Comment 52647

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted December 03, 2010 at 23:42:41

There's a lot of really interesting options out there for small-scale biofuels, too, using fairly traditional engine designs (propane, gasoline or diesel), as well as high-efficiency woodstoves. With a fairly simple gassification setup you can turn firewood into just about any kind of fuel you need (even run a car off it). In an industrial farming and production context, this is still a fairly nasty system, but on a local (farm or household) basis, the ability to generate that extra power on demand is often well worth it.

A very simple composting setup will generate methane and heat, in a way that can be captured fairly easily with basic plumbing. A more complex setup can do everything from generate electricity to purify water (at the same time). And all it would require is a heap of household wastes that we're all too glad to be rid of anyway (and cost us millions as a city to take away in trucks and pipes). The final products can then be used as high-quality organic fertilizer to grow food, fibres and fuels, with the wastes furthering the system. It would be highly impractical on a large scale because of waste stream contamination (the reason composted poop from the city causes cancer when applied to farm fields), but on a small scale could be done without much more work than a fancy rain-barrel set-up with pipes and barrels.

Some fairly simple household "appliances" like passive solar water heaters and composting toilets could replace huge sectors of industry and seriously cut costs on a household level. These are the technologies which will "revolutionize" energy and the economy, not antiquated notions like hydro dams and windfarms.

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