Friday the local news had an article about a Poop powered vehicle that the Denver Zoo is currently "parading" around the country. The vehicle is called Tuk-Tuk and here are several articles about it.
That same day I got my most recent Mother Earth News Magazine and there is a big article about a guy who is running several of his farm trucks on "Wood Gas".
It is quite interesting that these two different articles popped up about the same time when Rising gas prices are making people feel the "pain at the pump". Well I started doing some research and wondered if I could find a way to use my horses manure in a system like this. So I did more research and found this article about a guy who was making horse manure bricks and using them in his wood stove. After burning them, he then used the poop ashes in his garden as a fertilizer. So it appears that you can make poop bricks and burn them. It does seem like a labor intensive project, but since I have a wood burning stove, anything short of buying already cut and split wood is also labor intensive. I have 5 equine that I'm shoveling in grass hay in one end and they are processing and dumping out pounds of it at the other end. If I'm going to have to pay those ever increasing costs to feed these horses, I might as well try and get something back out if them. I looked at several options. The first was making pellets like the Denver zoo does, but a pellet machine costs a lot of money and I don't have a pellet burning stove.
This poop brick idea is a much better solution for my wood burning stove, but the problem is that the article had directions for a single brick mold. So I went on the hunt again for a plan or pre-made mold that would make more than one brick at a time. I finally found this Four log paper brick maker.
The interesting thing is you can use either paper or poop to make the bricks. and If you have access to both then you can mix them. So I'm considering attempting to make some horse poop bricks this year and see how it all turns out. Once I see how well it does in the home fireplace, I just might consider converting my really old, bad gas mileage truck into a poop burner similar to the Denver Zoo's poop powered vehicle. That would be an interesting experiment.
The interesting thing is you can use either paper or poop to make the bricks. and If you have access to both then you can mix them. So I'm considering attempting to make some horse poop bricks this year and see how it all turns out. Once I see how well it does in the home fireplace, I just might consider converting my really old, bad gas mileage truck into a poop burner similar to the Denver Zoo's poop powered vehicle. That would be an interesting experiment.
From Hay Burner to a Poop Burner!
ReplyDeleteHow awesome is that!?!
I hope you will keep us updated on your experiments and let us know how it all works out...literally!
~Lisa