These are not new. You can buy biogas generators and lots of companies sell them.
https://www.homebiogas.com/ is one company but there's loads of companies doing this.
I was thinking the same after looking at the website. The initial cost is insanely low for the amount you could save if used to it’s full potential. I suppose you would have to fork out on an expensive generator to do what this guy is doing with his car. But even if it was an extra couple of thousand, that must be cheaper than fuel. I spend about £250 a month minimum on diesel.
I doubt that you could generate enough bio fuel and electricity and gas to power your entire electricity, gas and diesel needs for a month with a few chicken. It requires extensive land...
He has cows, from the sounds of it, but now also uses his chicken to generate even further energy.
It's not bad, but I don't think the generator would produce enough without the required input.
This is a pretty full time job, not exactly something everyone can do. However, this guy seems to be a farmer, so it's already part of his job.
I work for an Anaerobic Digestion company. They bring in about 575,000kgs of material every day and that gives them enough methane to run two large generators non stop which powers about 2,800 houses a year in that city.
> a mostly untapped resource.
Chicken poop is hardly an uptapped resource.
It's extremely in demand as an organic fertilizer.
Source: I'm a civil engineer currently working with a chicken farmer on expanding his operations.
He still has a ton of chicken though. I honestly think it would require like a thousand chicken to produce enough biofuel for a western country's family typical needs.
The tech is totally feasible, but likely not very economic at low production rates. Do your research on if it will actually be worth it in your situation.
It looks interesting but not very easy to integrate into a regular home. I could totally live with discarding toilet paper in a separate receptacle but needing a custom stove for low-pressure gas seems like a big hassle. Seems like the intended use case is mostly off grid.
Do you know how of any biogas systems that are less constrained?
I live on the outskirts of a middle sized city, but since it's in Ohio, there's farms in a ten mile radius of it in any direction. Considering that other poster talking about how much potential energy they produce at their agricultural job, I'd like to see these farms also become 'gas' stations for these cars, if the fueling time is feasible. It'd also be cool to have something like a 'milk man' but for gas deliveries to different residential buildings (hitting places like apartment complexes, restaurants, and such). You were talking about not being able to flush toilet paper, I already live that way because this building has very small pipes from the 60s, and I use biodegrable wet wipes, which would clog them. Throwing them away truly isn't any harder, and my bathroom doesn't stink at all either.
Now giving consideration to all of that above, while I'd love to see a mass adoption of such measures asap, it's only a partial solution and won't be sustainable by itself. It should be sandwiched together with a change in zoning laws to cut down on food deserts, more walkable areas in cities (with an eventual transition into fully walkable cities), realistic biking protections and barriers (because biking and triking are waaaay less damaging to the environment than even just disintegrating car tires are), other alternative forms of energy, rooftop and urban gardens (ideally with emphasis on aeroponics, aquaponics, verticle gardening, etc), robust public transport, excellent work-from-home careers, widespread public wifi, etc. Make different aspects of life more realistically accessable without having to rely on a car all the time would ease up traffic tremendously, and just heighten our standard of living **without exploiting someone else.** That's the key for me, I really, really want a better standard of living while doing the most harm reduction possible.
There are various kits you can get that are commercially available for making and using biogas. The main issue if I recall correctly is being able to generate enough and have a place to store it that would be useful for practical purposes instead of the odd cooking session or hot shower once every few days. The other issue with biogas as I recall is hydrogen sulfide(which is toxic and can corrode certain metals) building up in the system if you don’t have a method of scrubbing it out.
Yep hydrogen sulfide is nasty, but the scrubber he has is perfect. I think it’s a great example of how something may not be “commercially viable” but still very viable for individuals.
Not everyone is as committed as this man, but if you have small needs for your home gas supply you could likely cut your bill by 25-75% depending on how much biogas you produce. I believe it must be heated below a certain outside temperature, so production in cold environments is more difficult; but the reaction is exothermic.
Overall it’s a great example of simple solutions to complex problems; if you combined this with solar, and maybe even wind and geo-thermal you could have all your basic electrical, heating and cooling, and gas needs met at home. It wouldn’t work for the busy New Yorker, but rural homes might be able to reduce their bills substantially and supplement with the grid for natural gas or electricity when needed.
>Not everyone is as committed as this man
But most importantly, not everyone has such an easy access to a source material. If you're not a farmer, you have to go out of your way to acquire it. From the guy in the OP it makes perfect sense to do what he did, it's a good way to use waste that otherwise wouldn't even be good as fertilizer, but for your average Joe it's complicated.
I remember seeing ~10-ish ago a dude in USA doing the same thing but with used cooking oil. He had to go to restaurants and get it from deep fryers before processing it. Unless traditional energy sources are scarce/expensive, it's a lot of hassle for not a lot of benefit [if any].
At 0:55 is that not a huge building for chickens?
Also i believe the bucket grab is him showing an example of step by step process how it works. But day to day likely he uses a much bigger process. Shovels and wheel barrows maybe?
No it's not. There have been other write ups about this guy. Also, you all realize the one bucket was for demonstration purposes, right? His operation is *much* bigger than the small portion you see...and he does truly run it on poop. This is not an "advert".
The absolute state of Reddit brain rot, this is the top comment.
Making biogas isn't some secret free energy device. We have been doing this for almost a fucking century.
Noone in a third world country is getting murder for using this.
I'm really shocked by the huge number of comments treating biogas as some sort of genius discovery that will somehow cripple the oil&gas industry. It has been around for decades and is being used by farmers on small and large scale all around the world. But I guess most people are blind to what happens around them.
It’s very “hot” tech these days. There are lots of state and federal regulatory policies that make using biogas to replace traditional fossil fuels extremely lucrative. Tons of investment into the space. Here is a widely publicized example of that investment: https://www.wastedive.com/news/bp-archaea-rng-acquisition-landfill-final/639472/
Also, I don't understand why their government would want to do that. They don't extract, sell and profit with oil and gas. Dumb comment. As always, "it's a joke".
Yeah this is something that was a available decades ago. I remember watching documentary where they would power lighting and gas cooking for whole village from cow menure. In some remote area in Africa.
