[HN Gopher] Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds...
___________________________________________________________________
Inventor harvests methane gas from ditches and ponds to power his
moped
Author : rudenoise
Score : 231 points
Date : 2021-07-13 09:08 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.notechmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.notechmagazine.com)
| NotSwift wrote:
| Please note that this is an art project and not a serious
| invention.
| usrusr wrote:
| 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!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Never is it claimed to be a GOOD invention, :p
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| 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.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Next step, tank it directly from the cow.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I googled quickly and the summary says "A single cow on
| average produces between 70 and 120 kg of methane per
| year", so that would actually probably be feasible. Getting
| it would the challenge though.
|
| That said, if I were to over-engineer this, they could make
| barns with a closed air system that filters out any methane
| produced.
| NotSwift wrote:
| This might not be as far fetched as you assume. Large
| farms in the Netherlands are already required to have
| some filtering systems for reducing the output of
| Nitrogen-based compounds.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > he's doing the world a favor by burning it
|
| i.e. transforming it into carbon dioxide and water - both
| greenhouse gasses.
| Xylakant wrote:
| True, but methane has a much stronger greenhouse effects
| than the resulting CO2 and water vapor. So that's still
| net-positive.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Actually, H2O is the most potent common greenhouse gas,
| then methane, and then CO2. If you burn methane (CH4) you
| end up with 2 molecules of H20 and one of CO2. Which to
| me would seem to be worse than one molecule of CH4 - but
| I might be wrong. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable
| could comment?
| rjmunro wrote:
| I thought that clouds reflected sunlight back to space
| and had a cooling effect. Interesting that I may be wrong
| about that.
| konschubert wrote:
| The amount of water in the atmosphere is probably
| independent of how much water vapour we emit.
| labster wrote:
| Outside the microscale, you're essentially right. But
| water emissions have outsized effects as contrails from
| jets, by causing ice cloud condensation where it wouldn't
| naturally occur. The heating is quite significant, as we
| discovered in studies of the September 11 air travel
| shutdown.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Water is the only gas of the three that condenses in
| atmospheric conditions. The total amount of water vapor
| that air (or the atmosphere) can hold depends on
| temperature more than anything else, excess water remains
| in the atmosphere for days only. This seems like good
| overview.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11652-climate-
| myths-c...
| labster wrote:
| But ultimately on Earth, even in the dry polar latitudes,
| there's certainly enough water to absorb everything in
| the H2O spectrum lines. The atmosphere is lousy with
| water, generally 1-3%, meaning it is usually the third
| most abundant gas.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Sure, but the question here is "does the water vapor from
| burning Methane add to the vapor in the atmosphere?",
| which is different from "is water vapor the most
| important contributor to the greenhouse effect?"
| vitus wrote:
| Water is the biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect
| (~60% of the total), but that's because it's the most
| abundant by far (wikipedia indicates about 0.25% globally
| [0], _by mass_ , which translates to something like half
| a percent by volume; meanwhile CO2 is 0.04% and CH4 is
| 0.0002% by volume). And as others mentioned, it's mostly
| not human-generated, and it stays in the air for a much
| shorter period of time (on the order of days instead of
| years or centuries because of a localized phenomenon
| called, um, rain).
|
| Methane, on the other hand, is much more than 2x as
| potent as CO2 (estimates range from 21x to 40x the
| warming effect over the span of 100 years, but most are
| centered around 25x, when taking into consideration that
| that methane's atmospheric lifetime is only ~12 years).
|
| You could argue that there's a 3x multiplier in the
| comparable difference in weight, but you've still got an
| 8x multiplier. Even if we assume that CO2 and H2O are
| comparable in terms of warming potential by volume (it's
| hard to measure H2O for various reasons), there's still a
| 3x multiplier over that 100-year period, compared to 1x
| CO2 and 2x H2O.
|
| Why would some molecules be more potent than others? It's
| a matter of the infrared wavelengths they absorb, but in
| particular how they cover the spectrum relative to other
| atmospheric gases. CO2 absorbs strongly in parts of the
| spectrum that H2O absorbs more weakly, and CH4 absorbs
| strongly in parts that aren't covered by either CO2 or
| H2O [2].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Com
| positio...
