GENeco’s VW Beetle – Fuelled by Human Waste

Lots of jokes floating around GENeco’s entrepreneurial venture of using gas extracted from human waste to fuel a converted VW Beetle. But jokes aside, the venture has potential. Owned by Wessex Water, GENeco is a company, which works on sustainable energy projects. And what can be more sustainable than human waste? It may be eco-friendly, but it will still release carbon dioxide into the air, though that would have been released anyway.

Wessex Water will use the sewage and put it into a decomposition chamber. There bacteria will work on it to produce methane. The methane will then be put into tanks in the boot of the car and work in similar way as compressed natural gas. The engine does have a petrol tank, which will use unleaded petrol to start, and then it will revert to using the methane. If the methane finishes, it will again revert to petrol.

According to the company, waste from 70 homes will provide gas that will enable the car to run for 10,000 miles. Actually biogas is already used a cooking fuel in countries like India, but that gas is got from animal waste. This is probably the first time that a company is using human waste.

If the trials are successful, the company plans to convert its fleet of vehicles to run on human waste. There is no information on how much this conversion of human waste into methane will cost and whether there are any other benefits apart from using a waste product more effectively.

Category: Auto, New Developments