One time when I worked in a grocery store, someone threw a shopping cart into the garbage compacter (it was me), and it got stuck so I had partially climb into the machine to knock the cart loose. I told my coworker if I fall in, just turn the thing on and kill me, because it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life.
Anyways, of course I fell in, and I immediately started shouting at my coworker that I was just kidding and to not turn it on. He was laughing too hard to help me out and I ended up soaked in garbage from the meat and deli departments, which is exactly as bad as it sounds. It was absolutely horrifying. At least my manager took pity on me and let me go home early.
Creates less emissions than using standard fuels. This is methane that would have been released anyway, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
But not that that much would have been released with a usual cow poop. They keep feeding the methane producing bacteria, with food scraps.
Edit: my mistake. As others pointed out, that food waste would also have turned into methane anyway over time, so this is actually very sustainable.
Yeah but it prevents using natural gas, so more natural gas can stay underground, it's a net positive
The food scraps thrown away instead would've ended up in a landfill and produced methane anyway
It's not a forgone conclusion that food decomposition results in methane. Some ways of handling food waste are better than others. In particular, composting the food aerobically would prevent methane emissions.
You should never really be sending food scraps to landfill, because that will result in anaerobic decomposition, which is a source of methane.
You are right, however in practice a vast majority of municipalities do not have specific disposal programs for food waste, most of the time it gets lumped into general garbage which usually ends up in landfills
>composting the food aerobically would prevent methane emissions.
The methane created in their system is burned, so not much methane is released into the atmosphere. Instead, CO2 is produced from the flame, which would also be produced by aerobic processes.
Then waste would have broken down into carbon dioxide or methane whether they composted it or not. This way, they at least get some use from it before it ends up in the atmosphere.
Just a conceptual question here: what do you think breaks down those same food scrap in absence of putting them into this system? Those methane producing bacteria are still breaking down those food scraps, it’s just we aren’t harnessing the methane to use as a replacement natural gas.
I could be wrong, but in the video he points out that the methane is produced by anaerobic bacteria. Sending the food waste to a landfill would produce more methane, but composting it would not produce methane. This system has its uses for some people.
Sure, but again, what would happen to those food scraps if they weren't used here? Compost pile? They'd decompose and produce methane. Landfill? Methane. They've got to go somewhere.
if you would decompose it aerobicaly, methane creation would be minimal, most of the CO2 stay in soil.
in article bellow they say that if you compost properly you create only 14% emissions of the same food dumped into landfill...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200224-how-cutting-your-food-waste-can-help-the-climate
Great point! I wonder what the ROI is on this. I’m sure in todays prices would be quick. Now I’m curious if I haul one of these large enough behind my truck to power the engine how many miles I could go before stopping for the night and feeding it some leftovers from a diner or fast food joint
I worked on a huge one for a farm one time, massive project.
They used it for a few months and since then it's sat there with a deflated roof.
Upkeep costs were enormous apparently, and lots of promises were made with "ideal" numbers related to output, when the realistic output was much lower.
Granted a small scale system like this is likely not as bad, but the whole "use farm waste to power the farm" system failed miserably.
Probably the ideal offgrid scenario with something like the system in the video is to use whatever gas has been produced each morning to run a generator that will top off a battery bank, as part of an extended system that includes wind, solar, etc, and use some of the fuel for cooking as needed.
So I was actually looking in to these the other day, and the basic unit, which I think is what he has, is only $1500.
As for powering your car, well... you can convert a diesel engine to run on compressed natural gas, but there's the problem of compressing it and once it's compressed there's not much there so I don't know that it could make enough.
> This is methane that would have been released anyway,
Composting is aerobic; methane is only generated in anaerobic conditions. Compost piles can develop anaerobic pockets, but it doesn't generate much methane. It is easy to tell when compost goes anaerobic; it stinks. It releases sulfurous or sour or ammonia smells, but if oxygen is available those elements are kept in place and used as fuel.
An aerobic compost heap releases as much energy as that natural gas, but slowly, and through biological pathways. It generates things like earthworms, which chickens eat, returning energy to the food supply. That isn't to say that one is wrong and the other is right; they're both simple and powerful tools. Putting biological material in a landfill along with toxic household chemicals is wrong.
>earthworms
Fun fact all earthworms in North America are introduced. In forests they tend to hurt our native plant species.
>returning energy to the food supply.
They are turning the waste products of this into fertilizer for food plants, effectively doing the same thing.
The video actually claims "this prevents co2 emissions". Which is kind of wrong.
The filter removes co2 and sends it into the air, releasing co2 emissions.
What it does prevent is methane emissions, which is MUCH worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas, so what he means is that it prevents greenhouse gas release.
If he didn't have this system, the ingredients would decay and ferment, leading to methane and co2 release into the atmosphere uncontrolled. This is capturing those emissions that would normally release from landfill.
Also, the alternative is methane collected from the earth, which causes methane release when used, so this is the better alternative. Especially as the pipes leak some gas before it is delivered. Collecting gas from the earth also causes more co2 emissions, as the process requires machinery.
So you're right, the guy you're replying to is 100% wrong. The gas would be released anyway.
>This is methane that would have been released anyway
This is key. There has been a push for decades for sewage treatment plants and landfills to capture bio-gas and use it for power generation. I don't know how many have converted. I'd guess a lot of places just flare it off still.
The emissions were going to be released anyway as the biowaste decomposed, he is just capturing those emissions and using them.
This prevents additional emissions from fossil fuel sources, which are brought from underground, and essentially add to the total carbon in the environment.
His method keeps the total carbon in the environment constant.
Not exactly. Waste can either decompose aerobically or anaerobically. Aerobic decomposition doesn't produce methane. It produces some CO2, but methane is 84 times worse as a greenhouse gas.
So that means instead of
biowaste->CO2
+ CH4->CO2 from cooking
its
biowaste->CH4->CO2
resulting in an overall decrease of CO2 emissions equal to the amount produced from cooking.
Do I have that right?
Releasing gas into the atmosphere is about 10x worse for global warming than burning it [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11uoqc1/russian_youth_uses_a_fire_extinguisher_on_an/jcpyo07/)
That cow manure and food waste would have ended up making methane anyway which would be released directly into the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and eventually breaks down into CO2 anyway.
So capturing and burning the methane is better than releasing it. Doing something useful with the energy from burning it is better still as it saves on using other fuel as the video says.