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-
| gases#C... - "Pound for pound, the comparative impact of
| CH4 is 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period."
|
| [2] https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/gre
| enhouse... which depicts the absorption spectra for
| various gases on the right: https://www.acs.org/content/a
| cs/en/climatescience/greenhouse...
| labster wrote:
| Water is the most powerful greenhouse gas because it's so
| abundant. Because it is so abundant though, the
| absorption lines are pretty much maxed. Besides the
| available quantum states (1 and 2 atom molecules cannot
| be GHGs) which make CFCs more powerful, the main impact
| on GHG strength is relative abundance. Methane is rare,
| so every atom is important, CO2 is uncommon, and H2O is
| common. I guess that makes CFCs a foil, lol.
| Scarblac wrote:
| H2O turns into a sort of gravity-propelled fluid form
| known as "rain", and then its greenhouse effect in the
| atmosphere ends quickly.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| 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.
| rualca wrote:
| Methane is estimated to be an order of magnitude or two more
| powerful than CO2.
|
| https://unece.org/challenge
| jasonhansel wrote:
| That's if you release the methane, not if you burn it;
| assuming you burn _all_ of it, the resulting CO2 is the
| bigger concern.
| rualca wrote:
| > That's if you release the methane, not if you burn
|
| You're talking about a guy who is trapping methane that's
| already being released and burning it.
| fettucini wrote:
| 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.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I wonder if "TailPipe" is trademarked.
| fleaaaa wrote:
| Feel the nitro punch of acceleration.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Relating to the methane etc. in bogs -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp sounds
| intriguing, curious how common it is.
| ortusdux wrote:
| 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.
| tolerant_sol wrote:
| As a kid I am sure that made more sense than "to save the
| planet a little".
| danuker wrote:
| A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step. Even a
| little helps.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| OTOH the 80/20 rule for optimization says to not waste
| effort on tiny inefficiencies.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| 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.
| Robadob wrote:
| My parents regularly throw out spare food (bread, meat,
| fruit) onto their lawn, local wildlife (birds, foxes,
| hedgehogs) always take it all within 24h.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| Not much wilflife about it then.
| solomonb wrote:
| I seperate my compostables as well. I don't even use a
| trash bag in my bin anymore. My trash bin fill up so
| slowly that I go months without taking it to the street.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| My uneaten food went into the fridge for my next meal as
| a kid.
| dv_dt wrote:
| My local landfill now taps that methane and powers generators
| with it.
| ortusdux wrote:
| That's what the landfill transitioned to. I believe it now
| powers all the buildings onsite.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| When I was still at school, I had occasion to tour the
| local sewage treatment facility as a field trip. They had
| equipment to power all the buildings on site with captured
| methane, but did not use it, because _it was cheaper to
| just buy electricity_ from the grid supplier than it was to
| operate and maintain the generator with free methane fuel.
| (The methane was still burned.)
| simonh wrote:
| The awful thing is that the greenhouse gas emissions
| involved in manufacturing the generator and maintaining
| it might have been significantly greater than the
| emissions due to the grid electricity. Not all these
| decisions are simple.
| tempestn wrote:
| Better might be to capture the methane and use it to
| supplement residential natural gas. Here in BC you have
| the option to convert any percentage of your residential
| NG usage to 'biogas' AKA methane. (You just need to pay
| the higher cost for the gas.) Technically it doesn't
| change what comes out of your pipes, but they purchase
| and inject into the system an aggregate amount of biogas
| equal to what's purchased by customers. So you're
| directly offsetting burning of NG by instead using the
| methane that would, best case, be burnt anyway. Of course
| there is some waste in storage and transportation and
| such still, but seems like a win. At least, until all the
| 'free' landfill methane gets used up, and people start
| creating methane farms.
| ars wrote:
| It's hardly clear that building, installing, and
| maintaining all the equipment necessary to do that would
| require less energy than the methane they are wasting.
