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November 13, 2009
Moonbat Tech: Trash-Powered Streetlight
Posted by Dave Blount at November 13, 2009 8:41 AM
The latest in eco-technology, via Yanko Design:
A lamppost powered by trash seems like a strange idea but if you think about the ratio between city trash and energy needs — things start to make sense, kinda. This lamppost composts trash and uses the methane byproduct as a fuel to power the lamps. The compost can then be retrieved to re-green our cities.
Maybe a troll could volunteer to translate this text out of the Moonbattese:
Air2air investigates the efficiency of garbage-powered streetlights:
The designer forgot to consider the actual mechanism the light would use to turn the trash into electricity, but:
• I looked up the actual power consumption of a streetlight, and it's 800 to 1,000 watts/hour.
• The smallest Honda gas-powered generator, the EU1000, will provide that power consuming about one pint of gasoline per hour.
Regarding methane, it is considered a much more destructive greenhouse gas than C02. From Wikipedia:
"Methane is a relatively potent greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential of 72 (averaged over 20 years) or 25 (averaged over 100 years). Methane in the atmosphere is eventually oxidized, producing carbon dioxide and water. As a result, methane in the atmosphere has a half life of seven years."
To really produce methane, animal excrement produces over 200 times more than trash by volume, due to nitrogen content. Paper and half-eaten snickers bars just don't produce energy. According to methane power pioneer Harold Bate:
"After experiments with just about every type of animal manure, I found I got the best results from mixing that of chickens and pigs. Chicken manure contains more nitrogen than others and pig droppings are useful because they generate heat so well."
Over a period of several weeks of fermentation, you can produce the equivalent of 50 gallons of gasoline from 300 pounds of chicken and pig manure. Therefore, to power a streetlight:
1. The generator would require a gallon of gas every day, if the light was on for eight hours.
2. 300 lbs of manure could create that much gas for each streetlight — if it was refreshed and topped off every day.
3. To use trash instead, each streetlight's bin would have to accomodate 60,000 lbs. of trash.
Of course, the energy costs of moving and processing 60,000 lbs. of trash per streetlight were not considered by the designer either.
Fortunately, green technology doesn't have to actually work. It just has to make liberals feel good about themselves, so as to attract government subsidies.