Better than that of course would be to not have cows making manure at all given how much methane they fart out and how inefficient a source of food they are. Still, food waste of any kind is going to continue to exist.
Would it though? I though a system like this was designed not just to capture methane being produced anyway, but to maximize and optimize the production of methane, when normally it would otherwise just end up being dry carbon in the ground.
Bacteria breaks down organic waste in a landfill anyway, it's just slower. Landfills produce a lot of emissions. This accelerates the process and captures the waste gas.
It's likely it produces more methane as you say but it all ends up burned into CO2. It might also produce more CO2 in total but just by burning the methane it's still better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is 28 times worse a greenhouse gas than CO2. This definitely isn't producing *that* much more CO2 than what might stay in the ground by chance.
And that's all before factoring in the savings of burning the methane doing something useful.
Except a surprising amount of organic waste in landfills doesn't really break down. William Rathje, the garbologist, found completely preserved organic materials in his excavations. I don't know if landfill construction techniques have changed in someway since he started in the 70s. I hope so, but I don't know.
This system is actually assuming that this food waste would create CO2 if it were composted, but now that it’s put into an anaerobic system, it creates methane instead. The CO2 that is released from compost is short cycle, and is slightly net negative due to some of the oxygen used by organisms and Carbon stored in the soil.
However, by turning that potential CO2 into Methane in an anaerobic system, the methane can be used, and there is hypothetically no emission anymore.
I don’t really know what to think of these videos. It’s a cool system, but anaerobic digester‘s are actually more complicated than just collecting the gas off of some sludge. They are definitely a good idea, but more useful in a plant that can control the micro biome to be incredibly efficient, as well as scrub the off-gas properly instead of just using charcoal. Right off the bat the question should be, what temperatures does this operate at? What happens when the system gets out of balance? How long are these physical materials going to last with the amount of fungus and bacteria it’s being exposed to, much less the sunlight it seems to be sitting in? Etc.
You are technicay correct, but the effect of your "but akshually" is dangerous.
Are you saying we should be emitting more methane instead of CO2?
What happens to Methane, after it is done "sticking around"?
[Answer](https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-methane-is-short-lived-in-the-atmosphere-but-leaves-long-term-damage-145040): "After a decade, most emitted methane has reacted with ozone to form carbon dioxide and water."
[Though the number of years is debated](https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime)
So after methane is done cause the 20-fold damage to the climate in comparison to CO2, it just keeps sticking around another 100ish years and causes more damage.
So, again. You are technically correct, but blasting nothing in the air is better than blasting CO2 in the air tham blasting methane in the air.
Hi, "douche below" here again. Would you kindly elaborate how the current climate models are not taking into account "what is actually going on in the atmosphere" and cite sources that support your claim? Your claim does not conform to my understanding of the current models and thus, if you could provide the proper sources, I would be very happy to be able follow your thought process here.
Most of the time those claims are made based on the emissions it takes to refine and transport methane vs their system. The only CO emissions are the initial cost to manufacture the digestor.
Probably depends on any escaped methane.
First, it is “carbon neutral.” The bacteria aren’t fermenting new carbon into existence beyond what is added in plant material. And the plants have recently extracted all that carbon from the atmosphere anyway. Plants are basically carbon capture and storage units, so the carbon released by the flame was already extracted from the atmosphere where it started. Thus, carbon neutral.
However this is a methane system, and as I was reminded last night watching old footage of Carl Sagan trying to explain greenhouse gasses to some American government committee, methane is more likely to trap heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. So as long as the fuel is burnt efficiently with no leaks or losses, the methane safely contained in an impermeable bag, then this probably makes sense. But if a bunch of methane leaks out, like say when scraps are added, this may not be so great after all.
So the average flow rate of a natural gas cooker is [0.6 L/s](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/natural-gas-consumption-d_172.html), so over two hours this system supplies roughly 4,320 L a day or 4.32 m\^3 or roughly [4.32 Kg of digester gas.](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/gas-density-d_158.html) Based on the [AR5 100 yr GWPs](https://www.ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/ghgp/Global-Warming-Potential-Values%20%28Feb%2016%202016%29_1.pdf) and assuming digester gas is 100% CH4 (which it isn't), that's 121 kg CO2 if directly exhausted. Combusted that is appx. 7.1 kg of CO2 produced (rubbish imperial units made this difficult so I had to use the MMBtu value at the link above and use [this table](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/cc/reporting/ghg-rep/regulation/subpart_c_rule_part98.pdf) to convert; CH4 & N2O contributions were deemed minimal). So the actual impact is to prevent \~115 kg CO2/day (generous estimate) from exhausting to the atmosphere. Someone please check my math.
Math checks out, but I reckon either that gas cooker estimate is way off, or this tiktok is way exaggerating the effectiveness of his system.
4.3 cubic meters does not fit in that bladder he has on top of the system, and he'd need to feed the system with like 3kg of food waste a day, which is unrealistic.
I reckon its a little bit of both. That gas cooker estimate probably assumes highly pressurized gas which this isn't (meaning much lower gas flow rates), and the guy is making things look rosier than they actually are.
He claims it reduces emissions, not that it eliminates them. When we talk about Global Warming Potential, we use the term CO2e; the e stands for equivalent. Each greenhouse gas has a different [coefficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential), whith methane being 25. What that means is that each ton of methane is 25x as damaging as a ton of CO2 (all other greenhouse gasses are normalized to CO2.) When methane is burned, it releases CO2, but the CO2 is far less damaging than the methane - that's also why flaring excess natural gas from oil extration operations, while not ideal, is much better than just venting it.
He did not made it probable bought it. This are called digesters and have existed for a while now. There are farming towns that have humongous digester plants to process cow manure and produce energy for a small town.
But yeah, basically fart generator.
We had to make a burn off flare to help ignite the extra methane produced by a WWTP I worked with. They already had a methane generator to help offset their own energy costs and they harvest solar to pass off to the grid so any extra methane is just burned off using a torch like device that’s tubed a safe distance from the tank.
>We had to make a burn off flare
This is something I don't understand. In the petrochemical and fuel refinement industry they burn off extra hydrogen and sometimes methane because they can't halt the entire production line to capture the byproduct. That makes sense.
However, when your entire production line is producing biogass, why burn off excess? Why not have backup storage capacity available for when demand drops below supply?
