Sewage-Powered Hydrogen fueling station opens in CA

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The old phrase used to be Garbage In/ Garbage Out, but that might have to be amended to Sewage In/Hydrogen Fuel Out due to a new fueling station in Orange County, California. The fueling station is the end result of a refining process from raw sewage to methane gas to hydrogen fuel. It’s about time we started putting all of that crap to work :D
 
Right on, someone has to take the Bull by the horns, and get that methane out. Hope alternate energy starts to move forward faster. When the original fuel crunch came in 73 we started offering Propane and Natural gas. Seems a little quiet from those quarters. Does that have anything to do with the newer engines or......
 
Several water treatment facilities around the country are also doing this. They are pushing their own turbines and actually selling power back into the grid at the end. I believe the Dallas, TX plant does this.
 
This is already a natural resource in the Washington DC area. Don't they already have 500+ refueling stations available? :) A politician in every tank!
 
ByteDown[H]ard;1037684405 said:
This is already a natural resource in the Washington DC area. Don't they already have 500+ refueling stations available? :) A politician in every tank!
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Oh your such a nerd.:D
 
Uncle said:
Right on, someone has to take the Bull by the horns, and get that methane out. Hope alternate energy starts to move forward faster. When the original fuel crunch came in 73 we started offering Propane and Natural gas. Seems a little quiet from those quarters. Does that have anything to do with the newer engines or......
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Natural gas has made a huge comeback here in Maine for home heating/cooking. Local gas companies are running new lines everywhere, including small towns. We're all sick of the oil companies jacking up prices in the winter just because they know we need it.
 
I remind people of the documentary Gasland before you go on "natural gas is better than oil" rant. If they actually stuck to environmental standards they would not be profitable, and therefore not be mining it.

IMO we need to convert all those old factories in the Detroit/Chicago Corridor to Wind Turbine factories and push that as our new source of energy. We'd be much better off effecting a limited number of avian species over killing/exposing carcinogens to every living thing in 5 mile radius with natural gas mines.
 
edit: forgot to ask, what's the efficiency on the conversion process ?

We have a waste2gas factory in edgewood, MD that AFAIK uses a steam/pressure process that is 80% efficient. That is, for every 10 gallons of fuel produced it burns the equivalent of 2 gallons of fuel to run it. Unfortunately when stating numbers like that you ignore all the overhead of moving/storing the waste.
 
lilbabycat said:
I remind people of the documentary Gasland before you go on "natural gas is better than oil" rant. If they actually stuck to environmental standards they would not be profitable, and therefore not be mining it.

IMO we need to convert all those old factories in the Detroit/Chicago Corridor to Wind Turbine factories and push that as our new source of energy. We'd be much better off effecting a limited number of avian species over killing/exposing carcinogens to every living thing in 5 mile radius with natural gas mines.
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Windpower is a terribly inconsistent source of power. Good for supplementing other plants, but it would kind of suck to lose power to an entire plant because it wasn't windy that day.
 
wizdum said:
Windpower is a terribly inconsistent source of power. Good for supplementing other plants, but it would kind of suck to lose power to an entire plant because it wasn't windy that day.
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Windfarms are put in locations with an overall constant wind, and are fed into the traditional grid. . Parts of the midwest as well as mountainous areas countrywide produce significant winds 365/24/7. If we can cut our traditional coal coaling to only as "as needed" basis, and make wind our primary, [it's in my opinion] we'll be in a much better place as a country both environmentally and financially.
 
I'm already cooking up a fresh batch of 4 bean chili! A little modification on a breathing mask, some rubber tubing connected to a huge air bladder... and I'll be making power in no time!
 
lilbabycat said:
Windfarms are put in locations with an overall constant wind, and are fed into the traditional grid. . Parts of the midwest as well as mountainous areas countrywide produce significant winds 365/24/7. If we can cut our traditional coal coaling to only as "as needed" basis, and make wind our primary, [it's in my opinion] we'll be in a much better place as a country both environmentally and financially.
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And what do we do when we kill all of the birds. This is a major downfall with wind power. Unlike the global warming bandwagon some tend to take, this is fact and you can see it as it happens!

