Vermont ski resort unveils gondola powered entirely by cow manurehttp://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/vermont-ski-resort-unveils-gondola-powered-entirely-cow-175051844.html (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/vermont-ski-resort-unveils-gondola-powered-entirely-cow-175051844.html)
By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – 21 hrs ago.. .
Ski and snowboard season for the Northeast opens in just a few weeks. And when it does, a Vermont ski area plans to unveil a gondola powered entirely by cow manure.
Killington Resort in central Vermont has partnered with Green Mountain Power to convert manure from nearby dairy farms to electricity for its K-1 Express Gondola. The so-called "Cow Power" program uses manure from 10,000 cows producing 300,000 gallons of manure per day.
"Easily the coolest thing you can possibly do with cow manure," the power company's website declares. "The short version is that we take cow manure, work some magic, turn it into methane, and then use that methane to generate electricity."
Killington's website explains the process in a bit more detail:
Farms collect cow manure throughout the day, mixing it with wash water from the milking equipment which is then pumped into an anaerobic digester. The slurry flows through a digester for about three weeks at 100 degrees Fahrenheit allowing bacteria to convert the manure into biogas, about 60% methane gas and 40% carbon dioxide. The biogas is then delivered to a modified natural gas engine, which drives an electric generator to create electricity. Finally, the energy generated is fed onto the GMP electrical system which ultimately powers the K-1 Express Gondola.
More than a dozen Vermont farms participate in the 8-year-old program, according to Green Mountain Power. In exchange, Cow Power farmers are paid for the "fuel," and "the process of producing Cow Power significantly reduces manure odor—a great benefit for anyone passing by a dairy farm on a hot summer day."
Or, to paraphrase George Costanza, when you consider the other choices, manure is actually pretty refreshing.
The cow-powered gondola runs from Killington's K-1 base lodge to the 4,241-foot summit of Killington Peak.
Japan toilet maker unveils 'poop-powered' motorbikehttp://news.yahoo.com/video/japan-toilet-maker-unveils-poop-090547249.html (http://news.yahoo.com/video/japan-toilet-maker-unveils-poop-090547249.html)
2 minutes ago, AFPMaktoob
Japan's best-known toilet maker on Wednesday unveiled a "poop-powered" motorcycle that can travel as far as 300 kilometres (180 miles) on a tank filled with animal waste.
Billed as the world's first waste-powered vehicle, the three-wheeler has a toilet in place of a regular seat and huge paper roll at the back. But as a young female model climbed aboard for a test drive Wednesday, toilet giant TOTO was quick to point out that she would not supply the "gas".
"The biogas it uses as fuel is not made from human waste. It's made from livestock waste and sewage," Kenji Fujita, a company spokesman, told reporters in a Tokyo suburb. "We hope to raise awareness among customers about our green campaign through development of environmentally-friendly products such as water-saving showerheads and water-saving toilets," Fujita added.
The company -- which makes toilets equipped with an array of features including heated seats, water jets with pressure and temperature controls, and ambient background music -- has no plans to commercialise the motorcycle..
Urine-powered generator unveiled at international exhibitionhttp://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/urine-powered-generator-unveiled-international-exhibition-234718329.html (http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/urine-powered-generator-unveiled-international-exhibition-234718329.html)
By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow – 3 hrs ago.. .
Four African girls have created a generator that produces electricity for six hours using a single liter of urine as fuel.
The generator was unveiled at last week's Maker Faire in Lagos, Nigeria, by the four teens Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, and Faleke Oluwatoyin, all age 14, and Bello Eniola, 15.
So how exactly does the urine-powered generator work?
•Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
•The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
•The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
•This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
And as for delivering the fuel itself? Well, we'll leave that up to the consumer.
The Maker Faire is a popular event across the African continent, drawing thousands of participants who travel to Lagos to show their inventions and other practical creations.
As the Next Web describes it, the Maker Faire is intended to highlight creations "that solve immediate challenges and problems, and then works to support and propagate them. Put another way, this isn't just a bunch of rich people talking about how their apps are going to change the world."