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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

#61

Post by gruez »

celticninja wrote: post #38
cheesysam wrote: post #33

I'm not sure disrupting the ecosystem at the bottom of the pond is an ecologically sound move. Biodiversity is important! Obviously I understand this is a proof of concept and not the solution to fossil fuels.

it probably speeds things up rather than killing them, and you know on the scale of BP pouring millions of oil into the ocean, I reckon what this guy is doing is absoloutley fine and the environmental damage is well within range of what the local environment can cope with and recover from within a reasonably small time frame.

>and you know on the scale of BP pouring millions of oil into the ocean, I reckon what this guy is doing is absoloutley fine and the environmental damage is well within range of what the local environment can cope with and recover from within a reasonably small time frame.

But BP serves millions of customers. If you normalize by that (ie. pollution divided by customers), my guess is that digging up ponds is more environmentally damaging than buying gas at the gas station.

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

#62

Post by adamius »

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?

Is it just me or did anyone else see an opportunity for automating this? He seemed to be working up and down. A fully mechanical / hydraulic actuator could do this.

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

#63

Post by Semiapies »

wombatmobile wrote: post #59

> “Eight hours of hoeing for a twenty kilometer drive will ensure that it will be the best twenty kilometers of your life.” True, and highly disruptive of orthodox economic theory which posits the primacy of convenience.

Or the modern presumption that anyone has a better use for eight hours of their time than hoeing ditches and ponds in order to ride a moped the distance you could walk in half that time.

I'm reminded of the biodiesel people of some years back, the ones who'd each hit all their local fast-food places to ask for waste grease so that they could make enough biodiesel to hit all the local fast-food places the next time.

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

#64

Post by kleton »

There aren't a lot of places that use anaerobic digesters (fermenting waste to methane) to treat wastewater. Anheuser-Busch does it at their breweries because their wastewater is particularly rich. If more municipalities built those at their wastewater treatment plants, then it would be a sizeable amount of carbon-neutral fuel. There are already 1200 municipal wastewater treatment plants in the US that do this according to the EPA, but there are many major cities that do not. https://www.epa.gov/anaerobic-digestion/types-anaerobic-dige...

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

#65

Post by derriz »

ChrisRR wrote: post #48

"He calls it “a quest on keeping the combustion engine alive in a fossil free future”." And why is that a good thing?

That comment seems tongue-in-cheek to me.

But to attempt a serious answer to your question; a large quantity of CH4 is produced in nature which eventually - after about 8 years - turns to CO2 and water in the atmosphere. But carbon in the form of methane is about 30 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

If this hastens the natural process and turns the CH4 into CO2 immediately, then the earth will be subject to less greenhouse effect then just allowing the methane to naturally oxidize.

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

#66

Post by larrydag »

adamius wrote: post #62
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?

Is it just me or did anyone else see an opportunity for automating this? He seemed to be working up and down. A fully mechanical / hydraulic actuator could do this.

I would imagine a good use of a windmill could be use to pump and accumulate.

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

#67

Post by tyingq »

qwertox wrote: post #34

Searching for the terms "secu" and "safe" doesn't yield any results. I know this is more of an art project, but in a photo he's driving through a city. What are the security implications of this? Also searching for "poly" doesn't yield any results, so I'm left to hope that the is using polycarbonate to provide some kind of safety shielding in case things go south. Also not on http://uitsloot.nl/sloot-motor/

The amount of methane to make a 50cc moped travel 20km is likely very little. And the tank is huge, so low pressure.

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

#68

Post by ct0 »

adamius wrote: post #62
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?

Is it just me or did anyone else see an opportunity for automating this? He seemed to be working up and down. A fully mechanical / hydraulic actuator could do this.

He just has to go to a landfill and connect that balloon to a methane release port.

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

#70

Post by ashtonkem »

larrydag wrote: post #66
adamius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or did anyone else see an opportunity for automating this? He seemed to be working up and down. A fully mechanical / hydraulic actuator could do this.

I would imagine a good use of a windmill could be use to pump and accumulate.

For moving a single human being 20km, you could easily use a solar panel and an electric bike.
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