Energy in America: Dead Birds Unintended Consequence of Wind Power Development
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011...equence-wind-power-development/#ixzz1WIxHIT1B
 
MajorDomo said:
The old phrase used to be Garbage In/ Garbage Out, but that might have to be amended to Sewage In/Hydrogen Fuel Out due to a new fueling station in Orange County, California. The fueling station is the end result of a refining process from raw sewage to methane gas to hydrogen fuel. It’s about time we started putting all of that crap to work :D
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Now where are the production model hydrogen cars for these stations?

Chicken n' The Egg, which came first..
 
hope this project takes off. we have to get something back from all the crap we produce.
 
MotorMouth said:
And what do we do when we kill all of the birds. This is a major downfall with wind power. Unlike the global warming bandwagon some tend to take, this is fact and you can see it as it happens!

Energy in America: Dead Birds Unintended Consequence of Wind Power Development
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011...equence-wind-power-development/#ixzz1WIxHIT1B
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HAHA you're funny. More birds die due to airplanes, collisions, and household pets than anything else. I'll admit that they picked a poor spot for the turbines if they knew the eagles roosted there. Either way, developments could be moved elsewhere and still be efficient. Besides, that really only affects that specific region. There are hundreds of other places to put wind farms that make sense. Hell.. a huge solar array in Arizona could power a healthy portion of the US. Besides that, coal and oil have killed thousands of animals a year through mining, leaks and frakking. Where's the article complaining about the millions of animals killed/poisoned during the BP spill and demanding an end to oil?

So, do you want to kill all the pets, down every aircraft and make bird proof buildings/cars? I doubt it.

Btw, the sewage thing is a great idea. I hope it takes off. More buildings powering themselves would help immensely.
 
How much is this bull@#$% going to cost me?

This is all due to a retarded mandate by California that 20% of our energy come from renewable resources by 2010 and 33% by 2020. As of 2011, 11.6% comes from renewable energy.

Of course, this is a disguised tax, because these infant technologies are absurdly cost prohibitive so every resident has to pay obscene amounts to cover the fines utility companies are having to pay and costs to import this energy from other states. They/we are forced to buy inefficient crap like this from companies like AirPower in the article to avoid these fines. Note there are no costs listed in the article. Typical.

Currently, California gets ~20% of its power from nuclear energy. If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, why we don't simply expand this proven technology is beyond me. Our government rewards inefficiency.
 
Hmmm, what about geothermal? Is there some downside to it that I haven't heard about? Emissions and environmental impact seem minimal to nonexistent, while at the same time it produces incredible amounts of power.
 
Well if you were smart you would have seen this reported on all news outlets. And yes I did.
 
The Rat said:
Hmmm, what about geothermal? Is there some downside to it that I haven't heard about? Emissions and environmental impact seem minimal to nonexistent, while at the same time it produces incredible amounts of power.
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I watched a news show where Cali was having problems with some plants because they use all of the water in the area and they had to shut some down. Also the costs to build the plants are more than some areas and afford to pay for.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Currently, California gets ~20% of its power from nuclear energy. If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, why we don't simply expand this proven technology is beyond me. Our government rewards inefficiency.
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Actually California has not only made it impossible to build or expand nuclear power plants, they have even passed a law that will likely shut down some of the existing plants. The law forces existing plants to change thier cooling systems to no longer use ocean or lake water. This will require the existing plants to spend major bucks building cooling towers if they want to keep the plants in production. Of course this is nothing more than a back-door way of killing off nuclear power.
 
Solidstate89 said:
That's absolutely brilliant.
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All jokes aside it really is. Fuel cells are the only logical solution to Fossil Fuels , at least for now (until cars can be powered by micro-fusion power plants). They don't produce any by product except water and they have the mileage to compete with Fossil Fuel.