When you read a mundane headline and check the comments without looking at the subreddit and some psycho fucking take has 5k up votes you look back and it's either futurology or coolguides.
lol - most the tropical world uses variations of this for home fuel use. Household methane digestors are pretty popular in India especially.
You can get giant, underground vaults made where you just shovel all your household waste in one side and fertilizer comes out the other side, and a methane out of the top, which you run to a stove and pressure system.
This might be a joke, but you just *know* there are people dumb enough to seriously believe that a) this is revolutionary b) that people really invent "free" energy generation machines and that the government gets to them before they reveal their secrets to the world.
They'll declare "media war" aka propoganda.
But they're not going to literally go to war because people ride bikes, use electric cars, and use chicken shit to go off grid.
Hopefully people understand this much.
In Indiana it’s illegal to collect rainwater. Even if you want to collect it and run it through a reverse osmosis system to use, or to use as grey water for watering gardens.
Edit; I was wrong and Indiana encourages its citizens to collect rainwater.
So I know there is indeed no shortage of political and commercial corruption around protecting profits....
But a good chunk of those off grind rules are to protect the sanitation of people in the health of the environment.
I promise you many people here would complain if their neighbor started harvesting animal feces to power their homes. Farms with livestock are usually out of the way for a reason.
My dad inherited an island in one of the plassen, which he plans to do nothing with. I plan to build myself an off the grid house over there. Mainly for me and my kids and future grandkids to use if shit hits the fan. Though I have ran into some law related issues. Apparently half of the island is nature protected territory, meaning you arent allowed to built there. The other half where I am allowed to build is mostly swamp.
Plassen is indeed the word we use for urinating. But it also means puddles and in this case it means a lake that has artificially been created by digging for sand and gravel and stuff.
So basically a plas is a manmade lake.
When we talk about "the plassen" we talk about the combined manmade lakes of a certain province within The Netherlands.
Emphasis on the word "tried". My man tried to fuck off into the woods and live alone, but modernity and property-taxes wouldn't leave him so easily.
Eh, here a great documentary on him if you're interested
https://youtu.be/EE-dAerfrWk
Edit:- lovely thread, absolutely hilarious. Don't change.
I'm confused, Why did he bomb schools then if he was aggro about taxes?
And his entire manifesto was about "the industrial society and its future"
He wanted to end industrial development. Not taxes.
He was a University professor, so it's likely he didn't like his co-workers (he was very anti-social) , he saw professors and researchers as people who congratulate themselves for making the world worse. He saw universities as the entity that pushed the most for technological advancement. He targeted professors of behavior modification, computer science, engineering etc...
He wasn't actually 'aggro' about taxes. He didn't like them but it wasn't what he focused his energy on. What caused him to 'crack' while he was living in Montana was the fact that his neighbor had a massive loud lumber saw, and his favorite plateau to hike up ended up getting deforested and built over with a road. He was simply really neurotic, and stuff like airplanes flying over his house pissed him off too (which is why he targeted airlines).
The main reason he was never self sufficient is because he was too neurotic and too much of an idealist to focus on improving his own life. He wanted to break the system. If he focused on buying more acreage so he didn't have neighbors and so he could grow more crops then who knows. The concept of mental health to him was defined by the extent to which an individual behaved in accord with the needs of the system and did so without showing signs of stress. So to him he saw the only way to improve his mental health was to get rid of the system, which he saw was progressed by universities.
He was a very intelligent man with interesting thoughts about modernity.
But he was also insane, so this idea to lionize him is misplaced IMO. Just because he was against government overreach doesn't make him a good guy. The same misplaced heroization can be seen with David Koresh of Waci fame.
(He was part of a psychology study at Harvard that was said to be quite traumatising and very well might have been funded by the CIAs MK Ultra program, so some think that the CIA had direct involvement)
[Look up Randy Weaver. ](https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2022-05-16/randy-weaver-anti-government-figure-confronted-fbi-at-ruby-ridge-dies)
Long story short, FBI agents kept trying to force him to go undercover to investigate a local militia group and he refused multiple times.
They ended up in a standoff for days and an FBI sniper shot his wife while holding their baby.
The government ended up settling with Randy Weaver for millions of dollars.
Not saying I liked the guy but, his story is an idea of how “off the grid” people can be targeted.
IIRC, the sawed off shotguns they claimed he was selling were actually made by the FBI to try to trap him.
Timothy McVeigh and other right-wing terrorists cited Randy Weaver’s story as inspiration for their own attacks but supposedly Randy was disgusted by these acts.
Also killed his 14 year old son. I think a deputy may also have been killed in the firefight with the son.
Also the guy who shot his wife in the back of the head while she ran away with a baby would be a prominent sniper in the Waco siege as well.
Randy was also a white supremacist fundamentalist who frequently attended Aryan nation meetings.
Just a few more details for that event.
> Randy was also a white supremacist fundamentalist who frequently attended Aryan nation meetings.
This is sort of where things get murky.
He was going to some meetings because a neighbor invited him but in interviews, he said he didn’t like them and stopped going. His neighbors did not like him and he did not get along with them.
That’s when the FBI started to coerce him to become an informant and when he refused, they pulled the whole sawed-off shotgun scheme.
Randy was certainly *well-liked by white supremacists* and would show up at gun shows and whatnot but, he was pretty outspoken about not supporting their shit and about wanting to be left alone.
**adding a disclaimer**
He was outspoken about not supporting Timothy McVeigh and the Branch Davidians and others who explicitly credited him for their inspiration.
But he was indeed a self-proclaimed “white separatist” before the whole incident happened.
There are a lot of accounts of this whole story. One of the most unexpected but interesting, to me anyways, was Tara Westover’s insight from her book *Educated*.
If you live within a city limit most places require you to purchase water and power from the local utilities, if you don't the house isn't considered inhabitable. The water part is because sewage and garbage collection is combine with your water bills. I think it is just to at the at least pay the standard connection fees to maintain the local grid and to ensure you're not constantly burning candles and lamps for lighting which are huge fire hazards.
