Monday 8 February 2016

Some questions for Horse power bioreactor



Can we make the produce of the reactors burn?

In this experimental project, I'm interested to see all possibilities of energy output from decomposing animal tissue. A lot of things I really don't know, but I'm positive that one energy output is methane gas (CH4). The easiest solution is if we store it in a gas bag and from there we use it as a fuel. A bit harder is to compress it or ever liquefied it. Compressing is probably also good DIY lesson while liquefying it involves purifying of gas, compressing at high pressures and low temperatures. I'm always fascinated with cryogenic engineering, but for this project, I think it's a lot-lot of work.
Some short reading list that can be expanded

Cars on gas bags were popular during I. and II. World war 
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/11/gas-bag-vehicles.html in further links there's a Finish guy making a car on wood gas.

But gas bags are also widely used in domestic environment and transported in homemade plastic bags - like in this news from Bingzhou, northern China's Shandong Province.
reblogged from The Telegraph

For bio gas digester best method is with Indian cylindrical pit design  as I see it, but might be some other solution as well
as rebloged from: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/BioFuel/VITABIOGAS3M.HTM (this one I like most)


and when we come that far to have a gas internal combustion engine which is probably not so hard to build or even use one as ready made.

Can we have flames of different colors?

Flames of different colors – I don't see what we would gain from this, but it can be done with reducing of increasing the ratio of air at burning – this is with just gas. For welding if you have acetylene and oxygen it depends on the ratio of each if we have yellow flame or we move toward blue one with a centralised point where the temperature is highest: http://www.ehow.com/about_5559097_different-types-flames-gas-welding.html 

But if we add some chemical substance it changes colour also. I don't think that we will see flame, so a colour of it is somehow irrelevant maybe?
Some examples

Otto: This was related to my idea of using the output gas for everburning torches. They would look great if we got to choose colors.

Will the reactors bubble or hiss or otherwise appeal to the senses?

Senses of robot or senses of visitors ... hmmmm – robotic sensors are going to measure temperature, the level of gas, etc. This is also going to be visible as data. But if there will be bubbles – hmmm – gas we will produce. How much I don't know now. But if this is going to be a small amount we can make a narrow tube for a small but big quantity of bubbles.

Otto: I was talking of visitors' senses. I just thought they could look weird and creepy, rather than clean and clinical. Interesting idea regarding appealing to robots senses. We should definitely see if we can build something like that into the robot.

How do you make glue out of a dead horse? Or a live one?

I really don't think it's humane or animalane to make glue from a living horse;) In Slovenia we called animal glue as klej and it was used for wood gluing, paper making etc. Today this is used in restoration. Probably this isn't energy output but in horse hide, ligaments and bones there is a lot of collagen which is a key protein. If we would make it as a byproduct somebody should separate this from other parts of a horse.

Otto: I was just thinking of all the uses of a horse, glue is a classic. Maybe not useful for this project, now that I think of it.

Talking of pipes and liquid, do we need pumps, or is gravity flow enough?

For sure I think we will need some slow mixer. And pumps for transport of our horse from one pot to another probably as well ;) Not sure about them, though, but some kind of transport has to exist - I looked at Delvoye's Cloaca, there are pumps. This is reasonable to have.

What do we do with the mess that accumulates in the final reactor?

I think the final product is similar to soil? We can plant some grass and give it to a horse farm to make full circle ;)

Otto: The main point here was, how much of residue will be produced? Do we need to prepare with a huge tank, of empty it every now and then?

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