Fred Bortz writes: In reading the current issue of New Scientist, I found a pointer to a blog entry called "Bug eats electricity, farts biogas."
Needless to say, I had to learn more.
Yeah, that sort of grabs my attention too. Fred is referring to the article Bug eats electricity, farts biogas in New Scientist, which literally proposed using wind to create wind ...
Wind power is capricious, while solar cell output drops off at night or on cloudy days. That fluctuating output poses big problems for electricity grids that rely on steady levels throughout the day. Proposals to deal with the ups and downs of green power supply have included better batteries or redesigning the electricity grid.
An intriguing new idea involves "feeding" surplus power to the microorganisms instead, which combine it with carbon dioxide to create methane. That could then be stored and burned when needed. The method is sustainable too, as the carbon is taken from the atmosphere, not released from long-term storage in oil or coal.
Now if only we could harness THIS GUY. Better yet, what if we could harness the latent energy of fart jokes? (I wonder if I could apply for a patent on that?)
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