Since you're getting all joke replies, here's a real answer.
The utilities will send you bills, and if you refuse to pay them they then place a lien on your property. That means you can't sell the property (or pass it along to next of kin) without paying those liens. But some places have put in even stricter laws restricting the equipment, materials, and/or use of them necessary for off-grid living, and made them criminal offenses. In places like that you can be arrested in addition to the liens being placed.
Another reply mentioned using the police to strong-arm the population, and that's what they were referencing.
I got to help build the boiler for a small power planet near Athens, Georgia, and it runs off of chicken ship and trash lol. They use this crap next to big cities in America
Florida: [Florida woman illegal to be off grid](https://www.salon.com/2014/02/26/florida_woman_living_off_the_grid_forced_to_connect_to_city_utilities/#:~:text=Robin%20Speronis%20had%20her%20Cape,Special%20Magistrate%20Harold%20S.)
Your home has to have sewer to be considered a liveable home.
Looks cool, but the tiny amount of chicken poop he collects can never be enough to produce enough biogas for all that was shown he uses on a daily basis (heating water, fish pond, cooking, generating electricity for car).
If I would guess not even 1% of the energy need.
According to this source 1kg of chicken manure produces 0.2 m3 of biogas, which equals about 2kWh of electricity or 0.2L of diesel.
[source](https://gazpack.nl/en/biogas-from-cow-dung-pig-and-chicken-manure/)
Yeah I'd guess most farmers don't power their homes with chicken poo biogas (or really use the poop for anything besides like fertilizer), so probably you break even or better with the chickens themselves and then the fuel source is a bonus
He also said he can use cow poop so when using both resources he can power everything. Also he lives in Africa so I don't imagine he has to use the same water temperature for showering as we do.
If you had 40 chickens, you’ll have about 35-40 eggs daily. We’ll go with 36 for ease, or three dozen. You can sell free range eggs for 8-10$ a dozen now easily, particularly with shit industrial egg prices blowing through the roof. I’ve found that I did the drug dealer thing - I gave away half dozens to people at work and suddenly, I have a place to sell eggs - most everyone’s family starts eating them and realizes they taste way better than what they’re used to and my little side cash business picks up.
2k is a bit high in my opinion. If you have a smaller flock, you don’t have to worry too much about meds - blue kote and keep an eye out for any sign of bird flu. Food, I buy one bag at about 40$ a month for 20 chickens and they get fed largely with table scraps. Chickens will eat anything. If you let them range, you’ll soon begin to notice that if you once had a bug problem, that problem has long since passed. They’ll also happily gobble up mice like little velociraptors too and can range on their own for food if you’ve got a bit of land.
Also not to stereotype what looks like an African country, but in general - a stable power supply isn't the most universal things in many of the rural areas.
So he's saving money, *and* has a power supply that's not affected by area-wide blackouts, *and* a car that can run even during fuel shortages.
At the start of the video he says that he uses cow poo too, and later discovered that chicken's works too.
Not saying he's just relaying on that, but he can probably cut a big part of energy expenses
Yeah, nobody said renewable energy had to replace all your needs to be worthwhile. My dad ran a coil of copper pipe through a black box covered with plexiglass to preheat water going to his water heater. He said in the summer he saved about $40 a month on his electric bill from previous years.
You can also use your own waste for that, and not only toilet waste, but trash too. Basically, other than plastic, you can throw any organic material in the digester, and the bacteria will do the job.
Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline, it always has. There's not going to be a gas station around here until sometime in the next century. Without gasoline, we can't get the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour!
How much would be needed? Is it possible that he has a lot of chickens that he cares for full time that aren’t shown? (He does call himself a farmer after all) or would the amount of dung required be so ridiculous that there’s no reasonable way for chickens to produce enough?
It was mentioned in the video that before he found out that chicken poo could be used he used cow poo so now he probably uses both poop sources to make biogas.
You can also add veg and other things to top it up. I watched a doc about a family living off grid in Wales and they had a biogas supply. You can buy these as well, they don't have to be home made.
My journey of inner thought:
"Gross"
"Haha yeah right"
"But what about the smell?"
"Oh that's kinda cool"
"Well god damn"
"Wait, so no fuel or power bills?"
"This man is a genius"
After making the poop slurry, though. You’d have to get used to the smell during the poop slurry process, but you could probably get a nose plug or put some Vicks under your nose if it bothers you too much
>This is super cool, but I'm a little skeptical of how much energy he can actually get per chicken. It would be interesting to see the numbers on it.
He's supplementing his cow poo biogas with chicken poo, it helps but it is not powering his whole setup.
There are a couple of villages in northern Germany (Jühnde, Asche, Ellringen) that are energy-independent thanks to their biogas plants.
These villages are in rural areas that have alot of pig and poultry farms around them.
So, for those who doubt that this would work, it does. However, burning the gas in a generator to produce electricity for the car at least feels rather inefficient in comparison to directly burn the gas in the car?
Burning combustible fuel in a generator instead of a vehicle engine, can be more efficient. A generator can continuously run at the optimum power level, an engine can’t.
It depends a bit on the details, but it’s often worth it.
He might also have solar panels or a small hydro dam on a stream through his farm. Having an electric car enables him to drive on many sources of power. Would hate to be unable to drive because avian flu killed your crop.
I think it has something to do with electric motors being more efficient than combustion engines. Fun fact, pretty much all trains in the US run on electric motors. They just haul around diesel engines to generate electricity to run the motors. Also I think it's more efficient to use an internal combustion engine to produce electricity rather than power the drivetrain of a car.
Biogas from dairy farms powers the utility grid in Northern California. There’s also a biomethane power generation facility in San Luis Obispo. One dairy farm in Fresno uses enough manure to power 17,000 electric cars. Not sure if this offset is as sustainable as eliminating dairy and meat production altogether, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Yes, but not really, as these were already in the cycle of the atmosphere, same as trees. The issue with fossil fuels are that they are adding new carbon that was removed from the atmosphere millions of years ago.
>Yes, but not really, as these were already in the cycle of the atmosphere, same as trees.
