City should turn feces into fuel, SPC told
17/1/2006 7:19
Xu Fang/Shanghai Daily news
A government adviser
wants the city to pay more attention to how it uses an abundant natural resource
- human excrement, a material he believes can create heat and
profits.
"Recycling is environmentally friendly and good for the city because
it can turn waste into a useful thing," said Guo Xiang, a member of the city
committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a body that
advises the Shanghai People's Congress.
Guo, who also runs a private company
that has invested in technology to turn feces into fuel, submitted a proposal to
the ongoing CPPCC meeting yesterday calling on lawmakers to create policies to
support the recycling of excrement.
The idea hit Guo when he attended a
meeting organized by the CPPCC on disposal of household garbage last May. After
the meeting, he sent two dried pieces of feces to a lab to test how many
calories they contained. The lab found they contained 4,570 kilocalories per
cubic meter, meaning they have about as much heating power as coal.
Guo said
excrement is wasted once it enters the city's sewage system.
"The only way to
make full use of the feces is to turn it into a kind of fuel like coal and burn
it," Guo said.
In order to make the substance more stable, Guo tested several
additives that could be added to feces. Last August, he created his first batch
of "man-made coal" by mixing feces with swill fed to pigs and then fermenting
and dehydrating the mixture.
The "coal" contains 5,270 kilocalories per cubic
meter, meaning it has more heating power than real coal.
Guo's company has
signed a deal with East China University of Science and Engineering to build a
facility capable of producing 10 tons of the "manmade coal" a year. The facility
is meant to test the feasibility of the product before Guo begins looking for
large-scale investment.
Guo submitted another proposal to lawmakers
yesterday, suggesting the city use environmentally friendly, water-based paint
to mark lanes on the road, instead of the currently used solvent-based paints.
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