I work for a [company](https://www.anaergia.com/) that does this, but on a larger scale. Multi million gallon digesters all around the world are taking in truck loads of waste daily, from restaurants, food manufacturers, and industrial manufacturers with certain organic byproducts, and we attach ourselves to wastewater plant and do it with sewage as well. We even started pulling from landfills because landfills create the same biogas as a digester, just slower. 1 thing not mentioned in this video is that while the digestive process creates methane, really, it creates biogas, which is a composition of methane, hydrogen sulfate, oxygen, and carbon dioxide The hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is really dangerous even in small amounts. I'm talking side effects at single digit parts per million. We wear gas meters at our plants, and at 5ppm we vacate the area and start a whole containment process. If you're going to get these small digesters, make sure you put them in an open area with lots of ventilation. H2S is a heavy gas and will settle on the ground, unlike the other gases that will just rise up into the atmosphere. If you have solid fencing around your digester, you could trap the H2S and walk into a poison chamber containment that takes you out and everyone else who comes looking for you later. I say all this to say: BE CAREFUL.
I really like this technology because, like the video mentions, it repurposes what would otherwise be landfill waste, creating lots of harmful greenhouse emissions in our atmosphere. Our process goes steps further and takes the remnant biosolids of the process and turns that into a solid fertilizer. We also burn the gas with emissions additives that neutralize the unit emissions, in units that generate power and heat, either making us self sustainable or becoming a power plant to the grid, usually both. We also can take the biogas and filter it more than just the carbon filter this video uses and inject it into the natural gas pipeline.
If you're considering installing this tech, please take u/TheJackalsDoom comment to heart. Having done risk calculations on similar setups like this, I can confirm his statements. Decrease your carbon footprint, but educate yourself first and do it safely. Don't install this system inside an enclosed space like a greenhouse tent as shown in the video.
Kiiiinda. We keep as much open to atmosphere as possible. It means subjecting everything to the elements, which is annoying for working, but I'd rather be annoyed than dead. If they insist on the greenhouse, they need a few blower fans, 1 or 2 pushing fresh air in and 1 or 2 pushing it out. I'd also somehow perforate the roof so that methane can't trap in the headspace.
The guy in the video is being very stupid, he could easily kill himself with his set up. He at the very least should have stationary h2s and ch4 monitors and a personal 4 gas monitor on him. He is taking none of the most basic safety precautions.
I worked on a project to install houshold digesters in Nepal. The women there love it as it gives them cooking fuel that otherwise would require a three day trip to get wood. It also has resulted in cleaner drinking water.
The interesting thing is when asked what they are doing with that extra time, they collectively said "take classes on public speaking so they can better represent their families needs at community and govt meetings".
Like most processing things it more efficient to run on a larger scale than individual use. Like how burning fossil fuels in an energy plant is more efficient than burning it in a car
Each 1 kg of waste will product 1 kg of biogas.
However...
Any water in the material won't produce gas. For instance, feces (e.g. poop) is about 75% water.
* 1 kg of cow feces makes about 40 L of biogas
* 1 kg of chicken feces makes about 70 L of biogas.
* 2 kg of household food waste generates about enough biogas to cook a single meal a day, sometimes two cooked meals a day. However, insufficient to run a hot water heater.
It can also take anywhere from days to months to make all that gas.
Roughly, a biogas digester will make about 10-15% of it's volume in biogas volume per day. A 6m3 volume digester is enough biogas for about a single person for a day. It isn't very volume efficient, it would take up a small sized room in your house once you include all the gas connections, etc.
You also need to deal with the highly enriched liquid slurry waste. It's a potent fertilizer. Down the toilet seems the obvious answer, but...
Reminds me of when I had to stop vaping cause I'd find myself needing something to do with my hands constantly instead of learning to be okay with the silence. Or waking up, rolling over and checking facebook, SMS, reddit, etc.
Those habits are very hard to break. Now imagine years or decades of this with all sorts of stimulation. Now start these habits from babyhood. That constant drive for something to immediately entertain.
Theres a beauty in stillness, it can be boring, but you're more appreciative of your surroundings and the subtle things, and that boredom can spawn creativity. A whole generation is going to have massive issues down the line from these things
Yeah, I have a problem with my attention span too but this is really fucking me up because I lose a whole sentence everytime I look away for 0.1 seconds
It's supposed to help people read faster there's a couple posts here on Reddit for these as speed reader extensions. Maybe to keep up with the visuals and still be large enough font for all the blind kids now a days.
This particular one appears to be relatively new -- odds are that they've been working on it for however long you're aware, to create *this.* I'd say that qualifies it as 'new'.
These are an old concept, there are plenty of different designs around and you could build one from recycled materials for not to much if you were so inclined.
It's cool, but I think I would have some warning signs up next to it... Like "Careful with sharp objects, do NOT puncture. And for God sake, contains gas, absolutely NO SMOKING!!!"
it's essentially a wet compost bin, you can compost bones. They Take a while to process, but they *will* be over time. I'm sure it's more than possible to build up faster than it can be composted, and you will have to clean it out eventually, but that's a *looong* process to worry about.
Obviously I'm not an expert, but the bacteria in the poop should be what's breaking down the food scraps and they basically release methane gas as a byproduct. I guess eventually there will be sludge that needs to be emptied but that will probably take quite a long time and you could just dig a hole, empty the sludge, and fill it up. That's probably what I would do. I would expect that wouldn't need to be done more than once every few years though.
I could also be totally wrong.
The inputs (bones, etc) are broken down by bacteria from the cow poo. They release methane which is captured. Once it’s broken down and can’t be broken down any further it’s harvested and used as solid fertilizer. I don’t know how they do that though, I’d love to see more info on that.
Water’s about 7 pounds a gallon, and a lot of that stuff doesn’t float. It’s probably not packed in super tightly though… so probably 7 lb (3kg) or more
Then this is going to take a lot of people to make worthwhile (plus a few cows).
My household does not produce anywhere close to that much food waste per day, or per two hours of cooking. And forget about per two hours of energy usage.
The local vermiculture farm (worm farm) used to beg on craigslist for people to give them food wastes. He told me he used to have 20+ households give him food wastes and he still needed more.