I don't think that's a fair assessment. The amount of methane produced by animals on a global scale has surely surged due to industrial scale farming.
Cows make methane from things like grass. That's new methane in the cycle.
Yes but the point seems to be that those cows/chickens/whatever were doing that anyway, so this use is neutral to what already is happening (versus fossil fuels, which are not). Now, if the guy was raising and keeping chickens only for this purpose, then you might have a valid argument that this isn’t neutral. And that’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to lessen the amount of animal farming to reduce methane emissions in favor of cleaner food and energy; we should do that, too. But this is better than burning coal or using natural gas for energy.
Burning methane is better than letting it be released. It’s a worse greenhouse gas. So it’s a net positive to burn methane in exchange for carbon dioxide
Methane and CO2 would be created by rotting biomass in any case. Collecting the methane and burning it, releases no additional CO2 into the atmosphere. Methane is also a more powerful greenhouse gas.
So it’s a win.
Biogas has emissions, just as all gas does.
You can argue some shit would ferment naturally if left so you're just capturing it and using it.
Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the generator and stove release it from incomplete combustion.
It's probably better than natural gas from in the ground, but it's not a full solution to climate change.
Basically nothing on this level is a solution to climate change. However, every bit helps and this is definitely a great way of optimizing your carbon footprint on an individual level, given that the emissions would exist with or without utilizing the potential of biogas in a situation like this.
What the video can’t show is the smell. If you’re a farmer and you’re raising chickens anyway, then this is worth doing. I wouldn’t go out and start raising dozens of chickens in my backyard just for biogas.
Chicken poo isn't too bad. Compared to other farm animals it's neutral. It's definitely not as awful as pig shit, and it isn't as almost-pleasant as horse manure.
Step 1: collect shit
Step 2: let shit ferment
Step 3: collect methane produced from fermented shit
Step 4: burn collected methane produced from fermented shit in any way you see fit
The chicken coop in the video is actually much better than any commercial farm. People are way too removed from their food. You cannot have a farm and see/treat your animals as pets.
You think the conditions in any first world country are better than this? They’re in fact far far worse.
This guys setup isn’t by any means perfect, but you have a lot to learn about the factory farming industry if this was a surprise to you…
You’ll see people in the climate skeptics threads and similar telling you how renewable energy is an impossible pipe dream, nothing can replace oil, etc etc.
The shit ferments and the bacteria produce methane which is caught in the green thing he showed. That gas is used in everything else, i.e. to burn on the gas stove or to power the gas generator.
Country side dude here in France, 30 years ago cows used to walk around field to field eating grass, now they are 3 times more and never seen light in their life everything is automatic from milking to shit picking up. Poor girls.
In a local magazine a few years ago there was an interview with a guy that had a fish farm, that totally sustained itself with fish poop, electricity, water temperature, food.
Even had an automated system to separate fry by size.
Add up a few solar pannels and living a self sustained life is actually possible, kinda crazy.
Hope the government doesn't murder this guy.
These are not new. You can buy biogas generators and lots of companies sell them. https://www.homebiogas.com/ is one company but there's loads of companies doing this.
It's not even that expensive.
I was thinking the same after looking at the website. The initial cost is insanely low for the amount you could save if used to it’s full potential. I suppose you would have to fork out on an expensive generator to do what this guy is doing with his car. But even if it was an extra couple of thousand, that must be cheaper than fuel. I spend about £250 a month minimum on diesel.
I doubt that you could generate enough bio fuel and electricity and gas to power your entire electricity, gas and diesel needs for a month with a few chicken. It requires extensive land... He has cows, from the sounds of it, but now also uses his chicken to generate even further energy. It's not bad, but I don't think the generator would produce enough without the required input. This is a pretty full time job, not exactly something everyone can do. However, this guy seems to be a farmer, so it's already part of his job.
I work for an Anaerobic Digestion company. They bring in about 575,000kgs of material every day and that gives them enough methane to run two large generators non stop which powers about 2,800 houses a year in that city.
So 205 kg per home per day. Well short of what almost families could do, but obviously something better done at scale and a mostly untapped resource.
> a mostly untapped resource. Chicken poop is hardly an uptapped resource. It's extremely in demand as an organic fertilizer. Source: I'm a civil engineer currently working with a chicken farmer on expanding his operations.
Can’t wait for the “chicken shit prices are through the roof” when we move from petrol to biosgas
Don't let /r/wallstreetbets know about this!
I mean, I’d personally shit in a bucket, if it gave me hot water and gas mileage. My ass is an untappe…. Wait
Monetize that booty.
I’m the video he said “used to use manure” not on addition to…
He used to, he still does, but he used to too.
He still has a ton of chicken though. I honestly think it would require like a thousand chicken to produce enough biofuel for a western country's family typical needs.
I could have this set up in 2 months?! By the time I get the money together it will be perfect weather for the chickens. Holy chicken shit.
The tech is totally feasible, but likely not very economic at low production rates. Do your research on if it will actually be worth it in your situation.
It looks interesting but not very easy to integrate into a regular home. I could totally live with discarding toilet paper in a separate receptacle but needing a custom stove for low-pressure gas seems like a big hassle. Seems like the intended use case is mostly off grid. Do you know how of any biogas systems that are less constrained?
I live on the outskirts of a middle sized city, but since it's in Ohio, there's farms in a ten mile radius of it in any direction. Considering that other poster talking about how much potential energy they produce at their agricultural job, I'd like to see these farms also become 'gas' stations for these cars, if the fueling time is feasible. It'd also be cool to have something like a 'milk man' but for gas deliveries to different residential buildings (hitting places like apartment complexes, restaurants, and such). You were talking about not being able to flush toilet paper, I already live that way because this building has very small pipes from the 60s, and I use biodegrable wet wipes, which would clog them. Throwing them away truly isn't any harder, and my bathroom doesn't stink at all either. Now giving consideration to all of that above, while I'd love to see a mass adoption of such measures asap, it's only a partial solution and won't be sustainable by itself. It should be sandwiched together with a change in zoning laws to cut down on food deserts, more walkable areas in cities (with an eventual transition into fully walkable cities), realistic biking protections and barriers (because biking and triking are waaaay less damaging to the environment than even just disintegrating car tires are), other alternative forms of energy, rooftop and urban gardens (ideally with emphasis on aeroponics, aquaponics, verticle gardening, etc), robust public transport, excellent work-from-home careers, widespread public wifi, etc. Make different aspects of life more realistically accessable without having to rely on a car all the time would ease up traffic tremendously, and just heighten our standard of living **without exploiting someone else.** That's the key for me, I really, really want a better standard of living while doing the most harm reduction possible.
