UK firm develops jet fuel made from human poo | The starting material is generated in excess and available in plenty. It is a win-win for everyone that the waste is repurposed.

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 226 points – UK firm develops jet fuel made from human poo
interestingengineering.com

UK firm develops jet fuel made from human poo | The starting material is generated in excess and available in plenty. It is a win-win for everyone that the waste is repurposed.::undefined

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Is this another one of these "eco-fuels" that take about ten times the energy they store just to produce them, and no one will tell you where that energy will come from?

I mean if you can get it from actually good sources (solar, geothermal) where that type of energy is in excess then use ships powered by it to transfer it around the world is that a huge problem?

It might be, if it's more efficient to use that energy for some other option.

I mean, if we can’t build more high speed rail, planes will be used. And they’re the largest contributor in transportation, right? Or at least the highest output/least efficient means of travel. Eliminating a huge contributor is a good thing.

Of course there would be other things that are worth curbing, but I don’t think we should shit on (eh?) killing emissions from a large contributor.

No, see if it’s not the perfect solution to literally everything then it’s just not gonna work. /s

Well, I've always wondered what would happen after humanity burns through all fossil fuels on the planet, if flight and space flight would be impossible. So at least it seems like it's possible with renewable resources.

It's comforting that future generations will still be able to reach for the stars in doo doo rockets.

Together, the research team developed a process to convert human waste into a thick, black liquid that looks like crude oil and behaves like it. Using fractional distillation, the team can then derive the fuel of interest, much like oil refineries do.

Based on the (almost no) data available here, this does seem likely to be a lot of steps and a lot of energy required just to turn the poop into the substitute for crude oil, and then do all the standard further refining of that into jet fuel. I'd be very dubious about the actual real-world value until some magical further data is shared, because this innovation surely won't help anyone if the fuel it makes is more expensive than regular jet fuel.

I'd be completely unsurprised to learn they were using thermal depolymerization. The process was patented about 30 years ago and can take just about any organic material and turn it into essentially light oil. When there was a plant testing it with turkey carcasses in the US, way back in 2003, it was competitive with oil production costs, provided that turkey guts cost less than $20/ton and oil cost more than $80/barrel.

I have been saying we should use this for waste treatment plants since they first started testing this. The water we get at the end is more pure; drugs, most chemicals, and germs are broken down; and we get a saleable product at the end. Depending on the cost to build and run, we could get a better result for less money.

Now, let's talk about the efficacy of converting human remains and the price of cemetery plots...

Now, let’s talk about the efficacy of converting human remains and the price of cemetery plots…

I mean seriously but yes crematoriums should be hooked up to district heating, apparently they don't even use much energy if you operate them right. There's a slow-burning trend in Germany to move from traditional cemeteries to dedicated forest plots: First you get cremated, then put in a biodegradable urn, then buried under a specific tree. Unmarked, but it's in a register somewhere so next of kin can find it.

I'm thinking a step past cremation, where oil and solid fertilizer is produced. So harvest the oil and fill that urn with the non-hydrocarbon solids, and go from there.

The energy comes from excess generation in renewables for load balancing, that base load thing people mistakenly say they can't do.

It's clever and simple, you put a whole load of potential generation in knowing that to meet your essential and desired demand on low generation days you'll need excess capacity which will over produce on high generation days. You then plug that in to a system which has tanks of feedstock in this case poo and empty storage capacity so that in peek generation periods it can run at maximum, when it's only a little over the requested load it runs at limited power and if there's a time with no excess power it turns off for a bit.

That's why all the carbon capture and processing facilities are focusing on modular parallel design, it's very easy then to create scalable production tied to excess load.

Of course this is only one of the many possibilities, the nuclear lovers want to build nuclear powered sequestration and processing facilities, Iceland made one using geothermal, the American one is wind and the proposed Saudi one trailer about being solar thermal.

Oh and actually the efficiency is incredibly impressive now, with some of the active catalyst chemistry they're developing we're getting into heat pump style efficiency gains and it'll looking more likely we'll be able to go below parity in cost per gallon Vs mined hydrocarbons.

I know it feels like people never explain the complex side of things but that's because journalists are bad at their jobs, there's whole organisations out there dedicated to this sort of planning and a lot of the stuff they talk about and work towards ia incredibly well thought out and sensible.

Another stupid fuel idea. How many #2s do you need to fly from New York to Los Angeles? Probably a shitload...

But seriously, this is just another idiotic Idea. Yes, you can make fuel from a lot of sources, but neither the quantity is there, nor is this in any way efficient or cost-covering.

I once calculated that we would need to cover each and every square centimeter of agricultural area in my country with rapeseed plants without crop rotation to produce the bio-fuel that the jets in my country burn. And that does not even include the energy needed to plant it, harvest it, and process it.