|
| To a rough approximation, the fact that no one found it
| financially worthwhile already tells you that you need a
| ton of resources to make it happen.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| "I hope he paid taxes." Snarky Californian take.
| knowledge-coin wrote:
| https://youtu.be/cvqUgdtbiZQ
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| That guy has the perfect, steam punk look to go with his vaporium
| power autobike.
| fy20 wrote:
| If you want to do this seriously, you could probably do quite
| well by creating biogas from kitchen scraps:
|
| https://www.motherearthnews.com/renewable-energy/other-renew...
| ada1981 wrote:
| I'm curious what moped km per day one could generate with human
| waste, food and yard scraps.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Here's my rough estimation:
|
| Anaerobic digestion of food and green waste yields ~0.22
| toe/tonne of biogas, and manure yields up to 0.04 toe/tonne
| [1]. (toe = tonnes of oil equivalent)
|
| Australia wastes 300 kg/year/capita of food [2] (across the
| entire supply chain, from farm through fork)
|
| Americans generate 90 kg/year/capita of yard waste [3]
|
| That's 1.07 kg/day, for 0.24 kg of oil equiv.
|
| The average adult produces ~0.4 kg/day of manure [4], for
| 0.02 kg of oil equiv.
|
| All up that's 0.26 kgoe/day, or 0.3 L [5] of petrol.
|
| The most efficient scooter I could find (Honda Activa-i) does
| around 70 km/L (165 mpg)
|
| So optimistically, you could generate 21 moped kilometers per
| day of biogas. In more normal units, that 3 kW/h or 11 MJ.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/outlook-for-biogas-and-
| biomethan...
|
| [2] https://www.environment.gov.au/protection/waste/food-
| waste
|
| [3] https://www.waste360.com/mag/waste_yard_waste_4
|
| [4] https://www.emedicinehealth.com/ask_how_much_does_poop_we
| igh...
|
| [5] 1 kgoe = 1.16 L of petrol
| hannob wrote:
| 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.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| If you're collecting something that would be produced anyway,
| it's going to be a net bonus.
| adrianN wrote:
| A well aerated compost pile would likely produce less
| Methane.
| hannob wrote:
| Ideally your kitchen waste would go into a facility that
| properly handles it and will use it for energy production,
| but in a properly controlled environment (and if that
| energy production is biogas by avoiding methane leakage as
| good as possible).
|
| Of course whether that happens depends a lot on where
| you're living.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Although our municipal green waste gets converted to
| compost, I recently found out that there is a food waste
| to energy plant in my city [1]. Going by their numbers, a
| home can be powered for a year with 25 tonnes of food
| waste, or 70 kg a day.
|
| The two largest sewerage treatment plants also capture
| and generate electricity from biogas [2].
|
| [1] https://www.yvw.com.au/faults-works/planned-
| works/completed-...
|
| [2] https://www.melbournewater.com.au/water-data-and-
| education/e...
| hannob wrote:
| I think in Germany this is pretty standard (both turning
| organic waste into biogas and collecting biogas at sewage
| treatment facilities).
|
| And tbh not treating organic waste as some form of
| resource should be considered a scandal these days, and
| the only valid discussion to be had should be how to use
| it (my bet would be that in the long term that will be
| chemicals and not energy). There is legitimately a lot of
| talk about the landuse issues of bioenergy, but using
| organic waste doesn't have any of those problems. It
| should be an absolute nobrainer.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| 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.
| shash wrote:
| 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.
| kleton wrote:
| 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...