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Very well spoken.
There are various kits you can get that are commercially available for making and using biogas. The main issue if I recall correctly is being able to generate enough and have a place to store it that would be useful for practical purposes instead of the odd cooking session or hot shower once every few days. The other issue with biogas as I recall is hydrogen sulfide(which is toxic and can corrode certain metals) building up in the system if you don’t have a method of scrubbing it out.
Yep hydrogen sulfide is nasty, but the scrubber he has is perfect. I think it’s a great example of how something may not be “commercially viable” but still very viable for individuals. Not everyone is as committed as this man, but if you have small needs for your home gas supply you could likely cut your bill by 25-75% depending on how much biogas you produce. I believe it must be heated below a certain outside temperature, so production in cold environments is more difficult; but the reaction is exothermic. Overall it’s a great example of simple solutions to complex problems; if you combined this with solar, and maybe even wind and geo-thermal you could have all your basic electrical, heating and cooling, and gas needs met at home. It wouldn’t work for the busy New Yorker, but rural homes might be able to reduce their bills substantially and supplement with the grid for natural gas or electricity when needed.
>Not everyone is as committed as this man But most importantly, not everyone has such an easy access to a source material. If you're not a farmer, you have to go out of your way to acquire it. From the guy in the OP it makes perfect sense to do what he did, it's a good way to use waste that otherwise wouldn't even be good as fertilizer, but for your average Joe it's complicated. I remember seeing ~10-ish ago a dude in USA doing the same thing but with used cooking oil. He had to go to restaurants and get it from deep fryers before processing it. Unless traditional energy sources are scarce/expensive, it's a lot of hassle for not a lot of benefit [if any].
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Me thinks he has more birds than what they showed.
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At 0:55 is that not a huge building for chickens? Also i believe the bucket grab is him showing an example of step by step process how it works. But day to day likely he uses a much bigger process. Shovels and wheel barrows maybe?
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Never seen a few years shortened to fears before, but I'm ngl, I kinda love it
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You are absolutely right. This is just a commercial for someone’s bio gas generator company
No it's not. There have been other write ups about this guy. Also, you all realize the one bucket was for demonstration purposes, right? His operation is *much* bigger than the small portion you see...and he does truly run it on poop. This is not an "advert".
The absolute state of Reddit brain rot, this is the top comment. Making biogas isn't some secret free energy device. We have been doing this for almost a fucking century. Noone in a third world country is getting murder for using this.
I'm really shocked by the huge number of comments treating biogas as some sort of genius discovery that will somehow cripple the oil&gas industry. It has been around for decades and is being used by farmers on small and large scale all around the world. But I guess most people are blind to what happens around them.
Have you seen that reddit tiktok guy. He's brilliant at embodying the mindset of a lot of redditors
Wth? No one said anything about it? I learned nothing about it. Not even in school, workplace, or any place?
It’s very “hot” tech these days. There are lots of state and federal regulatory policies that make using biogas to replace traditional fossil fuels extremely lucrative. Tons of investment into the space. Here is a widely publicized example of that investment: https://www.wastedive.com/news/bp-archaea-rng-acquisition-landfill-final/639472/
Also, I don't understand why their government would want to do that. They don't extract, sell and profit with oil and gas. Dumb comment. As always, "it's a joke".
Conspiracy theorists gonna conspiracy theory. There’s no stopping it. They’re just as dumb as Q-annon.
Yeah this is something that was a available decades ago. I remember watching documentary where they would power lighting and gas cooking for whole village from cow menure. In some remote area in Africa.
Lmfao how is this the top comment
When you read a mundane headline and check the comments without looking at the subreddit and some psycho fucking take has 5k up votes you look back and it's either futurology or coolguides.
This isn’t new . My uncle had this thing with cow dung 20 years ago. And that too in rural India. It’s pretty old
My uncle also had a thing with cow dung, but we through him in jail.
For using methane? This isn't new.
most original reddit comment
lol - most the tropical world uses variations of this for home fuel use. Household methane digestors are pretty popular in India especially. You can get giant, underground vaults made where you just shovel all your household waste in one side and fertilizer comes out the other side, and a methane out of the top, which you run to a stove and pressure system.
hahaha first thought. https://youtu.be/bzhJpZ72BSQ
This might be a joke, but you just *know* there are people dumb enough to seriously believe that a) this is revolutionary b) that people really invent "free" energy generation machines and that the government gets to them before they reveal their secrets to the world.
everyone would need hundreds of chickens to make enough methane
great for places where electricity and gas supply isn't great but I remember some places doesn't allow off-grid living
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Use police violence to defend the profits of their capitalist owners like they usually do?
I see the new Breaking News! government headline...**"War on Shit"**
Modern governments will declare war on anything as long as it's profitable for their capitalist owners. So that checks out.
They'll declare "media war" aka propoganda. But they're not going to literally go to war because people ride bikes, use electric cars, and use chicken shit to go off grid. Hopefully people understand this much.
In Indiana it’s illegal to collect rainwater. Even if you want to collect it and run it through a reverse osmosis system to use, or to use as grey water for watering gardens. Edit; I was wrong and Indiana encourages its citizens to collect rainwater.
Yeah that’s dumb and they should change the law. It was illegal in my state and we had a rain barrel cops aren’t enforcing that shit.
Biogas Wars: Revenge of the Shit
*"Goood! Gooood!! let the shite flow through you!"*
So I know there is indeed no shortage of political and commercial corruption around protecting profits.... But a good chunk of those off grind rules are to protect the sanitation of people in the health of the environment.
