City buses turn to sewage for 'clean' fuel
March 22, 2009 by Pierre-Henry Deshayes
A picture taken on March 5, 2009 shows passengers aboard a biogas bus in the street of Stockholm. The city officials of Oslo plan to introduce as of 2010 buses that run on biofuels. Biofuels, extracted from wastewater is a ''clean'' energy, which is methane generated by fermenting sludge, and will come from the Bekkelaget sewage treatment plant which handles waste from 250,000 city dwellers.
Can the key to "clean" energy be found down in the sewer? That's the idea in Oslo, where city officials soon plan to introduce buses that run on biofuels extracted from human waste.
As of 2010, the new buses are due to start plying the streets of the Norwegian capital.
"It's a win-win situation: It's carbon neutral, it hardly pollutes the environment, it's less noisy and its endlessly renewable," says Ole Jakob Johansen, one of the people in charge of the project at Oslo city hall.
The biofuel, which is methane generated by fermenting sludge, will come from the Bekkelaget sewage treatment plant which handles waste from 250,000 city dwellers.
"By going to the bathroom, a person produces the equivalent of eight litres (2.1 gallons) of diesel per year. That may not seem like a lot, but multiplied by 250,000 people, that is enough to operate 80 buses for 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles) each," Johansen says.
Compared to diesel, biomethane is a giant green step forward.
In addition to being carbon neutral, it emits 78 percent less nitrogen oxide and 98 percent fewer fine particles -- two causes of respiratory illnesses -- and is 92 percent less noisy.
Even the price is advantageous, says Johansen.
All included, the cost of producing biofuel equivalent to one litre of diesel comes to 0.72 euros (98 cents), while diesel at the pump in Norway currently costs more than 1.0 euro.
"The fuel is less expensive but the cost of the new buses and their maintenance is higher. In total, it's about 15 percent more expensive," notes Anne-Merete Andersen of Ruter, the operator of Oslo's public transport system.
Contrary to first generation bio-ethanol, made from grains and plants, biomethane has the added advantage of not impacting food supplies, nor does it require fertilisation or deplete precious water resources.
Environmentalists are delighted.
"We've been waiting for this for a long time. It's extremely good for the climate and also for the quality of urban life," beams Olaf Brastad of the Bellona environmental organisation.
"I see absolutely no downsides. On the contrary, it is an optimal way of using a renewable energy that has always been there, just waiting to be exploited," he adds.
The initiative, if extended to Oslo's second waste treatment plant and complemented with biofuels made from food waste, could provide enough fuel for all of Oslo's 350 to 400 buses.
"If our entire fleet switched to biomethane, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by around 30,000 tonnes per year," according to Ruter.
Biofuel buses have already been introduced in several cities, including the French city of Lille and Stockholm, Sweden, where 70 such buses are already in service.
"There were some teething problems with the introduction, but now that those problems have been resolved we see that we have a fuel that works well," Sara Anderson, a biofuels specialist for Stockholm's public transport system SL, told AFP.
And, for those who remain sceptical, Johansen stressed that "there is absolutely no smell."
(c) 2009 AFP
-
Hybrid Bus in the City: A Prototype with a Future
Aug 20, 2007 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Lawsuit claims school bus pollution
May 03, 2006 |
not rated yet |
0
-
British government to require biofuels
Nov 07, 2005 |
not rated yet |
0
-
School bus emissions study to be released
Jun 25, 2007 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Bio-crude turns cheap waste into valuable fuel
Feb 04, 2008 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Engineers build first sub-10-nm carbon nanotube transistor
Feb 01, 2012 |
4.9 / 5 (31) |
30
-
Something old, something new: Evolution and the structural divergence of duplicate genes
Jan 31, 2012 |
4.6 / 5 (7) |
1
-
The hidden nanoworld of ice crystals: Revealing the dynamic behavior of quasi-liquid layers
Jan 30, 2012 |
5 / 5 (3) |
1
-
Stock market network reveals investor clustering
Jan 27, 2012 |
3.9 / 5 (23) |
8
-
Of microchemistry and molecules: Electronic microfluidic device synthesizes biocompatible probes
Jan 26, 2012 |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
-
Calling function with no input argument
15 hours ago
-
Force free body diagram problem on gym equipment
16 hours ago
-
Empirical data regarding shower heads and water
Feb 10, 2012
-
feed hold button on CNC lathe
Feb 09, 2012
-
RFAC in Fortran
Feb 09, 2012
-
dynamics 2/32
Feb 08, 2012
- More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
More news stories
Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)
The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.
10 hours ago |
5 / 5 (9) |
16
Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets
Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.
8 hours ago |
5 / 5 (2) |
0
New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission
Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. Theyre a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel such as an optical fiber o ...
Technology / Computer Sciences
18 hours ago |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
6
|
New power source discovered
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
17 hours ago |
4.7 / 5 (30) |
8
|
Small modular reactor design could be a 'SUPERSTAR'
(PhysOrg.com) -- Though most of today's nuclear reactors are cooled by water, we've long known that there are alternatives; in fact, the world's first nuclear-powered electricity in 1951 came from a reactor ...
Technology / Energy & Green Tech
18 hours ago |
4.4 / 5 (13) |
23
|
Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago
(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...
The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males
A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...
Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins
Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...
Could Venus be shifting gear?
(PhysOrg.com) -- ESAs Venus Express spacecraft has discovered that our cloud-covered neighbour spins a little slower than previously measured. Peering through the dense atmosphere in the infrared, the ...
Advanced power-grid model finds low-cost, low-carbon future in West
(PhysOrg.com) -- The least expensive way for the Western U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to help prevent the worst consequences of global warming is to replace coal with renewable and other ...
Fool's gold may prove an unlikely alternative to overexploited catalytic materials
Catalytic materials, which lower the energy barriers for chemical reactions, are used in everything from the commercial production of chemicals to catalytic converters in car engines. However, with current catalytic materials ...
Mar 22, 2009
Rank: 2 / 5 (1)
It will save us a lot of money doing it his way vs going it the methane route.
JL Mealer
Mealer Companies LLC
http://betterconstructed.com