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| The energy generated from biogas recovery at Melbourne's two
| main sewerage plants (~100 GWh) isn't even enough to make them
| net generators [1].
|
| 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...
| noaccnt wrote:
| Ya, but I would guess the story is a bit more complicated.
| Consider (off the top of my head):
|
| I imagine there's a real concentration problem there. Sewage
| is incredibly diluted if you think about it (divide your
| estimate of how much organic waste you generate by the amount
| of water used in your water bill).
|
| If, instead, houses had grey water systems (i.e. the sink in
| you bathroom is used to fill up your toilet tank), or if
| black waters had a separate sewer (sure, not feasible in
| suburbia), the energy budget would change considerably.
|
| Either way, the affluent is full if nutrients even if we
| can't recover the energy. Nutrients our soil is rapidly being
| depleted of (thanks to our modern use of sewers!)
| pchristensen wrote:
| affluent -> effluent. Affluent means wealthy.
| [deleted]
| noaccnt wrote:
| thnx
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| 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.
| noaccnt wrote:
| That's a key qualifier though, energy we can extract.
|
| I don't think energy recovery from sewage is feasible,
| not in the short term, not with our current
| infrastructure. But either way we should be treating our
| waste more deferentially in an attempt to recover the
| minerals 6 billion people poop every day. Except for
| water, everything in pee and poop is valuable if
| recovered (urea ->energy, phosphate ->mineral, sulphur
| ->mineral, starch ->energy)
|
| Instead it all gets dumped to the oceans and the ocean
| dies from too much nutrients
| lostlogin wrote:
| 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.
| istjohn wrote:
| I imagine it also greatly improves the air quality for anyone
| down wind from the treatment plants.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Seems like learning about the bio system and setting up a methane
| producing aquarium at home will be easier.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I dig this - his travel is powered by his work ethic. Love to see
| it.
| bullen wrote:
| What is the yellow liquid:
| http://move.rupy.se/file/slootmotor3.png
| aaron695 wrote:
| It will be a flame trap.
|
| Gas bubbles through the water so the engine can't send fire
| back through to the gas bag.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Probably motor oil, these mopeds normally run on a fuel/oil
| mixture.
| bullen wrote:
| True, so he injects the motor oil with the gas so the
| cylinder doesn't jam?
|
| But has he prooved there is only lubrication oil in there,
| oil also burns, maybe the methane bubble is just for show and
| he has actually converted the engine to some sort of
| diesel/ethanol/any other oil engine! ;D
|
| I want to se the engine stop when the ballon is empty! :\
|
| Also now I watched the video: he spends more energy
| collecting the gas than it would have taken him to use a
| regular bike. But fun idea.
| cartoonworld wrote:
| Moped is a 2-stroke engine, the fuel is also the lubricant,
| It won't combust on oil alone.
| calebm wrote:
| I've heard of people collecting methane gas from composting
| toilets. It would probably be a big improvement.
| dheera wrote:
| Read the title at first as "Investor harvests ..." and was like
| holy shit an investor that actually understands how to build
| something ....
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I both read and watched the video.
|
| 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: referencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale _
| okareaman wrote:
| 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.
| cheesysam wrote:
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| 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.
| celticninja wrote:
| 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.
| tiagod wrote:
| It's "probably" ok? Based on what?
| skinkestek wrote:
| Methane is a much more potent green house gas than CO2.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| kiliantics wrote:
| if you destroy the support systems that all organic life
| depends on, then you aren't serving the customers all that
| well...
| gruez wrote:
| I think you're misreading my comment. It's not to say
| that it's okay for BP to spill oil, it's that all things
| considered, the environmental impact of a tank of gas
| (extracted using current methods) is much less than what
| this guy is doing. Imagine the alternative: rather than
| every american filling up at the gas pump, they're
| dredging up ponds/ditches for methane. How much
| environmental impact would that cause? Is that better
| than the occasional oil spill we get?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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?
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Disturbing wetlands is sort of the Dutch's thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Wood gas vehicles were, well not uncommon:
|
| 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...)
| bserge wrote:
| Saw a few pictures from North Korea using something like that.
|
| It's actually more interesting than I thought!
| cartoonworld wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > 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?
| adamius wrote:
| 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.
| ct0 wrote:
| He just has to go to a landfill and connect that balloon to a
| methane release port.
| larrydag wrote:
| I would imagine a good use of a windmill could be use to pump
| and accumulate.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| For moving a single human being 20km, you could easily use
| a solar panel and an electric bike.
