Dog Poop Park Lights

Like I mentioned in my About Me section I am a proud dog owner of a Chocolate Lab, Brylie.  Even though I just got my first dog in April 2010, I have been around dogs my whole life.  So inevitably, every since I can remember, I have been picking up dog poop in the back yard, and like most kids I would usually wait until there was so much poop in the yard that it would take hours to pick it all up.  So when I came across this very interesting article about a guy who designed a park light that used dog poop as a feedstock, I knew I had to share this with all the other dog lovers out there.

Using dog poop as the feedstock (and mixing it with water), naturally occurring bacteria inside the anaerobic ( meaning in the absence of oxygen) digester eat away at the dog poop.  These bacteria then produce a by-product consisting of about 50% methane and 50% carbon dioxide.     Even better, the now digested dog poop has essentially no odor and can be collected and used as a fertilizer.

Welcome to Trashy Energy

Using all types of waste to get heat and power is very interesting and innovative.  Growing up I began taking all sorts of things apart mainly, lawn mowers, old motorcycles, and electric motors.  From those experiences I became very interested in all types of energy and began leaning how to fix these simple engines and started building my own tiny motors using little magnets, nails, and wire.  Seemed like you could generate mechanical work out of just about anything.  That passion grew into a new way of thinking that has caused me to be very interested in ways of producing energy out of cheap (usually free) feedstocks.  Studying chemical and biochemical engineering here at Colorado School of Mines has helped me understand these sometimes complex processes.  I hope to introduce many of you to many of these new (and sometimes very old) ways of converting just about any type of waste into energy.

Whether its food wastes, garbage, poop, manure, plastics, or a bunch (I mean a whole bunch) of dead trees there are ways to turn these wastes into energy.