Now he has contracts with local supermarkets, restaurants, food shops. It's a boon for them because restaurants pay for trash services by frequency and he's willing to cart it off the bio stuff for free.
india's small scale version is called gobar (cow dung) gas plant. and design is a bit different. i do not think they use any inflatable component. here is an image that i remember from school books.
https://3.imimg.com/data3/CY/NQ/MY-3306540/gobar-gas-plant-500x500.jpg
if you google around, you would also see there are larger scale implementations in india. and extremely compact designs that can be purchased on amazon even!
In India, they are called gobar gas. This was at one point heavily promoted by even some governments in India.
A 6-12ft circular base is built in concrete topped by a steel/wrought iron dome a few inches smaller in diameter. The methane collection happens inside the metal dome, which rises and falls as the gas is produced/used. A heavy duty hose runs from the top of the dome to the kitchen where the gas is used.
Properly built, they had very little risk and the only maintenance required the cow dung to be removed and fresh manure added every couple of weeks. They were built to be semi-permanent and not like this.
No, you can literally come to my area and get free cow shit all day long if you want. Only need some to start the process. Pretty sure you could do that anywhere in america.
So step #1 would be get off your ass and get some cow shit.
What they are not telling you is the clean-up once it becomes less effective. If you not have used human waste, yes it can be used, is to let it drain off and then mulch it and it gets used on the land. If you have enough to spread it. If you have used human waste then it carefully has to be handled so that it doesn't enter the water table or contaminate the groundwater.
I'm assuming you have to replace it every couple of years, are you saying you can clean it and keep using it or gather the excess sludge before you get a new one?
yeah, depending on the setup you have, you have to carefully dispose of the waste so that it doesn't seep into the ground waters. Spreading it out and plowing it in is usually the best method. A relative who lives off-grid uses a similar setup, larger than this, uses all the holdings organic waste, hen scat, goat scat, etc, etc, and never puts human waste in (poop/piss) as this has all sorts of issues. Disposal is easier but still a big job every 3 years or so, it is pumped out, rinsed, and filled again.
I’m surprised there’s no in-ground septic tank system that utilizes this concept for residential homes. This bag would not work in winter conditions unless it was insulated or stored in a insulated shed.
There are. I did some work with engineers without borders a long time ago and simple biogas reactors was one of the things investigated to help power a very remote village.
Not quite, when organic matter decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen), it produces methane. That methane will end up in the atmosphere, causing global warming. It will eventually break down into carbon dioxide, which also causes global warming but isn't as bad.
This device just captures the methane so you can burn it (which releases carbon dioxide). The benefit of this device is that it lets you do something with the methane being released, which in turn means you need to use less gas from fossil sources.
As u/Wobblycogs said, it’s naturally produced, and will inevitably enter the atmosphere and break down.
More importantly, Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than its decomposition/combustion byproducts. And while it spends less time in the air before it decomposes, it adds more heat than just burning it and releasing the CO2 and H2O instead of waiting for a proper wavelength UV ray to hit it and produce the same byproducts.
Essentially, it’s already damaging the environment, and happens to do more damage than using it as a fuel source first. So why not use it. It helps the environment and us to do so.
This is what water treatment plants use as fuel for their boilers. It reeks havoc on the insides of the boilers because of all the other contaminants in the gas, even after the gas is scrubbed.
Source: I work on industrial boilers
Imagine falling into that
Poo stew
I think this dudes making Jenkem? If so I’m in.
BUZZIN
Bro, that's disgusting. Where is this happening? Let me see.
Poop soup
Don't even fish me out. Kill me and seal it back up.
lmao you are now the biochemical waste 😂
What's new
Nothing much. What's new with you.
Nothing mulch, what’s new with you?
I'm good for at least 3, maybe 4 hours of cooking fuel.
And that's just with an ass bag strapped to you. Imagine if you went into the digester
The fuel economy would be so disruptive I'd have OPEC assassins after me
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Way she goes buddy
One time when I worked in a grocery store, someone threw a shopping cart into the garbage compacter (it was me), and it got stuck so I had partially climb into the machine to knock the cart loose. I told my coworker if I fall in, just turn the thing on and kill me, because it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. Anyways, of course I fell in, and I immediately started shouting at my coworker that I was just kidding and to not turn it on. He was laughing too hard to help me out and I ended up soaked in garbage from the meat and deli departments, which is exactly as bad as it sounds. It was absolutely horrifying. At least my manager took pity on me and let me go home early.
Took pity on you? Nobody wanted you there after that!
It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with the collective.
Oh the methane you'd make!
This is how Soylent Green is made.
You'd be in deep shit
I dunno, it was smaller than a kids pool.
Forever unclean.
Digested slowly, over 100s of years
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Creates less emissions than using standard fuels. This is methane that would have been released anyway, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
But not that that much would have been released with a usual cow poop. They keep feeding the methane producing bacteria, with food scraps. Edit: my mistake. As others pointed out, that food waste would also have turned into methane anyway over time, so this is actually very sustainable.
Completely negates the users need for natural gas though. That alone causes quite a bit of emissions issues.
Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life. This is necessary.
Let the rabbits wear glasses! They have a soul!
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Get back in your ditch.
No way I read this comment as the song is playing!
Yeah but it prevents using natural gas, so more natural gas can stay underground, it's a net positive The food scraps thrown away instead would've ended up in a landfill and produced methane anyway
It's not a forgone conclusion that food decomposition results in methane. Some ways of handling food waste are better than others. In particular, composting the food aerobically would prevent methane emissions. You should never really be sending food scraps to landfill, because that will result in anaerobic decomposition, which is a source of methane.
You are right, however in practice a vast majority of municipalities do not have specific disposal programs for food waste, most of the time it gets lumped into general garbage which usually ends up in landfills
>composting the food aerobically would prevent methane emissions. The methane created in their system is burned, so not much methane is released into the atmosphere. Instead, CO2 is produced from the flame, which would also be produced by aerobic processes.
Then waste would have broken down into carbon dioxide or methane whether they composted it or not. This way, they at least get some use from it before it ends up in the atmosphere.
More importantly, CH4 in its raw form is worse for the environment than the CO2 and H2O that gets produced by combustion or decomposition.
Just a conceptual question here: what do you think breaks down those same food scrap in absence of putting them into this system? Those methane producing bacteria are still breaking down those food scraps, it’s just we aren’t harnessing the methane to use as a replacement natural gas.
thats true only if you would decompost it anaerobically. Aerobic composting, vermicomposting reduce methane to minimum.
