The key to the ' clean energy? It can also pass on our poo ...
And 'what is going to do the city of Oslo in Norway.
Oslo, which it aims to become one of the capitals most environmentally sustainable the world (target: zero emissions by 2050), decided to follow the path of starting production of biomethane from its two sewage treatment plants and then use it as fuel for its 80 municipal buses.
The biomethane is biogas produced through a refining process that leads to a rate of about 95% purity, which has enabled it to be used as fuel for motor vehicles.
also a common landfill of municipal waste normally produces biomethane. The only difference is that in this case, its share is around 45%, too low to be used as fuel for vehicles, but still good enough to be burned to produce heat or electricity. In our case instead of the high proportion of the biogas is achieved through a controlled process in the absence of oxygen and that this is called anaerobic digestion.
A series of micro-organisms decompose any organic compound (human waste, kitchen waste, green waste, slaughterhouse waste, etc..) Producing precisely CH4, or methane.
Set up a production facility like this is not, to date, very economical. However, the accounts at hand, the product should be obtained to cost about 40 euro cents per liter less than the cost of a liter of diesel (0.75 € for biomethane against the current price of about € 1.15 a liter of diesel Norway).
The immediate benefits will be:
- will be intercepted much of the approximately 17,000 tons of CO2 that would otherwise have been produced through the incineration of the same waste
- each of the 80 buses will avoid placing itself in ' air about 44 tonnes of CO2;
- besides being neutral for the emissions of CO2 to the combustion of biogas produces 78% less nitrogen oxides, 98% less particulate matter than burning diesel oil, without considering the low noise of the same vehicles;
Contrary to bioethanol from grains and plants, biomethane has the added advantage of not affecting the food resources, or require the use of fertilizers and water.
close with a rather significant figure: a city like Oslo (250,000 inhabitants) is able to determine thus fuel sufficient to take a year to each of its 80 bus adapted around 100,000 km. Without the proper proportions
a city like Milan, with more than 1,300,000 inhabitants, could produce something like 10 million a year and a half gallons of fuel sufficient to work by bus 300 to 100,000 km each.
In Europe, this system has already been adopted in France, the city of Lille and Sweden in Stockholm.
Comment the article. Click on "comments ".