| adamius wrote:
| I was trying to stay within the non-electric aspect of
| this. Solar isn't exactly something you can make
| yourself. Methane however is vaguely doable given a bit
| of effort and skilling up.
|
| Edit: when I write "make" I don't mean "install".
| jhgb wrote:
| You can very easily do a solar installation yourself. But
| even more interestingly, even biomass-derived methane is
| more efficiently burned in a CCGT plant (>60% efficiency)
| to generate electricity for charging an e-bike than in an
| ICE engine on a moped (~20-25%?). And even better, a
| smart charger can charge an electric vehicle from an
| electric mix (NG/wind/solar/nuclear) optimally, so you
| can run from whatever is best at that moment.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| From a global warming perspective, harvesting free
| methane and burning it is probably a net benefit given
| how much stronger methane is of a warming agent than the
| CO2 it burns into.
| jhgb wrote:
| And we're already harvesting biomass to turn it into
| biogas. You can do it on a larger scale and it's still
| more efficient than running a moped motor.
| yunohn wrote:
| > Solar isn't exactly something you can make
|
| I think "make" is the important part here, not buy and
| install.
| jhgb wrote:
| Would you insist that you should be able to "make" the
| moped? _Nobody_ will be as self-sufficient as the early
| Neolithic people ever again. For me, "making" things by
| building them from mass-manufactured components such as
| solar panels is perfectly fine. People don't shy from
| installing solar panels just because they can't
| manufacture them themselves from sand anymore then they
| shy from buying electric motors or CPUs.
| yunohn wrote:
| The perspective I get from the article is of
| decentralized self sufficiency. Being able to harvest
| methane in their locality, and use that as fuel is quite
| appealing versus purchasing and installing solar panels
| or relying on power lines.
|
| I'm not saying your math doesn't check out; rather, the
| author is going for a different set pro/cons than just
| pure "efficiency".
| jhgb wrote:
| 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.
| yunohn wrote:
| 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.
| aaron695 wrote:
| He has footage of a Wind powered Gasmaaier on his site.
|
| Although it's possibly CGI -
|
| https://uitsloot.nl/infrastructuur/
| tyingq wrote:
| 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.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| 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.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > It isn't like most folks can live off of a garden plot of a
| normal house
|
| The trick is to grow for value and flavour, not
| staples/calories. Probably still a terrible $ yield.
|
| Nonetheless, I think the 1 abused apple tree is going give me
| months of apples.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > I cannot cycle 20km fairly leisurely in an hour: I live in
| a mountainous area
|
| Not a good counter argument. In this case, the moped will
| also use more fuel.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Sure, it isn't the best, but I know lots of other folks
| cannot either, and reasons vary. The point really is that
| cycling 20km isn't realistic for a wide swath of
| population.
|
| And sure, it might use more fuel... when you go uphill.
| Downhill, you might not even need the power.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > Downhill, you might not even need the power.
|
| Same as with a bike.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| You can also leisurely coast downhill on a bicycle at a
| much higher speed than 20 km/h.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Fair enough, but my main point was that cycling or walking
| 20km probably consumes less energy than the "hard work" of
| harvesting methane for 8 hours.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Possibly, but this isn't really the tradeoff. It is using
| energy when you have time to reap the benefits when you
| actually need the quick travel. 20km is going to take hours
| to walk in one trip.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Now I'm imagining an alternate history/sci-fi planet
| where a neolithic society manages to effectively harness
| swamp gas (and eventually develop anaerobic digesters to
| produce it) as an energy source, instead of relying on
| timber/biomass.
| [deleted]
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think part of the reason people have
| the reaction they do is that they start with the headline,
| which teases people into thinking this is something that is
| actually semi-viable, and then when they go in to read the
| article they find it is basically an art project, so there is
| this dissonance between expectations and reality.
|
| I almost feel like we need a "Show HN an Art Project:"-like
| headline prefix.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| Serious question, why would you use a throwaway account for
| a comment like this?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Maybe the name is just a joke?
|
| user: hn_throwaway_99
|
| created: February 20, 2017
|
| karma: 28836
| ineedasername wrote:
| Really any account with less than 100k karma is
| practically a throwaway account.