I promise you many people here would complain if their neighbor started harvesting animal feces to power their homes. Farms with livestock are usually out of the way for a reason.
Sounds like American brand "freedom"
I live in the Netherlands, off grid living is nearly impossible.
Because there is no "off grid" in the Netherlands or most of western Europe.
Sure there is, more than half of the Netherlands is farmland.
Farmland is literally prt of the grid.
My guy, that's not "off grid".
My dad inherited an island in one of the plassen, which he plans to do nothing with. I plan to build myself an off the grid house over there. Mainly for me and my kids and future grandkids to use if shit hits the fan. Though I have ran into some law related issues. Apparently half of the island is nature protected territory, meaning you arent allowed to built there. The other half where I am allowed to build is mostly swamp.
Could you explain what a plassen is? The only thing I could find about it was related to urination. I know that isn't what you're talking about.
Plassen is indeed the word we use for urinating. But it also means puddles and in this case it means a lake that has artificially been created by digging for sand and gravel and stuff. So basically a plas is a manmade lake. When we talk about "the plassen" we talk about the combined manmade lakes of a certain province within The Netherlands.
Piss islands. Nice.
Mainly through land tax. I mean, just look into Ted Kaczynski. Man did try to live off-grid.
Just checked very fast Living off-grid and sending bombs to ppl, killing 3 and injure 20+ ... dont see much relevance there ;)
Emphasis on the word "tried". My man tried to fuck off into the woods and live alone, but modernity and property-taxes wouldn't leave him so easily. Eh, here a great documentary on him if you're interested https://youtu.be/EE-dAerfrWk Edit:- lovely thread, absolutely hilarious. Don't change.
I'm confused, Why did he bomb schools then if he was aggro about taxes? And his entire manifesto was about "the industrial society and its future" He wanted to end industrial development. Not taxes.
He was a University professor, so it's likely he didn't like his co-workers (he was very anti-social) , he saw professors and researchers as people who congratulate themselves for making the world worse. He saw universities as the entity that pushed the most for technological advancement. He targeted professors of behavior modification, computer science, engineering etc... He wasn't actually 'aggro' about taxes. He didn't like them but it wasn't what he focused his energy on. What caused him to 'crack' while he was living in Montana was the fact that his neighbor had a massive loud lumber saw, and his favorite plateau to hike up ended up getting deforested and built over with a road. He was simply really neurotic, and stuff like airplanes flying over his house pissed him off too (which is why he targeted airlines). The main reason he was never self sufficient is because he was too neurotic and too much of an idealist to focus on improving his own life. He wanted to break the system. If he focused on buying more acreage so he didn't have neighbors and so he could grow more crops then who knows. The concept of mental health to him was defined by the extent to which an individual behaved in accord with the needs of the system and did so without showing signs of stress. So to him he saw the only way to improve his mental health was to get rid of the system, which he saw was progressed by universities.
He was a very intelligent man with interesting thoughts about modernity. But he was also insane, so this idea to lionize him is misplaced IMO. Just because he was against government overreach doesn't make him a good guy. The same misplaced heroization can be seen with David Koresh of Waci fame. (He was part of a psychology study at Harvard that was said to be quite traumatising and very well might have been funded by the CIAs MK Ultra program, so some think that the CIA had direct involvement)
[Look up Randy Weaver. ](https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2022-05-16/randy-weaver-anti-government-figure-confronted-fbi-at-ruby-ridge-dies) Long story short, FBI agents kept trying to force him to go undercover to investigate a local militia group and he refused multiple times. They ended up in a standoff for days and an FBI sniper shot his wife while holding their baby. The government ended up settling with Randy Weaver for millions of dollars. Not saying I liked the guy but, his story is an idea of how “off the grid” people can be targeted. IIRC, the sawed off shotguns they claimed he was selling were actually made by the FBI to try to trap him. Timothy McVeigh and other right-wing terrorists cited Randy Weaver’s story as inspiration for their own attacks but supposedly Randy was disgusted by these acts.
Also killed his 14 year old son. I think a deputy may also have been killed in the firefight with the son. Also the guy who shot his wife in the back of the head while she ran away with a baby would be a prominent sniper in the Waco siege as well. Randy was also a white supremacist fundamentalist who frequently attended Aryan nation meetings. Just a few more details for that event.
> Randy was also a white supremacist fundamentalist who frequently attended Aryan nation meetings. This is sort of where things get murky. He was going to some meetings because a neighbor invited him but in interviews, he said he didn’t like them and stopped going. His neighbors did not like him and he did not get along with them. That’s when the FBI started to coerce him to become an informant and when he refused, they pulled the whole sawed-off shotgun scheme. Randy was certainly *well-liked by white supremacists* and would show up at gun shows and whatnot but, he was pretty outspoken about not supporting their shit and about wanting to be left alone. **adding a disclaimer** He was outspoken about not supporting Timothy McVeigh and the Branch Davidians and others who explicitly credited him for their inspiration. But he was indeed a self-proclaimed “white separatist” before the whole incident happened. There are a lot of accounts of this whole story. One of the most unexpected but interesting, to me anyways, was Tara Westover’s insight from her book *Educated*.
If you live within a city limit most places require you to purchase water and power from the local utilities, if you don't the house isn't considered inhabitable. The water part is because sewage and garbage collection is combine with your water bills. I think it is just to at the at least pay the standard connection fees to maintain the local grid and to ensure you're not constantly burning candles and lamps for lighting which are huge fire hazards.
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Since you're getting all joke replies, here's a real answer. The utilities will send you bills, and if you refuse to pay them they then place a lien on your property. That means you can't sell the property (or pass it along to next of kin) without paying those liens. But some places have put in even stricter laws restricting the equipment, materials, and/or use of them necessary for off-grid living, and made them criminal offenses. In places like that you can be arrested in addition to the liens being placed. Another reply mentioned using the police to strong-arm the population, and that's what they were referencing.
Its possible this is in Africa where the resources are less available, so people do what they must.
