From Human Waste To Biogas

Posted by Big Gav

Worldchanging has a note up about a prison in Rwanda that is turning human waste from prisoners into biogas, which is then used to provide part of the prison's power needs (obviously pig poo power was the start of a trend).

WorldChanging ally Emeka Okafor at Timbuku Chronicles reports on an award-winning program by the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology's Center for Innovations and Technology Transfer. Based in Rwanda's Cyangugu prison, KIST has built a 150 cubic meter "fixed dome digester", which converts human waste from 1500 prisoners into methane, which provides sufficient energy for half of the cooking needs of the 6000 inmate prison. The Ashden Awards for sustainable energy have recognized the project as a finalist in their "overseas awards" for sustainable energy. The designer of the facility, Ainea Kimaro, noted "I have been in this field all my life, turning problems into resources."

Elsewhere TreeHugger reports on a biogas powered train service that has been launched in Sweden. Hmmmm, I wonder - could the passengers produce enough fuel to run the train on ? Maybe the price of travel should include a mandatory "energy" contribution during the journey...

Technorati tags: peak oil

2 comments

@whut says 3:01 PM

On flat ground, the rolling resistance of these must be relatively low. I bet once it picked up momentum, a horse could probably tow it along. That would be bio, too!

Big Gav says 9:10 PM

And the horse would produce biogas too :-)