Washington D.C. has become the first city in the United States to begin generating power from 
. From now on nearly one third of all D.C. power will be generated from the waste people flush down the toilet. Here is how it works; every time you flush a toilet in Washington D.C. the waste travels though the sewers to be sent to the water treatment facility. From here the solid waste is separated from the liquid and and is pumped to a concrete holding cylinder where it is then treated with microorganisms. As the microorganisms begin to feed, grow and digest they produce high amounts of methane gas which is collected and funneled from the poop cylinders to a turbine where it is burned to create steam which then creates power. Below is a detailed diagram of this process.
It took 4 years to build but in the summer of 2015 D.C. Water has finished construction on a 470 million dollar, 157 acre water treatment facility. This facility is first of its kind in the USA and was inspired by power stations found in Norway. This power plant will provide 33% of the cities power needs and D.C. Water anticipates to save an estimated 10 million dollars annually to produce the same amount of energy through poop then it did then it had previously. The city also expects to save 2 million dollars per year on treatment chemicals and 11 millions dollars on waste removal expenses. According to project engineers D.C. water will now produce half as much waste as it used to send to landfills. The waste that is produced is said to be cleaner then the previous system and D.C. water even plans to sell some of the waste product to stores such as Home Depot for use in fertilizers next spring. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser explains, “We can’t afford to have waste be just waste, every dollar spent to convert that waste into energy will help us to reach our goals.”
Not exactly what I would call clean energy, pun intended, but none the less is innovation at its purest. It might not solve all the world energy problems but perhaps it is a step in the right direction. As D.C. Water General Manager George S. Hawkins said “It’s a public utility leading the world in innovation and technology. We have private and public water companies coming from all over the world to see this.” The technology has caught on in Norway and D.C. Water is not the largest facility of its kind on Earth. If D.C. water is successful in their new experiment I expect other states to get on board.
The United States and Norway are not the only countries trying to harness the power of Poop. In March 2010 a British car company created a line of cars that run on methane produced from human waste. In 2014 Hyundia released a new car that runs entire on free hydrogen made from waste products. In 2015 Bristol, England built the first poop powered bus in history and has a been in public use ever since. Who knew poop was such a valuable resource?
This article “The Power of ” is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article with a creative commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ
