Wastewater Into Energy

fenimor writes "A lot of electric energy could be produced from a city's wastewater, researchers at University of Toronto have discovered. The research revealed that the wastewater contained enough organic material to potentially produce 113 megawatts of electricity - 5 times more than required to operate wastewater treatment plants."

Methane gas

[BrookHarty]

Man I'm dense, I'm wondering how they turned shit into power, had to RTFA to find out its methane gas from microbe processed organic material. 1 More line on the Slashdot topic and I wouldnt have had to read the article, the article was that small....

Re:sad truth

[cpeterso]

if it doesn't turn out to make (or save) money, it will go nowhere. Capitalism (and consumism) is ruining the planet.

Actually, capitalism will SAVE our planet. If people value living on a nice, clean planet, they will pay for such benefits. The problem is not capitalism. The problem is the environment is a market externality. It's the classic tragedy of the commons: everyone uses (up) the environment, but no one PAYS for it. This is usually because governments disallow or dismiss environmental class action lawsuits.

The Soviet Union was on of the world's worst polluters. Today, the US government is the worst polluter in the country. Why are they allowed to pollute? When you write the rules, they don't have to apply to you. For some reason, most environmental and endangered species protection laws DO NOT apply to the US government or military! >:(

Been done for garbage

[cft_128]

They are already doing this for dumps. They have been doing this in Michigan [solutions.ca] using Toronto's imported garbage, and it looks like another one is being developed near Montreal [canoe.ca]. It looks like the Montreal facility will power a paper plant, and if memory serves me correctly -- I can't actually find a link now -- the Michigan dump(s) are selling the power to the grid.

Re:Splashplop!

[TykeClone]

The places with the most economies of scale to take advantage of this are cities (tax credits mean nothing to cities, unless they can sell them) or large livestock farms.

If you want to talk about poop - visit a hog confinement facility.

Re:sad truth

[MarsDefenseMinister]

You're damn right that's capitalism. We all started out living on a nice clean planet. Then the capitalists got ahold of it and polluted parts of it up. And now, if we want to live on a clean planet, here's a capitalist right on schedule, promising to sell us one. And you know he's right, because the commies were terrible polluters. So what's wrong with this picture?