My local landfill growing up had an decent sized methane burn-off flame running 24/7. I would put it on par with a wide open hot air balloon burner. My dad told me it was there to commemorate all the unknown meals that people threw in the trash, so I should always finish my dinner out of respect.
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 combustion engines and fuel from first principles.
It's fine to just go "that's cool" and move on with your life. The guy that made this knows it's not the most efficient use of his time.
Maybe, maybe not. It isn't like most folks can live off of a garden plot of a normal house, if you even have a garden plot.
I cannot cycle 20km fairly leisurely in an hour: I live in a mountainous area, but lived most of my life on flat ground and going uphill is freaking difficult, even if I'm going at a leisurely speed - and sometimes, downhill is brakes all the way down.
And I don't know how much this person drives. Most places I go to are within walking distance, and I'm pretty sure 8 hours of ditches would be less work than an entire summer of gardening (where I'd have to rent a plot, since I'm an apartment dweller). The majority of my foodstuffs are going to still be driven in, too.
I imagine he could improve it a lot. All that wood is making it pretty heavy. And it's a late 70s-era 4-stroke 50cc scooter. Something newer is probably more efficient.
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.
Agreed this was one of the first things I thought outside the balance of energy required for the whole thing doesn't make much sense.
What are we supposed to take away from this project other than its kind of neat and that methane occurs natural in the environment? We are not about to mining ponds for methane - we already have plenty of it accessible at LFG, waste water treatment facilities, methane from O&G operations.
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.
Lots of funny wordplay there: uitstoot = emissions but uitsloot translates as 'from the ditch'. grasmaaier = lawnmower ('grass mower'), but 'gasmaaier' = grass mower running on gas.
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...
No, you probably can't. To make biogas on any reasonable scale is at least a village-scale thing; a single family/household cannot easily produce sufficient raw-material to manufacture useful amounts of methane unless you commit to growing biomass just for conversion. (See also another comment below where livestock are involved, so another path to a sufficiency of raw material.)
I was very keen on the idea of making my own biogas (for cooking) when starting out in my self-sufficiency efforts some >25y ago, and the entire sewage system is designed to make conversion to biogas production easy, but the reality is it's just not ever going to produce any significant quantity of methane without some serious supplementation. Add to that, biogas digesters slow down significantly in Winter, even here where we never get freezing temps. In places that experience serious Winters you need to figure out ways to heat(!) the digester to keep it working lest the raw material inputs back up and cause... a mess that will thaw in Springtime with (cough) challenging results.
Growing up, my grandparents' house had a biogas plant, powered by cowdung (they had anywhere between 6 and 8 cows and bulls at the time). Looked something like this: https://www.peda.gov.in/nnbomp
Most of the cooking and some of the lighting for the house was done using this thing. Most of the bigger houses in the village had one.
You can probably do that, but don't delude yourself that you're doing anything for the environment.
Methane itself is a very potent greenhouse gas. Everything you do with methane is only environmentally friendly if you have a very low leakage rate. Whatever homegrown DIY biogas facility you're creating very likely does not do that.
Biogas is by definition a product of excess biomass production. The net potential can be estimate by the net agricultural (and perhaps forestry) primary production within a country.
To a rough first approximation based on food intake, biomass is the residual of undigested food caloric energy in the waste stream, which I believe runs at about 25% of the input calories.
You can estimate this for a population by taking roughly 2,000 kilocalories/day * population * 0.25. Ignoring any collection or processing losses, for the US this translates to about 700,000 GJ, 110,000 barreloil, or 200 GWh electricity (assuming no generation or transmission losses, in actuality about 1/3 this amount).
Actual US energy consumption is closer to 45 million barreloil day (equivalent, only 18.3 million barrels of actual oil), or roughly 400 times the maximum amount of energy available in food waste.
There may be other biomass wastestreams available (say: the input feedstock for livestock, pork, dairy, and poultry), though this won't add up to the 400-fold increase necessary as typically the trophic loss is about 10x in a given foodchain level. Even were all US food consumption in the form of animal products, the wastestream would be 40x short of present energy consumption levels.
It's not clear if the artist here is aware of what they're demonstrating, but the process of methane harvesting employed is not dissimilar to how fossil fuels formed in the first place, with biomass settling to the bottoms of shallow seas and, over the course of hundreds of millions of years, being transformed to petroleum and natural gas.
We're presently consuming that bounty at roughly 5 million times its rate of formation. The fact that it takes 8 hours to produce fuel sufficient for 20km of travel is actually millions of times more efficient than the net energy cost of fossil fuels.
Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) details this with exquisite clarity.
Definitely. This is an art project (ArteZ is an art school in The Netherlands) and the naming suggests a lot of fun!
