For those of us who didn't completely graduate from puberty, the business plans of Microgy and BioPetrol will never cease to amuse.
Microgy is erecting thermophilic digesters (pictured here) on manure recycling plots. Tons of manure goes in, and in a few weeks you get methane, or natural gas. While some farmers use the gas to run their own operations, the company also sells the gas from some operations over pipelines.
Israel's BioPetrol, meanwhile, takes sewage sludge--along with pulp and paper residue, tannery waste, bagasse and other waste products you didn't know existed--and subjects them to a thermo chemical process that's similar to the Fischer-Trops process for converting coal to liquids. Again, you have nearly worthless feed stock that actually cost money to dispose, are turning it into a source for salable hydrocarbons.
Synthetic Genomics, meanwhile, is tinkering with bacteria that produce harvestable electricity when breaking down sewage. The biological approach should take less energy than BioPetrol's process, but you need the right strain of bacteria and the end result is electricity rather than liquid fuel.
Photo by American Images