Fun thing about calculations is that if you write them down you can pull them out and show it to people who are skeptic about your claims, like I am being right now of your claims.

Your claimed calculation is very vague, I have to say I don't believe for a second you actually did that and it's laughable you're claiming you did

When someone tells me that they've noticed a fundamental flaw that all the leading minds in the field have not it does not lead me to think that the field itself is flawed rather the person I'm speaking to's understanding of it.

Of course we understand that it's not all going to come from one source but where there are waste products like stalks and leaves left over from food production, poo, algae, and etc it makes sense to work towards using all of those so we can transition away from the extracting oil and gas.

I mean I'm pretty sure a water treatment center can spare some shit for this test

This might actally power a few dozen flights a day nationwide. All the other ones will still have to rely on dead dinosaurs.

Yeah, screw every effort to get us away from dependency on fossil fuels, am I right?

They’re going to install more bathrooms on the planes and serve mexican bean salsa at boarding. That way the fuel can be made in flight.

You get a 10% discount if you use the lavatory during the flight

This is a fantastic idea, here in the UK we've just been dumping raw sewage in the rivers and poisoning the coast because it'd cut into water companies record profits to treat it (also Brexit chemical shortages or something)- if we can turn the poop into something useful that can sell then the won't let a drop off that precious filth go to waste.

I've always thought about how cool it would be to find a use for cat shit.

Imagine if every time your cats used the litter box, it made you money.

Have you tried grinding it into a powder and mixing it with your coffee?

A civet cat isn't a true cat, it got the name because it remotely looks like s vast

The environment would be saved if I could turn all the shit I experience at work into fuel.

let poo return to the earth. jets also. we don’t need poo jets adding to the crap in the air.

You're not going to stop people living their lives, visiting friends, family, and having meaningful life experiences. If we can make flying more ecologically sustainable than rail and boats then it would be a hugely positive thing in the fight against climate change.

We can stop them by taking their money away and giving it to those who need it.

No leisurely intercontinental flights until all children are free from starvation!

To be even more doomer, people will have to stop living their lives when we run out of everything, so we might as well start winding down now.

I'd argue that private jets would have to be banned before I'd accept any regulation on economy flights.

Yes I know that's what you want to happen but it's not very likely, we're not really short of anything that we don't have a dozen other options for.

We'll have oceanic floating factories harvesting sunlight and turning sea water into jet fuel and carbon fibre Christmas toys before consumerism gets close to admitting defeat.

If you want to change society I'm afraid you have to do the hard thing of coming up with a better idea and convincing people to try it.

You certainly can, with proper carbon emissions taxation. But you can't stop said people from voting for parties that advocate unrealistic pipe-dream technological solutions like poop jets and full-scale CCS, rather than parties who make them take the red pill and face reality and the consequences of their actions.

When poo is returned to the earth, it's digested by insects and microbes which use it for energy, and then emit CO2. Poo in the dirt puts carbon in the air the same as poo in a jet

Idk if it's bad idea or not, but I'll happily provide them with some of the precious material to experiment on. For a small fee, obviously, for science!

They way you have environmentally friendly planes is by replacing them with trains. I doubt burning shit just to fly will be good for the environment.

Trains aren't the solution to every problem. They are slower than planes, don't work on water, and need infrastructure (tracks). They are great where they do work, but where electric planes work, there's no need to put them down.

They seem to be since electric planes don't really exist for passanger flight and are unlikely to exist in a future near enough to be meaningful. For water we got boats so that's the one place where trains aren't the solution.

Tracks are a lot cheaper than airports as far as infrastructure is concerned while also going to more places and the speed of travel is a worthwhile sacrifice to stop pollution from planes. Plus sleeper trains are so comfy compared to the hell that is the cramped airplane seat with less leg room than you need to actually fit your legs there.

Let's replace all intercontinental flights with high speed rail and sleeper trains, and only use planes for long haul flights over water. For those planes that do stay in the sky, let's fuel them with renewables. Poo based jet fuel does not add carbon to the environment.

Even if it works ... Human waste is so heavily contaminated by medications I don't think this is a good idea

It’s fine. The chemtrails will sprinkle us all with antidepressants offsetting the general state of despair.

Read about thermal depolymerization. Not only will there be no medication, there won't be anything more complicated than some moderately long carbon chain oils. That system can even break down the prions from mad cow disease, so it's safer than most methods for getting rid of biological waste.

I think you're arguing "there's so much heat it won't be medication anymore." I'm unconvinced that, that means it's less dangerous ... consider cases like the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_pit](burn pits).

Cool, you go be unconvinced. That has no bearing on reality. If you can't tell the difference between open fire burning and closed vessel pyrolisis (or more advanced methods of chemical decomposition), nothing I have time to present will correct that misconception.