The next most important step is making the refueling easier for Fuel Cell cars. Hydrogen has to be pressurized and pass along to your car at thousands of PSI and even the fastest refueler takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. Versus about 2-5 minutes to fill the average car and the completely non-complex nature of doing so are going to the even bigger issue with these new Hydrogen refueling stations.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
Currently, California gets ~20% of its power from nuclear energy. If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, why we don't simply expand this proven technology is beyond me. Our government rewards inefficiency.
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Because when a country like Germany which uses quite a bit of Nuclear Fission to power its country decides to do a complete 180 and reduce its dependence on Nuclear Fission by 100 percent by 2020 , then there is damn good reason. We also still have no where to store nuclear waste (Yucca Mountain won't be ready for a while and is constantly being pushed back as well) other than depleted rod pools that just "prevent" the rods from overheating and dumping vast amounts of horribly dangerous rads across the plant , into the air and in our homes.

Nuclear Fission is a dream of yesterday , where we had hopes it would power everything we needed it to .. the reality is that its too dangerous and the results of even a SINGLE event can be downright biblical. You can't claim its "green" energy when its byproduct has a half life of around 50,000 years...

We need to completely switch over for the next few decades to renewable resources that require us to intelligently handle our power use. That includes making all electronic products far more energy effective and enforcing rules that require even stricter goals on manufacturers to bring energy costs down over time. The entire electrical grid in the US needs to be reworked for more effective power usage , so much is burned off through transfers and human error. There is no "gotcha" solution that will do everything we need in 10 years or less , its going to take trial and error and decades of more research to figure out the perfect solution across the board but right now we have renewable resources we can take advantage of and slowly withdraw our usage of coal power plants as our primary source of energy.
 
lilbabycat said:
Windfarms are put in locations with an overall constant wind, and are fed into the traditional grid. . Parts of the midwest as well as mountainous areas countrywide produce significant winds 365/24/7. If we can cut our traditional coal coaling to only as "as needed" basis, and make wind our primary, [it's in my opinion] we'll be in a much better place as a country both environmentally and financially.
Click to expand...

Windfarms will NEVER EVER be a primary source of power. The one thing most people seem to not understand is that there is NO ONE SOURCE that can replace our entire dependence on coal, oil, and gas. Our power demands are simply too great for that. Our energy future needs a mixture of green technologies, with no one or two primary sources. That means solar, wind, hydro, and bio powers. This is one step towards biofuel production, and a much needed step. Too much garbage is wasted when it can be converted into something useful.
 
Uncle said:
Right on, someone has to take the Bull by the horns, and get that methane out. Hope alternate energy starts to move forward faster. When the original fuel crunch came in 73 we started offering Propane and Natural gas. Seems a little quiet from those quarters. Does that have anything to do with the newer engines or......
Click to expand...

I think it probably does. Converting from gasoline to propane is kind of an involved process to begin with, but now with electronics on everything from the gas pedal to the exhaust pipe and everything in between, I doubt many do-it-yourself type people could get it done. If you have to pay someone to do it, then they have to warranty it and do all sorts of crap for safety and liability which means engineering gets involved at $120/hour and it's just cheaper to buy a Kia Rio...
 
Windfarms along with Solar farms can do a pretty good job. If you have it set up where your EV car powers your home when you are there when the grid sags then this is a pretty good mix. When I am home so is my EV car and it has everything it needs to power my home for a while and then charge in an hour when the wind turbines are cranking again.

Once we realize that cheap renewable power shouldn't be available 99.9999% of the time and adapt our systems and life to accept 98% availability renewable becomes much cheaper.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Wind_Resources_and_Transmission_Lines_map.jpg

So there are many really good spots to put wind power stations and so far many places that are putting them up are only fair just due to politics. If we focused a nationwide plan to provide power instead of providing jobs building wind turbines we would generate some serious power for the country.
 
The Rat said:
Hmmm, what about geothermal? Is there some downside to it that I haven't heard about? Emissions and environmental impact seem minimal to nonexistent, while at the same time it produces incredible amounts of power.
Click to expand...

One of the largest issues with geothermal is the stuff that comes out of the vents is EXTREMELY corrosive. As a result a bit on the expensive side. Most all power essentially uses heat to boil water to spin a turbine, if they don't recapture that steam, then that's a resource that also needs to be consumed by the power plant.
 
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