| coding123 wrote:
| whoa, even dang has only 25k. I'm not longer going to
| listen to him when he threatens bans.
| schoen wrote:
| Compounded here by the headline starting with "Inventor".
|
| Typically "inventor does X" reads as a proof of concept of
| something other people might someday want to do, too.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I suppose someone might figure a way to economically
| scale the methane captured here.
|
| Of course the method this person used, agitating the
| bottom of the pond, could have an adverse impact of the
| ecosystem of the pond itself. Do they rely on trace
| quantities of methane in some way? Will the muddy &
| cloudy disturbed water make survival harder, maybe
| killing the biomass that was generating the methane? Who
| knows. Well, someone might know, but I guess my point is
| that agitating metastable systems can have outcomes that
| are hard to predict.
| Semiapies wrote:
| The downside would be that probably only a small fraction
| of people would read those. Which might be worth saving the
| annoyance of people having this reaction (and the random
| people convinced they are reading about anything but an art
| project).
| throwaway2a02 wrote:
| People have built solar bikes, as in regular ebikes with
| 2-300w panels attached that power the motor. That's more
| impressive if you ask me. Other than that, lots of people
| (myself included) have run old, indirect injection diesels on
| used veg oil. That was years ago when it was financially very
| advantageous.
|
| If you ask me, these are more impressive/interesting
| technical feats, but with real world applicability and
| usefulness.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| That's what popped into my mind: the old waste fryer diesel
| fuel. A nice "gee whiz" science reporting that the MSM eats
| up, but not scalable in any way for any significant
| application.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Also not scalable because "waste" oil is, by & large, not
| usually wasted. Restaurants are often paid by collectors
| who repurpose it for a variety of applications, including
| biofuel. So the idea that massive quantities of fryer oil
| get wasted when it could be used is a myth.
| Xophmeister wrote:
| One could easily walk 20km in 8 hours.
| lostlogin wrote:
| And with the right preparation you could collect methane too.
| sdiq wrote:
| 5km per hour is easily doable, I believe. A group of us in
| high school once did that and covered about 105kms in 3 days.
| We walked just about 7 hours every day for those 3 days.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| At an average pace you could walk 20km in half that time
| bbarnett wrote:
| When I was growing up, we walked that to school each day,
| uphill, in a snowstorm!
| krab wrote:
| Oh, you lucky bastards! I could dream of walking to
| school. We were taking lessons in the snowstorm.
| Markoff wrote:
| more like 3-4 hours at max, this seems terribly inefficient
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| qwertox wrote:
| 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/
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Much less dangerous as the pressure is very low and the
| quantity of gas very small.
| aphrax wrote:
| LPG can be pretty dangerous in a car when not installed
| properly...
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| LPG is usually stored in a sturdy metal tank, and not a big
| balloon.
| aaron695 wrote:
| His "Safety testing" video might have something?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJxmQ3vFyVY
| qwertox wrote:
| Great! Good to know that he seems to care so much about this
| that he even posts some kind of research videos about it.
| Good job!
| tyingq wrote:
| The amount of methane to make a 50cc moped travel 20km is
| likely very little. And the tank is huge, so low pressure.
| [deleted]
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It'll stop bubbling in a few months.
|
| Add a fountain to aerate the water to speed it up.
| adrianN wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| "He calls it "a quest on keeping the combustion engine alive in a
| fossil free future"."
|
| And why is that a good thing?
| derriz wrote:
| 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.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > "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.
| Semiapies wrote:
| 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.
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| Cows I know release a lot of methane. I'm but sure if there's
| tech to harness that.
| slightwinder wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| smoyer wrote:
| This guy is clearly a modern wizard.
| maCDzP wrote:
| This made me chuckle. I am guessing he is trying to show how
| ridiculous our life style is without fossil fuels?
| rambambram wrote:
| 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
| the_rectifier wrote:
| Not at all. Did you read the article?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Looks more like a proof of concept that you can get enough
| methane to run a moped from your local ponds.
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