Fueled by crowdfunding and pre-orders, this self-contained domestic waste-repurposing unit can produce enough gas for a 2 to 4 hours of cooking as well as 5 to 8 liters of liquid fertilizer daily, all using organic scraps.

A complete system for sustainable recycling, HomeBiogas is the product of an Israeli startup and aimed at homeowners who want to something faster and more versatile in its outputs than traditional composting provides, using anything from animal waste to kitchen leftovers. The resulting organic fuel may not power your flying, time-traveling Delorean but it can sure help around the house.

While it will work as well in the suburbs as anywhere, the system may have particular appeal for those living off-the-grid in remote places, where bringing in fertilizers and fuels may be costly or difficult and sustainable strategies can save both time and money.

The the unit can convert just one kilogram of food waste into about 200 liters (7 cubic feet) of gas, more than enough to fuel an hour’s worth of cooking. At 88 pounds and a few feet long, it isn’t tiny but is still relatively portable (and well-suited to people with rural plots). The retail cost: $1,500 (or $900 presale), but like solar or wind power installations, the presumption is that the system will pay back for itself over time.

The post Backyard Biofuel: Home Converter Reuses Organic Waste first appeared on Gajitz.

Japanese inventor Akinori Ito has developed a way to turn plastic, styrofoam and other similar types of trash into usable fuel with a small tabletop machine – the Delorean from Back to the Future comes to mind.

Plastic bags are horrible for the environment, clogging landfills for hundreds of years; polluting lakes, rivers and streams; becoming tangled in trees, bushes and even entangling wildlife.

The result is an efficient conversion process that does not pollute and can process polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene, converting two pounds into a quart of oil using just a kilowatt of power. It is being billed as a carbon-negative solution to energy needs.

Essentially, the device changes plastic bags back to their original state: crude oil. Heat and electricity do the work and the results can power generators, stoves or be used as gasoline. The process is much less toxic and avoids CO2 as compared to burning it for fuel outright. Of course, the result is still likely going to get burned, but at the very least it means less oil needing extraction from the ground and a cheaper source of power for places in need.

The post Waste Not: Japanese Invention Turns Plastic Bags to Fuel first appeared on Gajitz.

This little robotic eco-warrior has a fuel cell sustained by bacteria living inside of the device, which in turn is scooped up from the water as it glides along the surface of a polluted lake, river or stream.

Four buoyant stabilizers serve as floating feet while two paddles attached to the center of the device propel it like a skimmer across liquid surfaces. As it travels, electrogenic bacteria ‘digest’ pollutants it encounters, generating carbon dioxide and electricity in the process, all of which keeps the Row-bot going. Indeed, it is able to produce more energy than it uses, allowing it to keep functioning effectively indefinitely.

The project is a collaboration between teams of scientists and roboticists at the University of Bristol, Bristol BioEnergy Centre and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, and was presented last month at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Hamburg, Germany.

“We present a design for an energetically autonomous artificial organism, combining two subsystems; a bioinspired energy source and bio-inspired actuation,” according to their research paper. “The work is the first demonstration of energetically autonomy in a microbial fuel cell (MFC)-powered, swimming robot taking energy from it’s surrounding, aqueous environment. In contrast to previous work using stacked MFC power sources, the Row-bot employs a single microbial fuel cell as an artificial stomach and uses commercially available voltage step-up hardware to produce usable voltages.”

The post Row-Bot: Drone Skims Water Surfaces Fueled by Pollution first appeared on Gajitz.

Participating in this year’s SAE Supermileage competition, a team of university students designed, built and drove a single-seat aluminum-shell vehicle that managed to get 2,098 miles out of a single gallon of gas.

The winning team, from Quebec’s Université Laval, reengineered a previously-successful shell to reduce weight, increase fuel efficiency and optimize the electrical system. These alternations were based in part on a post-event analysis of the previous year’s winning team, improving on their already-impressive work.

Running on just a single cylinder, the team beat the combination by far more than a mile – runners up managed to get over 1,000 MPG but none came within 600 miles of this winning design. The dozens of other contestants tried a number of tricks, including creating electric hybrids, but all will have to go back to the drawing board to come close to competing next year.

“One of our main goals is to reduce the vehicle weight,” Désaulniers of the team said. “The fact we reuse the shell from last year gives us time to optimize other parts of the car by doing FEA and trying to make them from aluminum. We had been able to reduce approximately the total weight by 2-3 lb.” Other changes to this year’s car included the clutch system, the electronic system, and fuel line. “There was a significant decrease in the energy loss due to the clutch. Also the electronic system and the fuel line were more reliable than the previous year’s,” Désaulniers said. “We also changed the rear sprocket to get a better ratio between the engine and the rear wheel.”

The post Student-Made, 1-Cylinder Car Gets 2,000+ Miles per Gallon first appeared on Gajitz.

Humans have no doubt contributed to climate change, but one of the biggest culprits is actually the methane released by cows. Researchers at Argentina’s Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria (INTA) want to harness that methane as a clean, renewable form of biofuel – by having the cows wear fart-collecting backpacks.

To collect the methane, a tube is inserted into the cows’ rumens (an interior part of the digestive system) and routed up to the gas-catching backpacks. Each cow produces somewhere around 300 liters of methane per day, which the researchers say could provide enough energy to operate a refrigerator for an entire day. After the gas is collected, it is purified and condensed to create usable biofuel.

There are some ethical dilemmas at play in this plan since the collection tubes are inserted through the cows’ skin using a local anesthetic. However, this measure may be acceptable and even necessary if it makes a significant change in the amount of harmful gasses that are released into the atmosphere. The method not only stops the methane from being released into the environment, but also provides a clean and renewable source of energy for nearly anything that requires fuel to operate. However, we hope that a far more humane method can be developed to eliminate the need for an intrusive and painful tube sticking through the side of the cow’s body.

The post Can Harvesting Cow Gas Slow Global Climate Change? first appeared on Gajitz.