Renewable Energy - from Algae

[rhoenix]

Thanks to 15 year old Texan Javier Fernández-Han, we feel a little more hopeful about the next generation’s ability to adapt to a world of limited resources. The high school student developed a fully featured algae-powered energy system that combines a dozen new and existing technologies to treat waste, produce methane and bio-oil for fuel, produce food for humans and livestock, sequester greenhouse gases, and produce oxygen. Dubbed the VERSATILE system, the project is this year’s winner of the annual Invent Your World Challenge $20,000 scholarship.

Fernández-Han’s Versatile System consists of six subsystems: An anaerobic digester for sewage and food scraps, a bio-gas upgrader to turn gases from the digester into food for the algae, vented methane burning stoves, a CO2-capturing device, algae bioreactors to produce algae biomass and oxygen from sunlight, saltwater, and CO2, flush latrines, and the PlayPump, which uses energy derived from children playing to power the system.

According to Fernández-Han, the modular system is targeted at developing countries that need self-contained sources of power and waste disposal. The budding inventor envisions African villages lit up by the Playpump’s LEDs, with excess methane to sell for income, reduced air pollution — thanks to methane burning stoves, and increased affordability of goats, pigs, and fish due to the availability of algae as feed. A scaled-down version of the system for a small house or apartment could cost as little as $200.

The algae-powered system hasn’t yet been built, however, and skeptics will remain until it is. Even if Fernández-Han’s design doesn’t pan out as planned, we’re thoroughly impressed by his innovative spirit.

Despite not yet having a working model, I thought this was impressive. Having a power source that is adapted to the way people live would ease transition for its deployment as well.

[Eulogy]

Say hello to the world's newest billionaire. If you have money, now's the time to invest in this!

[CaptainChewbacca]

Holy shit, this kid is FIFTEEN?! Hope some corporation doesn't fuck him over.

[tezunegari]

Interesting concept.

But what is the waste-in/energy-out ratio and does the size influence it? Will the waste produced by a small house be enough to allow the unit to run to a satisfying degree or will it require external input too?

But even if the energy is just enough to power the lights, or even just the refridgerator/freezer/washing machine, it would be quite interesting for both families and companies.

I hope he has applied for a patent on this.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

It's really nothing more than a pretty picture. I see a diagram of things that, on the face of it, seem to be exceedingly obvious that they ought to be stuck together and would, if workable, create a stable system. The only novelty here is that it's a 15 year old kid who won a contest drawing it up. The devil, as always, is in the details. Like this 'PlayPump' idea, for instance. How are we going to extract the energy from children playing? I have this mental image of poor African children running in human-sized hamster wheels. This is important, since the system apparently requires this power input to pressurize and move the gas products of the system. The hydrogen sulfide removal process is also suspect, since a bit of quick research shows that cow manure is just a part of some proprietary mixture. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with reducing the CO2 fraction of the resulting biogas by passing it through water, but producing a self-sustaining culture of algae with the right properties will be a real pain by itself.

I am deeply skeptical that this system could really scale down well enough to be useful on the single dwelling scale, or work well enough to produce enough excess methane to pay for the cost of installing the system, let alone allowing a village to profit off it.

[Nephtys]

Concepts are a dime a dozen.

Implementations are what matter, and this one sounds damned far fetched. The 'Playpump' almost sounds like a horrible euphemism for kids working a pump for long hours. Also, seriously, a 200 dollar 'home' methane bio-reactor? With a methane stove, is it going to drive a turbine or something? Ridiculously impractical from the sounds of it.

[madd0ct0r]

I'm surprised at you two.

The playpump's been knocking around for years, usually for water raising.

It's a kiddies roundabout with the central axel used to provide the motion.

[Molyneux]

I'm surprised at you two.

The playpump's been knocking around for years, usually for water raising.

It's a kiddies roundabout with the central axel used to provide the motion.

Hah, so it is an enormous human hamster wheel! Only turned on its side.

On the plus side,those things are damned fun...I wonder if there's any way we could implement some sort of seesaw-based pumping system?

[Surlethe]

No fucking spam.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I'm surprised at you two.

The playpump's been knocking around for years, usually for water raising.

It's a kiddies roundabout with the central axel used to provide the motion.

Hah, so it is an enormous human hamster wheel! Only turned on its side.

On the plus side,those things are damned fun...I wonder if there's any way we could implement some sort of seesaw-based pumping system?

The problem with using playground equipment as a power source for anything is that it operates intermittently. The hamster wheel will only get an hour, maybe two, or even three of intermittent usage per day (probably achieving much less than 50% duty cycle when the children have free time.) But it'd make a better generator than a seesaw, because the mass of the wheel + children makes it an effective flywheel, so we can get a steadier current out of it when children are riding around on it. Fortunately, for this scheme, modern generator designs are over 90% efficient.

[Darth Holbytlan]

The biggest problem with play power is that attaching a generator to something like a see-saw or roundabout would convert them from play to work, and I don't mean psychologically. Driving a generator adds load, meaning that the equipment would slow to a stop almost immediately if you want to power anything significant. For instance, instead of a roundabout spinning freely, it would require constant effort to keep it going at all, making "playing" on it more like driving a rotary mill. I would expect kids to figure out pretty quickly that playing elsewhere is less tiring and more fun.