- Slootmotor: already explained in article
- Uitsloot: pun on exhaust gas and ditch
- Plompstation: pun on gas station and pond/water
Well... if it gets a few people to learn more about this topic then that's serious enough for me. Many have very strong opinions about energy and fossil fuels, but few really understand what they're talking about. For example they don't understand that natural gas is actually a very potent greenhouse gas and he's doing the world a favor by burning it. On a larger scale, we could certainly do more to stop methane from reaching the atmosphere, where it's economical.
Agreed, the term "inventor" in the headline makes it seem unnecessarily naive.
But even if it's art, I suspect that some objective benchmark comparison fits very well: assuming that you had serfs to do the dirty work for you, at eight man-hours for 20 km this would be clearly more efficient than having them carry you around in a sedan. And only slightly less efficient than a rickshaw. Great way to put our fossil every consumption into perspective!
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.
I don't understand what the security implications might be? It's just the normal gas that's available from mains gas everywhere, in a low-pressure tank. Probably no more dangerous than existing CNG/LPG vehicles.
IIRC the average male farts 20 times a day. If he installed a voluntary workplace "collector", he would improve the office environment considerably (as well as improving climate change) and harvest methane for free.
For that special motorcyclist: how about a direct butt plug-in? A former co-worker especially fond of flatulent foods could likely get 10 km from a bean burrito.
Isn't this just a low-scale biogas-collector+engine? Biogas is already used in farming and commecial transportation since some decades. So the point here is that there are also other sources we can collect it from?
This remindes me of those guys who collect grease from diners and others foodshops to refine it into fuel for their cars.
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.
Given that this involves disturbing the bottom of the pond, and that burning methane still produces CO2, this may actually be less environmentally friendly than just using gas.
> 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.
Wood gas was really common and used to power all kinds of lighting before electrification. FEMA even created and distributed plans[0] for a Gasifier in the late 80's. You can find the PDF all over the internet, I think its a pretty cool looking project.
A solar powered still mounted to the back that dumps methanol and ethanol into a tank would be interesting depending on where you live. If you live in an area with a lot of fruit (California Central Valley) you could ride around for little cost.
What is the best way to deal with a pond lined with soil taken from dry ground, which emits methane bubbles nonstop when underwater? I'm concerned it's hurting life in the water.
Methane is produced from anaerobic bacteria. If you add enough oxygen to the water and make sure the pond doesn't stratify, aerobic bacteria should take over and produce CO2 instead.
Are we allowed to just dig up river bottoms? In many places you can get in serious trouble for disturbing wetlands. Were there any permits needed for this?
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.
ortusdux|4 years ago
tolerant_sol|4 years ago
dv_dt|4 years ago
helsinkiandrew|4 years ago
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?
Cthulhu_|4 years ago
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 combustion engines and fuel from first principles.
It's fine to just go "that's cool" and move on with your life. The guy that made this knows it's not the most efficient use of his time.
Xophmeister|4 years ago
Broken_Hippo|4 years ago
I cannot cycle 20km fairly leisurely in an hour: I live in a mountainous area, but lived most of my life on flat ground and going uphill is freaking difficult, even if I'm going at a leisurely speed - and sometimes, downhill is brakes all the way down.
And I don't know how much this person drives. Most places I go to are within walking distance, and I'm pretty sure 8 hours of ditches would be less work than an entire summer of gardening (where I'd have to rent a plot, since I'm an apartment dweller). The majority of my foodstuffs are going to still be driven in, too.
tyingq|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
adamius|4 years ago
cheesysam|4 years ago
Obviously I understand this is a proof of concept and not the solution to fossil fuels.
boringg|4 years ago
What are we supposed to take away from this project other than its kind of neat and that methane occurs natural in the environment? We are not about to mining ponds for methane - we already have plenty of it accessible at LFG, waste water treatment facilities, methane from O&G operations.
celticninja|4 years ago
jacquesm|4 years ago
kleton|4 years ago
toomanybeersies|4 years ago
The main environmental benefit isn't actually from the carbon footprint of biogas, it's the reduced methane and NOx emissions from capturing the gas.
[1] https://www.melbournewater.com.au/water-data-and-education/e...
fy20|4 years ago
https://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/other-renew...
mikro2nd|4 years ago
I was very keen on the idea of making my own biogas (for cooking) when starting out in my self-sufficiency efforts some >25y ago, and the entire sewage system is designed to make conversion to biogas production easy, but the reality is it's just not ever going to produce any significant quantity of methane without some serious supplementation. Add to that, biogas digesters slow down significantly in Winter, even here where we never get freezing temps. In places that experience serious Winters you need to figure out ways to heat(!) the digester to keep it working lest the raw material inputs back up and cause... a mess that will thaw in Springtime with (cough) challenging results.
shash|4 years ago
Most of the cooking and some of the lighting for the house was done using this thing. Most of the bigger houses in the village had one.
hannob|4 years ago
Methane itself is a very potent greenhouse gas. Everything you do with methane is only environmentally friendly if you have a very low leakage rate. Whatever homegrown DIY biogas facility you're creating very likely does not do that.
dredmorbius|4 years ago
To a rough first approximation based on food intake, biomass is the residual of undigested food caloric energy in the waste stream, which I believe runs at about 25% of the input calories.
