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Engineers from The Denver Zoo have taken the global concern about an energy crisis a step further by developing a method to use animal waste as fuel, reports The Denver Post.
The experts took animal manure and garbage from the zoo’s bins, compressed it into hard pellets, and used it to power a 20-year-old three-wheeled taxi from Thailand.
The pellets are burned under high heat and a lack of oxygen to produce a gas called “syngas”, which contains carbon dioxide and hydrogen.
The gas is used to produce electricity as energy stored in a generator, and used to charge the batteries of the taxi’s motor—which makes the vehicle able to go at a top speed of 16 km/h.
The zoo’s system will convert about 1.5 million pounds of waste — using all of the animal droppings plus 90% of the solid waste produced by visitors and employees — into energy annually, making up for 20% of the zoo’s total energy consumption.
This is not the first time animal or human waste has been used to power a vehicle. In October last year, Japanese toilet manufacturer TOTO designed a three-wheeled motorcycle with a modified WC bowl attached to it that converts the rider’s waste into a biogas fuel.
Watch a Fox21 report:
Comments
Tom
Shit it really goes…