Sweden's New Biofuel is a Clean-Burning Appetite Suppressant
- Aug 21, 2007 11:20 PM EST
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If you are just sitting down to have dinner, perhaps you would be better served by saving this read for a later time. If not, then here is a question: what do you get, when you put together booze, human feces, and dead animal remains? No, not the latest episode of "Fear Factor." The result is clean burning biogas.
This unusual concoction is already used to power Swedish cars, buses, taxis, garbage trucks, and even trains. Illegally transported alcohol seized by the Swedish government, together with human waste and animal carcasses are mixed and heated in anaerobic digesters to produce organic biogas.
In a related development, San Francisco's Norcal Waste Systems want to use a similar approach, only their byproduct of choice is dog poop. Interesting trend!
Designers of hydrogen fuel-cell cars like to brag that the tail pipes of their vehicles smell like fresh laundry. Carl Lillehöök, managing director of Swedish Biogas, boasted that "if you put your finger on the inside of the tail pipe of a biofuel car, [it doesn't] get dirty." Maybe, but I bet it doesn't smell like fresh laundry.
Source: National Geographic