Microsoft buys more than a billion dollars’ worth of excrement, including human poop, to clean up its AI mess — company will pump waste underground to offset AI carbon emissions
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Engineer here. We arent talking about directly tossing it on fields. We are talking about having it be anaerobically fermented at high temperatures for about 30 days, with the biogas captured and used for energy.
the new thing to do then is burn the remains and recover the phosphate from the ashes, where certainly no biological threat remains
These type of plants are currently built on many larger wastewater treatment plants in Europe
I'm curious how much phosphate we would be able to capture with this method?
I know it is a critical resource we are flushing away daily and -SHOULD- be doing this. Just like peak oil there is a concept of peak phosphorous.
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Not to forget: It contains a ton of medicine as well. If you want to have antibiotics in your salad, use human waste as fertilizers.
Probably mucroplastics too?
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Pathogens are less of a problem, they die off before they cannot infect a plant. But chemicals from medication and contraceptives, as well as heavy metals, are.
less about infection and more environmental. some people don't wash their produce and get sick because of it.
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Can't make this shit up.
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Greenwashing is a fraud.
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Fight shit with shit.
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I'm curious how much phosphate we would be able to capture with this method?
I know it is a critical resource we are flushing away daily and -SHOULD- be doing this. Just like peak oil there is a concept of peak phosphorous.
In the EU recovering phosphor from wastewater could cover about one third of the EU countries total phosphor demands.
This is why the EU made tge strategic decision to have such recovery systems developed and built.
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Meanwhile I’m out here pooping for free like a chump!
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"To reach the golden temple you and your companions must first pass through the vast Caverns of Corruption."
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so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?
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How many turds can you buy for a billion dollars. . ?
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Damn from that photo it looks like some people have a seriously high fiber diet.
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so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?
Yes, burying fertilizer traps biomass CO2 and then they can use that as carbon credit equivalent to claim CO² neutrality.
Of course, there's a reason why fertilizer is an inexpensive source of fixated carbon biomass and
this means all fertilizer will increase in price by the amount value of it's CO2 carbon credit equivalentThen maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.
I don't see any problems with this plan !
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Devil's advocate says: 5000 ft is probably below groundwater level. But tbh idk. Hell, they could even use spent oil reservoirs.
use spent oil reservoirs
Ok, that lead to some giggles thinking about some company drilling in the future thinking they were about to hit a strangely untapped oil field.
Add a hundred years of methane pressure build up and that could be really interesting gusher.
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But that's fertilizer! WTF?
It's also precious cheap carbon credit, don't worry it will only increase world wide fertilize costs by the value of the carbon credits but thing of all the methane they can burn to make electricity.
It's like converting our fertilizer directly into electricity, except its carbon sequestered 5000 feet under ground !
Maybe the fertilizer prices will increase so much it will become worththile to dig that 5000 feet mine and get that fertilizer back in the bio carbon cycle in 30 years when fertilizer costs more than aluminium does today !
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What about the nutrients in the waste? Why not compost it, capture the methane offgassing, and store that?
But what do you do with the methane, can't story it and if you burn it, you release the CO² which was the point of burying fertilizer while it's CO² carbon credit value is less than the price of the fertilizer itself.
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use spent oil reservoirs
Ok, that lead to some giggles thinking about some company drilling in the future thinking they were about to hit a strangely untapped oil field.
Add a hundred years of methane pressure build up and that could be really interesting gusher.
Watching Landman or you just familiar with the lingo?
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using human waste as fertilizer isn't a good idea.
human waste contains everything that a person has consumes. this includes disease causing pathogens and parasites.
if it were to be used as a fertilizer it would need to go through multiple stages of expensive processing and testing to ensure safety. it's far more cost effective and safer to use food by-product like fish cuttings to create fertilizers.
Can’t it be “baked” or irradiated to kill the pathogens? And then sold as “not for human food use” for good measure?
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We truly are in the metaverse era.
They found a way to convert physical shit into virtual shit.
And vice versa!
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so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?
It's poetic... MS AI slings out massive amounts of shit and now the company gets to bury some of it to compensate