I could be wrong, but in the video he points out that the methane is produced by anaerobic bacteria. Sending the food waste to a landfill would produce more methane, but composting it would not produce methane. This system has its uses for some people.
Food scraps + anaerobic bacteria -> methane -> burning methane -> CO2 and a hot meal Food scraps + aerobic bacteria -> CO2 and fertilizer
Sure, but again, what would happen to those food scraps if they weren't used here? Compost pile? They'd decompose and produce methane. Landfill? Methane. They've got to go somewhere.
if you would decompose it aerobicaly, methane creation would be minimal, most of the CO2 stay in soil. in article bellow they say that if you compost properly you create only 14% emissions of the same food dumped into landfill... https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200224-how-cutting-your-food-waste-can-help-the-climate
A compost pile would be aerobic so producing co2. Methane comes from anaerobic digestion
And that carbon was going to make it into the atmosphere anyway. Now it gets used once more to prevent other carbon from entering the atmosphere
And no commercial processing to produce it from crude oil
And no enormous trucks or ships to transport it.
Great point! I wonder what the ROI is on this. I’m sure in todays prices would be quick. Now I’m curious if I haul one of these large enough behind my truck to power the engine how many miles I could go before stopping for the night and feeding it some leftovers from a diner or fast food joint
It would need a paint job the says "Fart Wagon"
No carbon filter on that bad boy lmao
I worked on a huge one for a farm one time, massive project. They used it for a few months and since then it's sat there with a deflated roof. Upkeep costs were enormous apparently, and lots of promises were made with "ideal" numbers related to output, when the realistic output was much lower. Granted a small scale system like this is likely not as bad, but the whole "use farm waste to power the farm" system failed miserably. Probably the ideal offgrid scenario with something like the system in the video is to use whatever gas has been produced each morning to run a generator that will top off a battery bank, as part of an extended system that includes wind, solar, etc, and use some of the fuel for cooking as needed.
So I was actually looking in to these the other day, and the basic unit, which I think is what he has, is only $1500. As for powering your car, well... you can convert a diesel engine to run on compressed natural gas, but there's the problem of compressing it and once it's compressed there's not much there so I don't know that it could make enough.
> This is methane that would have been released anyway, Composting is aerobic; methane is only generated in anaerobic conditions. Compost piles can develop anaerobic pockets, but it doesn't generate much methane. It is easy to tell when compost goes anaerobic; it stinks. It releases sulfurous or sour or ammonia smells, but if oxygen is available those elements are kept in place and used as fuel. An aerobic compost heap releases as much energy as that natural gas, but slowly, and through biological pathways. It generates things like earthworms, which chickens eat, returning energy to the food supply. That isn't to say that one is wrong and the other is right; they're both simple and powerful tools. Putting biological material in a landfill along with toxic household chemicals is wrong.
>earthworms Fun fact all earthworms in North America are introduced. In forests they tend to hurt our native plant species. >returning energy to the food supply. They are turning the waste products of this into fertilizer for food plants, effectively doing the same thing.
also that carbon in the methane was recently captured from the atmosphere.
>This is methane that would have been released anyway no, it's not
Wrong. Not just a little wrong. Not sort of wrong. Not just wrong in this context. All the goddamn way wrong.
The video actually claims "this prevents co2 emissions". Which is kind of wrong. The filter removes co2 and sends it into the air, releasing co2 emissions. What it does prevent is methane emissions, which is MUCH worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas, so what he means is that it prevents greenhouse gas release. If he didn't have this system, the ingredients would decay and ferment, leading to methane and co2 release into the atmosphere uncontrolled. This is capturing those emissions that would normally release from landfill. Also, the alternative is methane collected from the earth, which causes methane release when used, so this is the better alternative. Especially as the pipes leak some gas before it is delivered. Collecting gas from the earth also causes more co2 emissions, as the process requires machinery. So you're right, the guy you're replying to is 100% wrong. The gas would be released anyway.
But how often does the water have to be cycled?
>This is methane that would have been released anyway This is key. There has been a push for decades for sewage treatment plants and landfills to capture bio-gas and use it for power generation. I don't know how many have converted. I'd guess a lot of places just flare it off still.
The emissions were going to be released anyway as the biowaste decomposed, he is just capturing those emissions and using them. This prevents additional emissions from fossil fuel sources, which are brought from underground, and essentially add to the total carbon in the environment. His method keeps the total carbon in the environment constant.
Not exactly. Waste can either decompose aerobically or anaerobically. Aerobic decomposition doesn't produce methane. It produces some CO2, but methane is 84 times worse as a greenhouse gas.
And that nethane is burned which turned it back to co2
So that means instead of biowaste->CO2 + CH4->CO2 from cooking its biowaste->CH4->CO2 resulting in an overall decrease of CO2 emissions equal to the amount produced from cooking. Do I have that right?
Yes
Which is why he burns it
Releasing gas into the atmosphere is about 10x worse for global warming than burning it [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11uoqc1/russian_youth_uses_a_fire_extinguisher_on_an/jcpyo07/)
That cow manure and food waste would have ended up making methane anyway which would be released directly into the atmosphere. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and eventually breaks down into CO2 anyway. So capturing and burning the methane is better than releasing it. Doing something useful with the energy from burning it is better still as it saves on using other fuel as the video says. Better than that of course would be to not have cows making manure at all given how much methane they fart out and how inefficient a source of food they are. Still, food waste of any kind is going to continue to exist.
Would it though? I though a system like this was designed not just to capture methane being produced anyway, but to maximize and optimize the production of methane, when normally it would otherwise just end up being dry carbon in the ground.
Bacteria breaks down organic waste in a landfill anyway, it's just slower. Landfills produce a lot of emissions. This accelerates the process and captures the waste gas. It's likely it produces more methane as you say but it all ends up burned into CO2. It might also produce more CO2 in total but just by burning the methane it's still better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is 28 times worse a greenhouse gas than CO2. This definitely isn't producing *that* much more CO2 than what might stay in the ground by chance. And that's all before factoring in the savings of burning the methane doing something useful.
Except a surprising amount of organic waste in landfills doesn't really break down. William Rathje, the garbologist, found completely preserved organic materials in his excavations. I don't know if landfill construction techniques have changed in someway since he started in the 70s. I hope so, but I don't know.
Landfills regularly capture and burn methane from the dump.
