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)
rogerknights says:
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.
Might make more sense to have the “separate compartment” be an anaerobic digester. Though you’d want a petrol engined truck to start with.
Ken Harvey says:
More than sixty years ago it was common practice for city sewage works to collect their bio gas and use this to run heaters for their digesters. Heating sped the digestion process and saved on capital outlays for additional digesters.
It also saves money on paying for gas to heat the water… The other alternative is CHP units which provide hot water and electricity.
Another looney green scheme http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/scientists-want-more-protection-for-oceans/story-e6frfq80-1226453766559
Rent seeking and Mannure go hand in hand.
Climate consensus fanatics, eugenics and 911 truthers are in many ways the same.
This dog poop guy has just figured a way, like Gore or Mann or Oxburgh, to make a buck off of the fear mongering.
@Anon
The issue here isn’t that it isn’t technically feasible to convert waste to methane. The issue is the absurdity of the proposal. This guy is proudly claiming that he can make 3800 liters (about 4 cubic meters) of methane from a year’s worth of dog crap. I’m sure he could, even if he could collect it all. But for chrissakes !!!! 4 CUBIC METERS … IN A YEAR !!!!!
I work for an oil and gas company that produces gas for the transport and sale of LNG to Japan. We power about 25% of Tokyo’s needs. We produce and liquefy 30 MILLION cubic meters of gas PER DAY !!! Do you get the picture ?? 30 million every f$%&ing day !!! And this idiot is proud to come up with an idea that spends a year collecting and processing dog crap to deliver 4 in a year.
And you wonder why people think that environmentalists aren’t living in the real world. Its because they aren’t.
Kit P says: August 19, 2012 at 8:24 am
The ratio of N, P, K in the organic fertilizer (in context, referring to processed Dog Poo) is perfect for many food and non-food applications.
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Alas, but….a minor quibble.
Doggie Poo et al are low in Nitrogen. The intestines remove the nitrogen compounds because they are necessary for life. That leaves Doggie Poo a poor source for Nitrogen. The end point for Nitrogen in the body is that it is excreted in the urine. So, to be a more complete fertilizer you would have to add Dog Piss to the effluent stream.
Bird Poo, on the other hand is different and, at the risk of being stoned as a specie-ist, superior. Anyone who has had a Parakeet will know of what I speak. The dark part of Bird Poo is the excretion from the digestive tract. The white part, on the other hand, is their equivalent Bird Piss. Birds developed to conserve water and. frankly, Pissing is not very water efficient. Bat Poo also has a high Nitrogen content which makes Guano superior to Dog Poo et al as a fertilizer.
So, to make the process efficient, I would suggest catheters and colostomy bags on dogs to harvest this valuable product. And maybe cats, although I doubt that theywould hold still for it.
The mind boggles!
(On occasion I have explained the superiority of Bird Poo over Horse Puckey (Manure). I might suggest that this is better not done during lunch. )
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Anon says:
August 19, 2012 at 3:04 am
Sorry to poo poo your scepticism guys….
Anon, I totally agree that methane digestion is a valid technology.
Drive-in movie theaters are also a valid and proven technology. The problem is the business model. Open a drive-in and you will lose all your money.
The cost of collecting the doggie doo is the killer. Take a small area of ground with a high “deposit rate” like the 100m diameter oval where I walk the dogs 2-3 times a week. I rather doubt that the total gleanings from this area would keep an Olympic torch alight 24/7.
Methane digesters are highly efficient at processing human waste because the collection infrastructure is already in place. For example when a digestor is attached to a sewage works, or a large building or factory. (The Capitol in Washington comes to mind as an excellent source.)
Brown is the new Green.
To all those naysayers who mock the “approximate figure” of 6078 dogs in the district of Yarra:
Well, of course that is an approximate figure. If he had meant it to be precise, he would have stated “6078.00 dogs”.
Slightly off-topic (but maybe not).
Back in the early 2000s when Europe was concerned about the U.S. unilaterally attacking Iraq, a curious phenomenon was noted in the German city of Dusseldorf. In those days, maybe still, there was no law against citizens escorting their dogs to city parks to relieve themselves of their burdens. One dawn, early morning dog walkers were amazed to discover small American flags displayed across the wide lawn of a local park. As far as the eye could see, each of the little clumps of doggy-doo leftover from the previous evening’s walks had been adorned with a tiny American flag, the kind used in displays of cocktail party snacks. Each flag was one inch tall by an inch and a half across, glued to a little toothpick. There were hundreds of them.
The local police were unable to discover who had set these out and why, but the practice quickly caught on, and parks throughout the region were later visited in the same way. No one was ever caught. It being Germany, there were a lot of little clumps requiring such adornment.
This remains one of my fondest memories of the George W. Bush Administration. The picture remains in my mind, and I laugh each time I remember it.
Steve Tabor says:
August 20, 2012 at 3:31 pm
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I seem to miss your point if there was one.
@Steamboat Jack
I love it, a reasonable argument. Just wrong.
“Doggie Poo et al are low in Nitrogen. ”
Maybe so but in an AD, you are growing bacteria which are very high in nitrogen while removing the carbon to biogas as CO2 and CH4. You are correct that bird droppings are very hot or high in nitorgen. More fertilizer less biogas.
So you have to know you stuff. It sounds like Steamboat Jack does not know stuff from shinola. Not exactly how us old navy guys would put.
A report on a dairy farm AD reported way too much biogas for the number of cows. Shredded paper was used for bedding.
The point here is there are all kinds of solutions if you look for them.
Kit P@7:27 says: ““Doggie Poo et al are low in Nitrogen. ”
Maybe so but in an AD, you are growing bacteria which are very high in nitrogen while removing the carbon to biogas as CO2 and CH4. You are correct that bird droppings are very hot or high in nitorgen. More fertilizer less biogas. ”
So if you put nitrogen-deficient dog feces into an anaerobic digester, brewing up a batch of nitrogen-rich bacteria, whence comes the nitrogen? It has to come from somewhere.
I think we just found a way to power those ocean-water atmospheric-pumping ships. Just man the ships with 2,000 dogs and you’ve got free energy!!!
(I’m not a real atmospheric climate scientists, didn’t go to Harvard or UVa, so, my numbers of dogs per poo per cloud may be a bit off)
Aside from the comical value of this post. Even if there were some end use, wouldn’t it be far more efficient to put dog waste down the already existing sewarge system that runs on water+gravity and collect the sludge all in one place, ie the sewerage works?
MrV, that’s just common sense, but no grant money there.
Electricity generation from sewage waste and the creation of ‘biogas’ which can be injected into the national gas grid is widespread in the UK – and increasing.
See here for example – plans to produce 20% of the electricity the company use from the waste they process.
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/about-us/10950.htm
In Exeter UK they have been using AD on sewage to produce gas since 1895 – in 1900 they ran the street lights off it!
2 million homes in northern India use AD from what their cowsheds produce to supply their cooking gas.
If you’ve got to process the poo or manure anyway, why not get electric and gas out of it? Not all renewable energy is a waste of space….
Wait, wait! 1,500,000 pounds of poo makes ONLY 3800 L of methane? That’s only 6 pounds of gas. A yield of 0.0004%. It’s not worth even thinking about.