Tag Archive for 'urine'

DIY: Start A Compost Bin

jesse published on June 15, 2010 in food, technology and zeitgeist. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Good Day!

Wanna Start a Compost Bin in your back yard? It can be done. You don’t need much space…

Here’s one way:

Find a Container (maybe it’s made of wood so it will someday decompose as well… in this case, I bought a metal trash can because I’m leaving this house soon and needed something I could take with me to the next place I’ll be living)

Make sure it has holes in it for air flow… oxygen good for decomposition… so put it up on some bricks or stones.

Put a layer of cardboard and dead yard clippings down first so that air can come up from the bottom.

Then it’s just like making a cake… first a layer of “brown” (dead) matter… then a layer of “green” (living) matter…

Add your saved up scraps from the kitchen. (some people say no animal products because it attracts vermin and makes extra bad smell)

For a good list of what you can compost, check this site out: http:planetgreen.discovery.com

Then add another layer of “brown” waste (sawdust, soil, grass clippings… etc…) to cover it all up and let it start really cooking… breaking down the food scraps and other compostable items over the course of the next few months.

And then maybe you want to pee on it a little bit?

Cover with a lid to keep out animals… and every time you fill up your container in the kitchen with scraps, just pull back a section of the top “brown” matter layer and mix in the scraps, and then re-cover. Or if you have enough of those scraps, create a whole new layer of “green” matter and then cover with another layer of “brown”. After a while you can mix it all up and the really useful compost soil will be down at the bottom…

P.S. Here’s a nice container for the kitchen with a carbon filter so it doesn’t smell while its sitting on your counter and slowly getting filled up…

Tupperware works too… you can freeze it as well so it won’t smell until you’ve got enough to make the trip outside.

P.P.S. For more composting tips… check out http://easycomposting.com

Good Luck… The Earth says, “THANKS… I LOVE YOU TOO!!!”

jrc

Ben Mack @ Wired – “Power Your Car With Pee” (!)

jackson published on July 19, 2009 in celebrity, technology, transportation and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

picture-15

Gooooooood Morning SuperForest!

I hope this Sunday finds SuperForesters everywhere in high spirits and fine style.

Mr. Benny Mack has a piece (piss?) up over at wired.com about the work of Ohio scientist Garardine Botte, who has cleverly discovered a way of creating hydrogen from urine.

How?

“(Ms. Botte) claims the device uses significantly less energy than is needed to extract hydrogen from water and says it could power hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the near future. Her electrolyzer uses a nickel-based electrode to extract hydrogen from urea (NH2)2CO, the main component in urine. Hydrogen is less tightly bound to the nitrogen in urea than to the oxygen in water, so the electrolyzer needs just 0.37 volts across the cell to oxidize the urea, according to Botte. That’s less than half the amount of energy in an AA battery and considerably less than the 1.23 volts needed to split water.”

“An electrolyzer built into a car would eliminate the need for a hydrogen storage tank, and with the right partnership, I believe we could have pee-powered cars capable of 60 miles per gallon on the road within a year.”

To condense: It is easier to make hydrogen from pee than water. Waaayyyyyy easier.

Here’s the full article. Thanks, Benny Mack and Ms. Garardine Botte!

With no shortage of pee in the forseeable future, a pee-based economy could be very interesting.
Brave New Times we’re living in.

LOL!

CNN – NASA Contractor: Give Us Your Urine

jackson published on July 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

According to cnn.com, NASA needs a lot of pee.
This is so funny.

NASA: Give us your urine

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The No. 1 need right now for some of the builders of the nation’s next spaceship: Lots of urine.

A NASA contractor is seeking urine from space-program workers to test the toilets on the Orion space capsule.

Space program contractor Hamilton Sundstrand is seeking urine from workers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of its work on the new Orion space capsule that eventually would take astronauts to the moon, according to an internal memo posted on the Web site Nasawatch.com.

The need is voluminous: 30 liters a day, which translates into nearly 8 gallons. Even on weekends.

Designers of the Orion, which will park unoccupied in space for up to six months while astronauts work on the moon, have to solve a pressing issue of getting rid of stored urine, said John Lewis, NASA’s head of life support systems for Orion.

“Urine is a mess because urine is full of solids,” Lewis said. Those solids clog the venting system for dumping pee, so keeping the waste disposal system clear is “really a challenge,” he said.

NASA has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because “you can’t make fake urine,” Lewis said.

The Connecticut-based company building the Orion toilet needs the large volume of urine (about the daily output of 30 people) to work on urine acidity problems, said spokesman Leo Makowski.

The memo seeking daily contributions from July 21 to July 31 was not meant to go public, he said.”

Not meant to go public. So good.

Thanks to cnn.com for the hilarity.