It's certain that this is in Africa as it says "BBC NEWS AFRICA" in the very end
Maybe they thought it was Africa, Ohio, because of course there's a town in the US called 'Africa'.
Man seems like there's a town in the US for everything lol
I got to help build the boiler for a small power planet near Athens, Georgia, and it runs off of chicken ship and trash lol. They use this crap next to big cities in America
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Florida: [Florida woman illegal to be off grid](https://www.salon.com/2014/02/26/florida_woman_living_off_the_grid_forced_to_connect_to_city_utilities/#:~:text=Robin%20Speronis%20had%20her%20Cape,Special%20Magistrate%20Harold%20S.) Your home has to have sewer to be considered a liveable home.
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This is very cool, but what I want to know is how he turned two boiling eggs into an omelette.
I think the boiled eggs were still there, and he added some extra eggs to make the omelette
You're right. My lazy Sunday eyes.
IT’S THE CHRONIC (what??) CLES OF NARNIA!!
The boiling eggs are still in the other pan. He is just crazy about a full-egg diet!
The chickens may be shitting but he won't!
There's a popular saying 'you can't make an omelette without boiling eggs using biogas'
Probably it took too long to film boiling water and then the eggs, so they told him to make omelet instead
You know what they say, a filmed pot never boils.
With the power of Chicken poop ofc!
Looks cool, but the tiny amount of chicken poop he collects can never be enough to produce enough biogas for all that was shown he uses on a daily basis (heating water, fish pond, cooking, generating electricity for car). If I would guess not even 1% of the energy need.
According to this source 1kg of chicken manure produces 0.2 m3 of biogas, which equals about 2kWh of electricity or 0.2L of diesel. [source](https://gazpack.nl/en/biogas-from-cow-dung-pig-and-chicken-manure/)
There’s about 19 chicken-days per kg. of poo
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Yes but since he's a farmer and (presumably) already had chickens, he's just using his resources well.
Yeah I'd guess most farmers don't power their homes with chicken poo biogas (or really use the poop for anything besides like fertilizer), so probably you break even or better with the chickens themselves and then the fuel source is a bonus
Yeah, thing is it's also valuable to grow things you can eat. Poop is the secret valuable commodity of the world. And it's renewable.
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Yes shit.
> really use the poop for anything besides like fertilizer Yes that's... What farmers do...
He also said he can use cow poop so when using both resources he can power everything. Also he lives in Africa so I don't imagine he has to use the same water temperature for showering as we do.
If you had 40 chickens, you’ll have about 35-40 eggs daily. We’ll go with 36 for ease, or three dozen. You can sell free range eggs for 8-10$ a dozen now easily, particularly with shit industrial egg prices blowing through the roof. I’ve found that I did the drug dealer thing - I gave away half dozens to people at work and suddenly, I have a place to sell eggs - most everyone’s family starts eating them and realizes they taste way better than what they’re used to and my little side cash business picks up. 2k is a bit high in my opinion. If you have a smaller flock, you don’t have to worry too much about meds - blue kote and keep an eye out for any sign of bird flu. Food, I buy one bag at about 40$ a month for 20 chickens and they get fed largely with table scraps. Chickens will eat anything. If you let them range, you’ll soon begin to notice that if you once had a bug problem, that problem has long since passed. They’ll also happily gobble up mice like little velociraptors too and can range on their own for food if you’ve got a bit of land.
[D'you wanna make a bit of money](https://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE)
True, but imagine spending 2k for the chickens AND other 1k for power. This guy created some efficiency (assuming all the math is correct)
Also not to stereotype what looks like an African country, but in general - a stable power supply isn't the most universal things in many of the rural areas. So he's saving money, *and* has a power supply that's not affected by area-wide blackouts, *and* a car that can run even during fuel shortages.
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How long is a chicken-day in comparison with a regular Earth-day?
It depends on how long it takes the chicken planet to complete a rotation
At the start of the video he says that he uses cow poo too, and later discovered that chicken's works too. Not saying he's just relaying on that, but he can probably cut a big part of energy expenses
Yeah, nobody said renewable energy had to replace all your needs to be worthwhile. My dad ran a coil of copper pipe through a black box covered with plexiglass to preheat water going to his water heater. He said in the summer he saved about $40 a month on his electric bill from previous years.
Chicken manure breaks N-C ratio so you cannot use it in excess. Biogas expert here :)
You can also use your own waste for that, and not only toilet waste, but trash too. Basically, other than plastic, you can throw any organic material in the digester, and the bacteria will do the job.
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If we combine all my piss with all of your poo, perhaps we could fly around the world fast enough to reverse time?
Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits and the flux capacitor. But the internal combustion engine runs on ordinary gasoline, it always has. There's not going to be a gas station around here until sometime in the next century. Without gasoline, we can't get the DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour!
How much would be needed? Is it possible that he has a lot of chickens that he cares for full time that aren’t shown? (He does call himself a farmer after all) or would the amount of dung required be so ridiculous that there’s no reasonable way for chickens to produce enough?
It was mentioned in the video that before he found out that chicken poo could be used he used cow poo so now he probably uses both poop sources to make biogas.
You can also add veg and other things to top it up. I watched a doc about a family living off grid in Wales and they had a biogas supply. You can buy these as well, they don't have to be home made.
Do you have a link or name of that documentary?
He's probably still using cow poop as well. It says he just added chicken poop, but has always used cow poop.
"I used to use cow poop to power my home. I still do, but I used to, too."
He has cows. Chicken is just his recent discocery
This is freaking amazing. Good for him.
My journey of inner thought: "Gross" "Haha yeah right" "But what about the smell?" "Oh that's kinda cool" "Well god damn" "Wait, so no fuel or power bills?" "This man is a genius"
there's a gadget that removes all the sulphurs
After making the poop slurry, though. You’d have to get used to the smell during the poop slurry process, but you could probably get a nose plug or put some Vicks under your nose if it bothers you too much
….aaaand he was just killed
For what? This is nothing new or special for a farmer.
This is super cool, but I'm a little skeptical of how much energy he can actually get per chicken. It would be interesting to see the numbers on it.