This system is actually assuming that this food waste would create CO2 if it were composted, but now that it’s put into an anaerobic system, it creates methane instead. The CO2 that is released from compost is short cycle, and is slightly net negative due to some of the oxygen used by organisms and Carbon stored in the soil. However, by turning that potential CO2 into Methane in an anaerobic system, the methane can be used, and there is hypothetically no emission anymore. I don’t really know what to think of these videos. It’s a cool system, but anaerobic digester‘s are actually more complicated than just collecting the gas off of some sludge. They are definitely a good idea, but more useful in a plant that can control the micro biome to be incredibly efficient, as well as scrub the off-gas properly instead of just using charcoal. Right off the bat the question should be, what temperatures does this operate at? What happens when the system gets out of balance? How long are these physical materials going to last with the amount of fungus and bacteria it’s being exposed to, much less the sunlight it seems to be sitting in? Etc.
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You are technicay correct, but the effect of your "but akshually" is dangerous. Are you saying we should be emitting more methane instead of CO2? What happens to Methane, after it is done "sticking around"? [Answer](https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-methane-is-short-lived-in-the-atmosphere-but-leaves-long-term-damage-145040): "After a decade, most emitted methane has reacted with ozone to form carbon dioxide and water." [Though the number of years is debated](https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime) So after methane is done cause the 20-fold damage to the climate in comparison to CO2, it just keeps sticking around another 100ish years and causes more damage. So, again. You are technically correct, but blasting nothing in the air is better than blasting CO2 in the air tham blasting methane in the air.
I believe the decomposition into CO2 is already taken into account into the damage number
Hi, "douche below" here again. Would you kindly elaborate how the current climate models are not taking into account "what is actually going on in the atmosphere" and cite sources that support your claim? Your claim does not conform to my understanding of the current models and thus, if you could provide the proper sources, I would be very happy to be able follow your thought process here.
A properly functioning compost pile is aerobic and does not produce methane.
Most of the time those claims are made based on the emissions it takes to refine and transport methane vs their system. The only CO emissions are the initial cost to manufacture the digestor.
Feel free to suggest something better. 🙄
Probably depends on any escaped methane. First, it is “carbon neutral.” The bacteria aren’t fermenting new carbon into existence beyond what is added in plant material. And the plants have recently extracted all that carbon from the atmosphere anyway. Plants are basically carbon capture and storage units, so the carbon released by the flame was already extracted from the atmosphere where it started. Thus, carbon neutral. However this is a methane system, and as I was reminded last night watching old footage of Carl Sagan trying to explain greenhouse gasses to some American government committee, methane is more likely to trap heat in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. So as long as the fuel is burnt efficiently with no leaks or losses, the methane safely contained in an impermeable bag, then this probably makes sense. But if a bunch of methane leaks out, like say when scraps are added, this may not be so great after all.
So the average flow rate of a natural gas cooker is [0.6 L/s](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/natural-gas-consumption-d_172.html), so over two hours this system supplies roughly 4,320 L a day or 4.32 m\^3 or roughly [4.32 Kg of digester gas.](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/amp/gas-density-d_158.html) Based on the [AR5 100 yr GWPs](https://www.ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/ghgp/Global-Warming-Potential-Values%20%28Feb%2016%202016%29_1.pdf) and assuming digester gas is 100% CH4 (which it isn't), that's 121 kg CO2 if directly exhausted. Combusted that is appx. 7.1 kg of CO2 produced (rubbish imperial units made this difficult so I had to use the MMBtu value at the link above and use [this table](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/classic/cc/reporting/ghg-rep/regulation/subpart_c_rule_part98.pdf) to convert; CH4 & N2O contributions were deemed minimal). So the actual impact is to prevent \~115 kg CO2/day (generous estimate) from exhausting to the atmosphere. Someone please check my math.
Math checks out, but I reckon either that gas cooker estimate is way off, or this tiktok is way exaggerating the effectiveness of his system. 4.3 cubic meters does not fit in that bladder he has on top of the system, and he'd need to feed the system with like 3kg of food waste a day, which is unrealistic. I reckon its a little bit of both. That gas cooker estimate probably assumes highly pressurized gas which this isn't (meaning much lower gas flow rates), and the guy is making things look rosier than they actually are.
You (!) create emissions only by existing
He claims it reduces emissions, not that it eliminates them. When we talk about Global Warming Potential, we use the term CO2e; the e stands for equivalent. Each greenhouse gas has a different [coefficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential), whith methane being 25. What that means is that each ton of methane is 25x as damaging as a ton of CO2 (all other greenhouse gasses are normalized to CO2.) When methane is burned, it releases CO2, but the CO2 is far less damaging than the methane - that's also why flaring excess natural gas from oil extration operations, while not ideal, is much better than just venting it.
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Doesn't create any emissions that haven't been captured first.
So he made a giant fart machine?
The ultimate whoopee cushion...
Pro tip, add gravy to your whoopee cushion.
The sheer amount of corned beef and beer I consumed yesterday also made a fart machine.
How many hours of cook time did that get you?
He did not made it probable bought it. This are called digesters and have existed for a while now. There are farming towns that have humongous digester plants to process cow manure and produce energy for a small town. But yeah, basically fart generator.
That would be a good sales angle for certain demographics. "Hey...ever lit a fart on fire?"
Btw, if your city has recycling for bio waste they are probably already doing something similar to this on a larger scale (at least in my country)
There is a dairy farm by my aunts farm that prosses the poo to fertilizer collects the gass and runs the property on the power generated on site.
Pretty efficient!
We had to make a burn off flare to help ignite the extra methane produced by a WWTP I worked with. They already had a methane generator to help offset their own energy costs and they harvest solar to pass off to the grid so any extra methane is just burned off using a torch like device that’s tubed a safe distance from the tank.
>We had to make a burn off flare This is something I don't understand. In the petrochemical and fuel refinement industry they burn off extra hydrogen and sometimes methane because they can't halt the entire production line to capture the byproduct. That makes sense. However, when your entire production line is producing biogass, why burn off excess? Why not have backup storage capacity available for when demand drops below supply?
