| |
|
|
 |
With oil prices rising everyday it is imperative that humans discover a new, reusable energy source. There have been many suggestions in the past and scientists have been working relentlessly on discovering the 'next best thing'. Could it be that our solution lies in the history books?
When our ancestors decided to pack up and head west they were in for an arduous journey beyond their imagining. When they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of miles of grassy plains there was little they could use to fuel their fires since they couldn't carry wood with them. There was one plentiful resource, however that served the pioneers well, buffalo dung. It is to this precious commodity we are turning to today.
Of course you probably realize that buffalo aren't as plentiful as they use to be (on account of the Cowboy 'heroes' who slaughtered them) so what can we substitute? For those of you who occasionally watch the Discovery Channel and find Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs to your liking you may recall an episode where Mike visits a farm that collects cow manure (Cows, of course! They are very similar to buffalo!) to power a homemade power plant that feeds electricity to the whole farm. But that isn't all! After processing, the solid waste that is left over is turned into biodegradable flower pots that are sold to help the farm make a profit while the liquid waste is used for its traditional purpose of fertilizer.
Recently, researchers at the University of Georgia have made some progress not using cow manure, but human waste in the collection and use of methane as a power source. They're hopes are high and Tim H. Baloo, lead researcher on the project says, "There are over 6 billion people on the planet and that number continues to grow exponentially. The amount of methane produced from that waste in a single day by that many people could power the entire city of New York for a week. Now imagine if we harnessed that power and used our technology to increase the efficiency of the system, the energy crisis would be over in the time it took to visit your family bathroom."
The recent technology is being kept under wraps while further studies are being conducted. However researchers did mention a future where our power plants not only powered our lives but took care of waste, lowered green house gas emissions by their very nature, and helped keep our environment a cleaner and more welcoming place.
For most information on methane and its different uses please visit Wikipedia.com's article on methane .
 |
Last updated: 4/28/08