- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
UK firm develops jet fuel made from human poo | The starting material is generated in excess and available in plenty. It is a win-win for everyone that the waste is repurposed.::undefined
It is not that I had found a “fundamental flaw”. Those eco-fuel things simply don’t scale up to realistic levels, and the people who are behind it know that their small-scale experimental systems will never power the current level of aviation fuel demands.
Yes, human poo has some energy left. But it is way less than the same amount of fuel, I.e. you need several tons of poo to create a ton of fuel.
OK, lets have a look at this poo idea. Human faeces have an energy density of 8kJ/g. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1793018/#:~:text=As the energy content per,measurements of stool wet weight.
Aviation fuel has an energy density of 43.5kJ/g. Source: https://s2.smu.edu/propulsion/Pages/energyex.htm#:~:text=The energy density of aviation,about 820 kg%2Fm3.
So if it was possible to get a lossless conversion of human poo to aviation fuel, you would need more than five tons of poo to create one ton of fuel.
A 747 from NY to LA burns about 60 tons of fuel. Source: https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-is-needed-to-fly-a-Boeing-747-from-New-York-City-to-Los-Angeles#:~:text=New York to LA would,be 16%2C716 gallons of fuel.
So you would need over 300 tons of shit to power that flight - if the conversion was lossless. It most likely is way worse.
Now a human produces between 125 and 500g of faeces per day. Source: https://www.healthline.com/health/do-you-lose-weight-when-you-poop#how-much-does-it-weigh
So you would have to collect the days worth of shit of way over half a million people to power this flight. And all this - again - with a lossless conversion. The reality is probably more like a 10% conversion productivity, meaning you would need ten times the poo.
I leave the question if this technology is actually sustainable to the reader.
And yes, my calculation of rapeseed oil based fuel was similarly funded in facts.
And those numbers are for ONE flight. How many thousands of planes are in the air each day?
Exactly. Bio-fuels simply will not sustain aviation at current levels. The only way to solve this is to drastically reduce air travel down to sustainable levels. Which might be “rescue helicopters only” if push comes to shove.
If push comes to shove the rescue copters will take a back seat to the military. There is what should be, and what likely will be, and those things are often very different.
Well, the military is known to produce a lot of shit on their own, so their fuel supply should be safe, regardless of.