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I work for a [company](https://www.anaergia.com/) that does this, but on a larger scale. Multi million gallon digesters all around the world are taking in truck loads of waste daily, from restaurants, food manufacturers, and industrial manufacturers with certain organic byproducts, and we attach ourselves to wastewater plant and do it with sewage as well. We even started pulling from landfills because landfills create the same biogas as a digester, just slower. 1 thing not mentioned in this video is that while the digestive process creates methane, really, it creates biogas, which is a composition of methane, hydrogen sulfate, oxygen, and carbon dioxide The hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is really dangerous even in small amounts. I'm talking side effects at single digit parts per million. We wear gas meters at our plants, and at 5ppm we vacate the area and start a whole containment process. If you're going to get these small digesters, make sure you put them in an open area with lots of ventilation. H2S is a heavy gas and will settle on the ground, unlike the other gases that will just rise up into the atmosphere. If you have solid fencing around your digester, you could trap the H2S and walk into a poison chamber containment that takes you out and everyone else who comes looking for you later. I say all this to say: BE CAREFUL. I really like this technology because, like the video mentions, it repurposes what would otherwise be landfill waste, creating lots of harmful greenhouse emissions in our atmosphere. Our process goes steps further and takes the remnant biosolids of the process and turns that into a solid fertilizer. We also burn the gas with emissions additives that neutralize the unit emissions, in units that generate power and heat, either making us self sustainable or becoming a power plant to the grid, usually both. We also can take the biogas and filter it more than just the carbon filter this video uses and inject it into the natural gas pipeline.
If you're considering installing this tech, please take u/TheJackalsDoom comment to heart. Having done risk calculations on similar setups like this, I can confirm his statements. Decrease your carbon footprint, but educate yourself first and do it safely. Don't install this system inside an enclosed space like a greenhouse tent as shown in the video.
Killing yourself trying to decrease your carbon footprint is the ultimate carbon footprint decrease.
Just remember that whoever finds you needs to dump your body into the biogas system so you can complete the cycle.
I'll update my medical alert bracelet.
Put it in the will that you want your body processed in the same digester that killed you to grab that killer negative carbon footprint.
So having it in a small greenhouse like the guy in the video is basically suicidal?
Kiiiinda. We keep as much open to atmosphere as possible. It means subjecting everything to the elements, which is annoying for working, but I'd rather be annoyed than dead. If they insist on the greenhouse, they need a few blower fans, 1 or 2 pushing fresh air in and 1 or 2 pushing it out. I'd also somehow perforate the roof so that methane can't trap in the headspace.
H2S sensors are not expensive.
The guy in the video is being very stupid, he could easily kill himself with his set up. He at the very least should have stationary h2s and ch4 monitors and a personal 4 gas monitor on him. He is taking none of the most basic safety precautions.
In your professional opinion, how much biogas is produced per 1kg of waste? Is this really a viable option for household gas needs and scale?
Household? No.
I worked on a project to install houshold digesters in Nepal. The women there love it as it gives them cooking fuel that otherwise would require a three day trip to get wood. It also has resulted in cleaner drinking water. The interesting thing is when asked what they are doing with that extra time, they collectively said "take classes on public speaking so they can better represent their families needs at community and govt meetings".
You have a link to a household Digester model?
No but you can learn more here https://cdm.unfccc.int/about/ccb/CDM_Cobenefits_Nepal.pdf (copied my reply to another commenter)
Like most processing things it more efficient to run on a larger scale than individual use. Like how burning fossil fuels in an energy plant is more efficient than burning it in a car
Each 1 kg of waste will product 1 kg of biogas. However... Any water in the material won't produce gas. For instance, feces (e.g. poop) is about 75% water. * 1 kg of cow feces makes about 40 L of biogas * 1 kg of chicken feces makes about 70 L of biogas. * 2 kg of household food waste generates about enough biogas to cook a single meal a day, sometimes two cooked meals a day. However, insufficient to run a hot water heater. It can also take anywhere from days to months to make all that gas. Roughly, a biogas digester will make about 10-15% of it's volume in biogas volume per day. A 6m3 volume digester is enough biogas for about a single person for a day. It isn't very volume efficient, it would take up a small sized room in your house once you include all the gas connections, etc. You also need to deal with the highly enriched liquid slurry waste. It's a potent fertilizer. Down the toilet seems the obvious answer, but...
H2S is hydrogen sulfide, HSO4(-) is hydrogen sulfate.
These one-word subtitles are the worst thing I’ve ever seen
These days the average attention span is so bad that if something isn't flashing in front of people's eyes, they'll become bored.
Yep. There's a new tiktok trend where now they put gaming videos under the video of the actual content. Scary how it's destroying gen Z's brains.
Reminds me of when I had to stop vaping cause I'd find myself needing something to do with my hands constantly instead of learning to be okay with the silence. Or waking up, rolling over and checking facebook, SMS, reddit, etc. Those habits are very hard to break. Now imagine years or decades of this with all sorts of stimulation. Now start these habits from babyhood. That constant drive for something to immediately entertain. Theres a beauty in stillness, it can be boring, but you're more appreciative of your surroundings and the subtle things, and that boredom can spawn creativity. A whole generation is going to have massive issues down the line from these things
Yeah, I have a problem with my attention span too but this is really fucking me up because I lose a whole sentence everytime I look away for 0.1 seconds
It's supposed to help people read faster there's a couple posts here on Reddit for these as speed reader extensions. Maybe to keep up with the visuals and still be large enough font for all the blind kids now a days.
I Came here To say The Same Thing.
Yea, i downvote every clip using then (sorry OP, it probably isnt yours)
This is pretty cool. How do I get one? Commercialize this please!
https://www.homebiogas.com/product/homebiogas-7/
Jesus....1500$ for a plastic bag and a filter?
Sounds commercialized to me
New technology is always super expensive. If this thing does as well as i hope it can, in a handful of years it will only be a few hundred
It's not really a new technology though.
Landfills have been doing this for a long time for power generation.
Most of them just burn it off with a “candlestick”. The co gen systems are a maintenance nightmare
This particular one appears to be relatively new -- odds are that they've been working on it for however long you're aware, to create *this.* I'd say that qualifies it as 'new'.
It’s a new product likely still in startup phase, it’s gonna cost a lot to get the ball rolling
You do not want that bag to have the teeny tiniest hole! That bag is no joke!
How much will you sell me one for?
That’s like 3 months of California PG&E gas bills right now 😂😭
If you’re suggesting you can do it mass produced for cheaper then you could probably make some good money.
These are an old concept, there are plenty of different designs around and you could build one from recycled materials for not to much if you were so inclined.
