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Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

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Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#171

Post by 71a54xd »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #74
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #17

> Eight hours of hoeing in a ditch supplies him with enough fuel to ride his vehicle for 20 km Hmm, this is an art project but you can cycle 20km fairly leisurely in an hour. 8 hours of toiling in the ditches probably might be better used growing vegetables so your food isn’t being driven in?

I know HN comments have a knack for trying to min/max and optimize something posted, but honestly that's not the point here. He's proving that it's possible to harvest methane from ponds, enough to power a moped. OF COURSE there's more efficient ways to get around, this isn't an attack on anyone's intellect or common sense and there's no need to react to getting nerdsniped by going "well ackchyually" and reinventing…

"nerdsniped" is my new favorite word - thank you for this post haha

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#172

Post by toomanybeersies »

lostlogin wrote: post #133
toomanybeersies wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the day, there's just not a lot of energy in human waste. Poop is what's left after your body has extract all the energy it can from food.

I don’t think you are correct. A lot of places spread it on crop fields historically and many still do. It can be treated to remove (reduce?) the risk of disease transmission. Animal manure is very good for plants and many gardeners seek out chicken, horse or cow manure.

Manure is used as a source of nitrogen for crops, not energy. Plants usually get their energy from the sun.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#173

Post by kyriakos »

oh_sigh wrote: post #110
danuker wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step. Even a little helps.

With the obesity epidemic it is probably better to tell people they can just compost their food if there is too much and they can't eat it. And then cook a little less next time. I keep 100% of foodstuff out of my trash, and an added benefit is that you never get stinky trash that needs to be taken out. I take my trash out every 2 weeks and it never smells at all.

How do you deal with meat leftovers? You can compost plant remains but meat becomes another issue.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#174

Post by TrevorJ »

oh_sigh wrote: post #170
TrevorJ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uneaten food went into the fridge for my next meal as a kid.

Sorry you had abusive parents

Eating leftovers is perfectly fine, and a hell of a lot less wasteful than dumping it in the compost.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#175

Post by emsign »

> It takes the young Dutchman roughly eight hours to collect enough fuel to fill the tank and ride his moped for about 20 km. This is not comparable to the convenience of filling up a gasoline tank or charging an electric battery, but that is exactly the point.

This shows the true cost of using fossil fuels has to be payed by something else (our planet) but not by its users.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#176

Post by jhgb »

yunohn wrote: post #141
jhgb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you'd still be able to do this in a local municipal biogas plant more efficiently. It would also scale better should you wish to run more than several mopeds like this.

Again, that’s centralized. Less central than your previous example, but still requires a dependency on their municipal plant and power lines. Not sure why this is a confusing concept.

The concept is not at all confusing, it's just useless. For load balancing, efficiency, and reliability reasons, a microgrid is more desirable than isolated households in pretty much all circumstances.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#177

Post by King-Aaron »

krab wrote: post #109
b112 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was growing up, we walked that to school each day, uphill, in a snowstorm!

Oh, you lucky bastards! I could dream of walking to school. We were taking lessons in the snowstorm.

Luxury!

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#178

Post by fm2606 »

TrevorJ wrote: post #174
oh_sigh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry you had abusive parents

Eating leftovers is perfectly fine, and a hell of a lot less wasteful than dumping it in the compost.

IMO leftovers taste better than the original meal.

Re: Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his moped

#179

Post by danuker »

kyriakos wrote: post #173
oh_sigh wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the obesity epidemic it is probably better to tell people they can just compost their food if there is too much and they can't eat it. And then cook a little less next time. I keep 100% of foodstuff out of my trash, and an added benefit is that you never get stinky trash that needs to be taken out. I take my trash out every 2 weeks and it never smells at all.

How do you deal with meat leftovers? You can compost plant remains but meat becomes another issue.

Find a neighbor with a carnivorous pet.

Alternatively, eat less (or no) meat; it's good for the environment: https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

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