Some Unusual Source of Alternative Energy

The world is like an Oliver Twist when it comes to its insatiable demand for energy; it always wants some more. The scientists and engineers are not resting on their oars in their desire to fill this much-needed gap. But in this quest, every once in a while we run into the bizarre idea for alternative energy. Without further ado, here are some lists I got as I scoured the net.

^{Image Credits: Pixabay}

The Body Heat

Who knows that that stuffy room, bus or over-booked eatery during festivities could be such a good thing.

So if by chance you find yourself sweating in a Stockholm's busiest railway station in the Scandinavian country of Sweden, you should be happy as it was not in vain.

Stockholm’s Central Station which has up to 200,000 commuters go through it daily is a beehive of human travelling to and fro.

The heat generated by these massive crowd usually dissipate as waste, not until a real estate company in Stockholm, Jernhusen thought of ways to capture and make it useful.

First, they capture the body heat from commuters using the ventilation system and send it to an underground water tank which it warms up.

The warm water is pumped up 13 floors where it is combined with the primary heating system.

The firm expects to lower cost of the heating system by 20% in the coming years.

How much did it cost to get this system running, you may ask. It costs roughly $30,000 to buy and install the pipes and pumps.

And since their "source" of energy is always running through the station without regards to their excellent work, I'd say it is a cool deal :)

Party People

Who knows that busting a move on the dancefloor could be both good for the dancer and also help save our planet. So next time you see a drunk fella with a stained white T-shirt with a black inscription.

I PARTY AS MY PART TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT

may not necessarily be out of place as the party freak may just be right.

A startup firm in Rotterdam in the Netherlands started a sustainable dance floor business known as Energy Floors. The energy floor produces electricity as people dance on top of it.

How they pulled it off: The floor is made from materials that flex slightly when someone steps on it. Underneath the floor is an electromechanical module that transforms the slight up and down flex of the floor module into rotational movement that drives a generator. The video here shows how it works.

The dimension of each tile (module) is 75X75X20 cm and produces about 35-watt output which ensures that each person generates between 5-20 watts.

Interested in this cool tech? You can contact them through their email for more details.


More Vibrations


Remember the piezoelectric effect? The ability of an object to produce electricity due to response to mechanical stress.

In 2008, a Japanese startup, Soundpower working in conjunction with Shibuya Ward government in Tokyo, Japan, produced and installed piezoelectric mats which produce current whenever someone steps on it.

The power produced lights up the holiday's display and LED boards.

A 135 pounds (61kg) person stepping on it will produce 0.1watt for 1 second. This, when produced in large scale, will provide large quantities of electricity as the Shibuya train station has an estimated 2.4 million commuters daily.

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Urine and Feces

If only the owner of this sign knows that pee can produce electricity, he may have some respect for those lost souls peeing on his electric fence :)

Researchers at the Herriot Watt University of Engineering and Physical Science in Edinburgh capital of Scotland, are working on the first fuel cells that will be powered by urine.

The urine is rich in urea, and urea fuel cells are similar to the hydrogen fuels which instead of hydrogen uses urea.

The technology converts urea (in urine) into nitrogen, water and most importantly electricity.

It is estimated the human population worldwide produces about 10 billion litres of urine daily. This is one energy source we will not run out from anytime soon.

Such development is bound to piss off some other energy producers.

But we still have more news which will make them feel crappy since it's about crap.

No one could have thought there is more to a dog poo than inside a landfill. A San Francisco garbage company in 2006 started a pilot program of handing out bio-degradable bags to dog owners to park their dog waste.

In San Francisco Bay Area, there is an estimated 6500 tons of dog poo produced annually.

The dog poo is placed inside a digester where the microorganism action produces methane.

Methane is a good fuel as it produces less carbon dioxide in combustion compared to the fossil fuel for each unit of heat produced.

While the San Francisco people are running on dog poo, GENeco made a human "poo- powered" car in Bristol. They created the bio-gas (methane) from the human poo.

Chocolate

Now here's a sweet one, the cholate factory is here with some of that much-needed energy.

The plan is simple, feed the harmless form of the bacteria E. coli, some chocolate waste and leftovers.

The bacteria is a sugar-loving freak, so getting it to slop away on that chocolate-factory waste is no big deal.

The E.coli bacteria is left in a 5-litre reactor that has diluted nougat and caramel mixture.

The bacteria created hydrogen and organic acid after consuming the sugary waste

Professor Lynne Macaskie of the University of Birmingham’s School of Biosciences led the research team. “Hydrogen offers huge potential as a carbon-free energy carrier,” she comments. “Although only at its initial stages, we’ve demonstrated a hydrogen-producing, waste-reducing technology that, for example, might be scaled-up in 5-10 years’ time for industrial electricity generation and waste treatment processes.”
University of Bermingham.

Willy Wonka, who could have powered his Great Glass Elevator with hydrogen he made in his chocolate factory will be very proud of this.

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^REFERENCES

• ^{Body Heat: Sweden's New Green Energy Source}
• ^{Sustainable Floor}
• ^{POWER GENERATING FLOOR IN TRAIN STATIONS LIGHT UP HOLIDAY DISPLAYS}
• ^{Making electricity from urine}
• ^{GENeco Case study:Bio-Bus}
• ^{Sweet Success for Pioneering Hydrogen Energy Project}

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