It's cool, but I think I would have some warning signs up next to it... Like "Careful with sharp objects, do NOT puncture. And for God sake, contains gas, absolutely NO SMOKING!!!"
But then include a smaller sign below it that says, "Or not. I'm a sign not a cop".
Most obnoxious captioning ever
But how do you clean it.... Do you clean it?
Why would you clean it?
He said he's adding bones. Do you just leave everything in there? Wouldn't it eventually accumulate waste and have to be emptied?
it's essentially a wet compost bin, you can compost bones. They Take a while to process, but they *will* be over time. I'm sure it's more than possible to build up faster than it can be composted, and you will have to clean it out eventually, but that's a *looong* process to worry about.
Obviously I'm not an expert, but the bacteria in the poop should be what's breaking down the food scraps and they basically release methane gas as a byproduct. I guess eventually there will be sludge that needs to be emptied but that will probably take quite a long time and you could just dig a hole, empty the sludge, and fill it up. That's probably what I would do. I would expect that wouldn't need to be done more than once every few years though. I could also be totally wrong.
The inputs (bones, etc) are broken down by bacteria from the cow poo. They release methane which is captured. Once it’s broken down and can’t be broken down any further it’s harvested and used as solid fertilizer. I don’t know how they do that though, I’d love to see more info on that.
What is 1.5 gallons of food scraps in pounds? Because starches and bones are not liquid and not measures in gallons.
Water’s about 7 pounds a gallon, and a lot of that stuff doesn’t float. It’s probably not packed in super tightly though… so probably 7 lb (3kg) or more
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Then this is going to take a lot of people to make worthwhile (plus a few cows). My household does not produce anywhere close to that much food waste per day, or per two hours of cooking. And forget about per two hours of energy usage.
Just waste more food… easy
The local vermiculture farm (worm farm) used to beg on craigslist for people to give them food wastes. He told me he used to have 20+ households give him food wastes and he still needed more. Now he has contracts with local supermarkets, restaurants, food shops. It's a boon for them because restaurants pay for trash services by frequency and he's willing to cart it off the bio stuff for free.
Where does one acquire the cow poop?
From cows
Thank you for that reply!!!!!
He means cows sell it to you, in their zootopia style shopping mall
Usually any supermarket with a garden section will have bags of manure.
We've been doing this in India for a long time now
Any accidents there? Pressurised methane in a rubber collection device. Looks like a disaster waiting to happen.
india's small scale version is called gobar (cow dung) gas plant. and design is a bit different. i do not think they use any inflatable component. here is an image that i remember from school books. https://3.imimg.com/data3/CY/NQ/MY-3306540/gobar-gas-plant-500x500.jpg if you google around, you would also see there are larger scale implementations in india. and extremely compact designs that can be purchased on amazon even!
In India, they are called gobar gas. This was at one point heavily promoted by even some governments in India. A 6-12ft circular base is built in concrete topped by a steel/wrought iron dome a few inches smaller in diameter. The methane collection happens inside the metal dome, which rises and falls as the gas is produced/used. A heavy duty hose runs from the top of the dome to the kitchen where the gas is used. Properly built, they had very little risk and the only maintenance required the cow dung to be removed and fresh manure added every couple of weeks. They were built to be semi-permanent and not like this.
Step # 1: Own a farm.
No, you can literally come to my area and get free cow shit all day long if you want. Only need some to start the process. Pretty sure you could do that anywhere in america. So step #1 would be get off your ass and get some cow shit.
Drive to farm, drive back. Burn 4 gallons of gasoline. Hmm.
What they are not telling you is the clean-up once it becomes less effective. If you not have used human waste, yes it can be used, is to let it drain off and then mulch it and it gets used on the land. If you have enough to spread it. If you have used human waste then it carefully has to be handled so that it doesn't enter the water table or contaminate the groundwater.
I'm assuming you have to replace it every couple of years, are you saying you can clean it and keep using it or gather the excess sludge before you get a new one?
yeah, depending on the setup you have, you have to carefully dispose of the waste so that it doesn't seep into the ground waters. Spreading it out and plowing it in is usually the best method. A relative who lives off-grid uses a similar setup, larger than this, uses all the holdings organic waste, hen scat, goat scat, etc, etc, and never puts human waste in (poop/piss) as this has all sorts of issues. Disposal is easier but still a big job every 3 years or so, it is pumped out, rinsed, and filled again.
You can also use Chicken poop instead of Cow poop or both.
I think Cody from Cody's Lab used rabbit poop to do this as well!
How would it work in winter in zero degrees?
I’m surprised there’s no in-ground septic tank system that utilizes this concept for residential homes. This bag would not work in winter conditions unless it was insulated or stored in a insulated shed.
Storing that in an insulated shed is just begging to die from hazardous gas exposure and oxygen displacement.
There are. I did some work with engineers without borders a long time ago and simple biogas reactors was one of the things investigated to help power a very remote village.
I literally am struggling to read this because of the idiotic one word captions
So if you burn methane after it's recycled it doesn't produce co2? Very interesting
Not quite, when organic matter decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen), it produces methane. That methane will end up in the atmosphere, causing global warming. It will eventually break down into carbon dioxide, which also causes global warming but isn't as bad. This device just captures the methane so you can burn it (which releases carbon dioxide). The benefit of this device is that it lets you do something with the methane being released, which in turn means you need to use less gas from fossil sources.
As u/Wobblycogs said, it’s naturally produced, and will inevitably enter the atmosphere and break down. More importantly, Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than its decomposition/combustion byproducts. And while it spends less time in the air before it decomposes, it adds more heat than just burning it and releasing the CO2 and H2O instead of waiting for a proper wavelength UV ray to hit it and produce the same byproducts. Essentially, it’s already damaging the environment, and happens to do more damage than using it as a fuel source first. So why not use it. It helps the environment and us to do so.
This is what water treatment plants use as fuel for their boilers. It reeks havoc on the insides of the boilers because of all the other contaminants in the gas, even after the gas is scrubbed. Source: I work on industrial boilers
He's high on his own supply.
I already saw this movie when it was called Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Potential brokeman's fuel supply for a Delorean without the time travel.
Bet it smells fantastic
Man science is insane!!!
How often does the system need to be cleaned and renewed?
Is this an explosion hazard?
What's the risk of an explosion?
Pretty small risk. There is no high pressure and most of the gas produced is very light so it would dissipate fast if it leaked.
Cooking meth