You can estimate this for a population by taking roughly 2,000 kilocalories/day * population * 0.25. Ignoring any collection or processing losses, for the US this translates to about 700,000 GJ, 110,000 barreloil, or 200 GWh electricity (assuming no generation or transmission losses, in actuality about 1/3 this amount).
Actual US energy consumption is closer to 45 million barreloil day (equivalent, only 18.3 million barrels of actual oil), or roughly 400 times the maximum amount of energy available in food waste.
There may be other biomass wastestreams available (say: the input feedstock for livestock, pork, dairy, and poultry), though this won't add up to the 400-fold increase necessary as typically the trophic loss is about 10x in a given foodchain level. Even were all US food consumption in the form of animal products, the wastestream would be 40x short of present energy consumption levels.
It's not clear if the artist here is aware of what they're demonstrating, but the process of methane harvesting employed is not dissimilar to how fossil fuels formed in the first place, with biomass settling to the bottoms of shallow seas and, over the course of hundreds of millions of years, being transformed to petroleum and natural gas.
We're presently consuming that bounty at roughly 5 million times its rate of formation. The fact that it takes 8 hours to produce fuel sufficient for 20km of travel is actually millions of times more efficient than the net energy cost of fossil fuels.
Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) details this with exquisite clarity.
https://www-legacy.dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_C...
ada1981|4 years ago
maCDzP|4 years ago
rambambram|4 years ago
Cthulhu_|4 years ago
the_rectifier|4 years ago
NotSwift|4 years ago
trompetenaccoun|4 years ago
usrusr|4 years ago
But even if it's art, I suspect that some objective benchmark comparison fits very well: assuming that you had serfs to do the dirty work for you, at eight man-hours for 20 km this would be clearly more efficient than having them carry you around in a sedan. And only slightly less efficient than a rickshaw. Great way to put our fossil every consumption into perspective!
qwertox|4 years ago
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/
pjc50|4 years ago
tyingq|4 years ago
aaron695|4 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxmQ3vFyVY
fettucini|4 years ago
For that special motorcyclist: how about a direct butt plug-in? A former co-worker especially fond of flatulent foods could likely get 10 km from a bean burrito.
1MachineElf|4 years ago
fleaaaa|4 years ago
slightwinder|4 years ago
This remindes me of those guys who collect grease from diners and others foodshops to refine it into fuel for their cars.
anfractuosity|4 years ago
wombatmobile|4 years ago
True, and highly disruptive of orthodox economic theory which posits the primacy of convenience.
Semiapies|4 years ago
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.
jasonhansel|4 years ago
rualca|4 years ago
https://unece.org/challenge
emsign|4 years ago
This shows the true cost of using fossil fuels has to be payed by something else (our planet) but not by its users.
lifeisstillgood|4 years ago
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html
Due to the need for oil (major cause of second world war anyway) Nazi Germany produce 1/2 million cars run on wood gas.
(Had to google this but just remembered the image from "The Knowledge" well worth a read: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Knowledge-Rebuild-World-After-Apoca...)
cartoonworld|4 years ago
Youtube is full of weird wood gas car projects such as this pickup truck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFw3Agg7SM
I don't see how these could be street legal in general, but pretty fun.
[0] https://survivalring.org/pdf/fema_wood_gas_generator.pdf
bserge|4 years ago
It's actually more interesting than I thought!
WaitWaitWha|4 years ago
What was invented?
Also, on a side note this sort of "environmental solution" reminds me of the 1970's beached whale disposal in Oregon.
edit: reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
smoyer|4 years ago
okareaman|4 years ago
nyanpasu64|4 years ago
londons_explore|4 years ago
Add a fountain to aerate the water to speed it up.
adrianN|4 years ago
bullen|4 years ago
aaron695|4 years ago
Gas bubbles through the water so the engine can't send fire back through to the gas bag.
Cthulhu_|4 years ago
sandworm101|4 years ago
toomanybeersies|4 years ago
knowledge-coin|4 years ago
calebm|4 years ago
dheera|4 years ago
Hnrobert42|4 years ago
catchmeifyoucan|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
andrew_|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
ChrisRR|4 years ago
And why is that a good thing?
derriz|4 years ago
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.
kumarvvr|4 years ago
fidesomnes|4 years ago
[deleted]