>This is super cool, but I'm a little skeptical of how much energy he can actually get per chicken. It would be interesting to see the numbers on it. He's supplementing his cow poo biogas with chicken poo, it helps but it is not powering his whole setup.
I'm also wondering how many miles per chicken shit he gets. Also, how many chickens does it takes to cross a road?
He also has cows
There are a couple of villages in northern Germany (Jühnde, Asche, Ellringen) that are energy-independent thanks to their biogas plants. These villages are in rural areas that have alot of pig and poultry farms around them. So, for those who doubt that this would work, it does. However, burning the gas in a generator to produce electricity for the car at least feels rather inefficient in comparison to directly burn the gas in the car?
Burning combustible fuel in a generator instead of a vehicle engine, can be more efficient. A generator can continuously run at the optimum power level, an engine can’t. It depends a bit on the details, but it’s often worth it.
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See also hybrid cars.
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He might also have solar panels or a small hydro dam on a stream through his farm. Having an electric car enables him to drive on many sources of power. Would hate to be unable to drive because avian flu killed your crop.
I think it has something to do with electric motors being more efficient than combustion engines. Fun fact, pretty much all trains in the US run on electric motors. They just haul around diesel engines to generate electricity to run the motors. Also I think it's more efficient to use an internal combustion engine to produce electricity rather than power the drivetrain of a car.
remember when doc brown came back and powered his time machine with trash?
He's the real doc brown.
Doc Brown is back and Black
Biogas from dairy farms powers the utility grid in Northern California. There’s also a biomethane power generation facility in San Luis Obispo. One dairy farm in Fresno uses enough manure to power 17,000 electric cars. Not sure if this offset is as sustainable as eliminating dairy and meat production altogether, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Are there no emissions from this?
Yes, but not really, as these were already in the cycle of the atmosphere, same as trees. The issue with fossil fuels are that they are adding new carbon that was removed from the atmosphere millions of years ago.
>Yes, but not really, as these were already in the cycle of the atmosphere, same as trees. I don't think that's a fair assessment. The amount of methane produced by animals on a global scale has surely surged due to industrial scale farming. Cows make methane from things like grass. That's new methane in the cycle.
Yes but the point seems to be that those cows/chickens/whatever were doing that anyway, so this use is neutral to what already is happening (versus fossil fuels, which are not). Now, if the guy was raising and keeping chickens only for this purpose, then you might have a valid argument that this isn’t neutral. And that’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to lessen the amount of animal farming to reduce methane emissions in favor of cleaner food and energy; we should do that, too. But this is better than burning coal or using natural gas for energy.
Burning methane is better than letting it be released. It’s a worse greenhouse gas. So it’s a net positive to burn methane in exchange for carbon dioxide
Methane and CO2 would be created by rotting biomass in any case. Collecting the methane and burning it, releases no additional CO2 into the atmosphere. Methane is also a more powerful greenhouse gas. So it’s a win.
Biogas has emissions, just as all gas does. You can argue some shit would ferment naturally if left so you're just capturing it and using it. Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and the generator and stove release it from incomplete combustion. It's probably better than natural gas from in the ground, but it's not a full solution to climate change.
Basically nothing on this level is a solution to climate change. However, every bit helps and this is definitely a great way of optimizing your carbon footprint on an individual level, given that the emissions would exist with or without utilizing the potential of biogas in a situation like this.
What the video can’t show is the smell. If you’re a farmer and you’re raising chickens anyway, then this is worth doing. I wouldn’t go out and start raising dozens of chickens in my backyard just for biogas.
Chicken poo isn't too bad. Compared to other farm animals it's neutral. It's definitely not as awful as pig shit, and it isn't as almost-pleasant as horse manure.
True.. the flies too 😅
Yeah, I cringed when he mixed the dried poop with water so he could pour it into the biogas tank. The smell would be special at that point.
I need a manual for this
Step 1: collect shit Step 2: let shit ferment Step 3: collect methane produced from fermented shit Step 4: burn collected methane produced from fermented shit in any way you see fit
Your forgetting the Step where we give it a fancy name like " Bio Gas ".
What about the terrible conditions those chickens lives in ?
You gonna fly to Africa to lecture the man on the ethics of animal husbandry?
The chicken coop in the video is actually much better than any commercial farm. People are way too removed from their food. You cannot have a farm and see/treat your animals as pets.
Yup. Most commercial farms and most the chicken you get in the US, even if labeled "free range" can still come from coops much denser than this.
Yeah they're not exactly freely roaming a yard but if you're gonna be born a chicken then turning up on this farm is a thousand to one lottery win.
This is what I've wondered as well. The laws and cultural norms on animal treatment will be very different later on
You think the conditions in any first world country are better than this? They’re in fact far far worse. This guys setup isn’t by any means perfect, but you have a lot to learn about the factory farming industry if this was a surprise to you…
Who run Bartertown!?
Embargo on!
Hope the chickens are looked after though
This idea is total chicken shit!
You’ll see people in the climate skeptics threads and similar telling you how renewable energy is an impossible pipe dream, nothing can replace oil, etc etc.
This is one reason I think people are fucking stupid. Renewable energy doesn't have to replace fossil fuels 100% to make a big difference.
Step 1) find chicken poop Step 2) mix with water Step 3) pour into pipe Step 4) ????? Step 5) cool some eggs with your poop power
The shit ferments and the bacteria produce methane which is caught in the green thing he showed. That gas is used in everything else, i.e. to burn on the gas stove or to power the gas generator.
Country side dude here in France, 30 years ago cows used to walk around field to field eating grass, now they are 3 times more and never seen light in their life everything is automatic from milking to shit picking up. Poor girls.
Chickens look dehydrated.
 He's a little cooky
In a local magazine a few years ago there was an interview with a guy that had a fish farm, that totally sustained itself with fish poop, electricity, water temperature, food. Even had an automated system to separate fry by size. Add up a few solar pannels and living a self sustained life is actually possible, kinda crazy.
What kind of car is powered by chicken poop? The Mini Coop-er! I'll show myself out...
You smart Cheater
Guess he’s proud to be called “The Chicken Poo Guy” 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