007.html
And in Arizona:
https://asunews.asu.edu/20120501_dogpark
And looks like getting off the ground in the UK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137773/Puppy-power-Dog-mess-turned-electricity-pioneering-scheme.html
As others have noted, the concept is hardly new but the application to dog poo in parks is a neat way of making use of doggy waste.
OK, this is not a bad idea as far as how to handle a waste product.
BUT !!!
To think (and claim) that you are going to save the planet and generate any appreciable amount of energy is just nonsense
I better tell this man he can get a grant.
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/methane_bate.html
I can’t believe I’m treating this as a serious discussion. I guess it’s too early in the day too late in the week to muster adequate sarcastic response.
Anon says:
August 19, 2012 at 3:04 am
Your reference describes a different goal. The 70% recovery refers to the amount of methane which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from decomposing waste. They are concerned with reducing emissions of a greenhouse gas. That has nothing to do with whether enough methane is recovered to produce as much energy as would be consumed collecting the waste and transporting it to a collection/conversion station.
An earlier commenter hit the key issue squarely on the head:
mwhite says:
August 19, 2012 at 2:39 am
[I’m going to take a wild guess here that mwhite does not review grant proposals for the “Unlocking Australia’s Potential” initiative]
There is surely more human than canine fecal waste in Yarra and much of it is probably aready collected through a public sewer system and processed in a central waste treatment facility. If methane from waste recovery makes sense, it makes the most sense at the central facility where much of the waste already goes. So, rather than give Mr. Chew $45,000 to create a new special-purpose poo-power contraption for the city parks, it would be vastly more sensible to simply collect the waste and dump it into the existing sewer/waste treatement system.
Personally, I think worrying about methane release from dog waste decomposition is completely pointless. The total biomass of termites in the world is vastly greater than dogs and humans put together and their gut bacteria are prolific converters of cellulose to methane. Dog poo and cow farts are so far down on the scale of atmospheric methane release it’s laughable.
I guess there are simply no stupid ideas when you are spending other people’s money.
Steve Crook says:
August 19, 2012 at 5:17 am
“However, most people collect the shit in little plastic bags to put it in the bins”
Some may “put it in the bins”, but there seems to be an ever increasing minority of peaple who tie these bags to all manner of objects. Many seem to be hanging from the lower branches of trees.
Brian Johnson uk says:
August 19, 2012 at 5:55 am
“Well in the Surrey Hills UK we we told we had to separate paper and plastic bottles and that existed for years. Now we are told we have to include paper and plastic in the same bin! I suspect that the majority is just burnt/tipped/buried. ”
When they request you to put plastic and paper in the normal bin this indicates that they have a waste incinerator. Paper and plastic are good fuels. Incinerators love plastic-rich waste.
Some poo is more equal than others.
Reading about the endless schemes reported in WUWT gives me a funny feeling as if I’ve been transported back in time to 1970, reading the first issues of The Mother Earth News and The Whole Earth Catalog.