K.T.C.
by Alia Shahnaz
With the ongoing debate about renewable energy vs non-
renewable energy, and the increasing concern that our
reservoir of fossil fuels, which for many is the main source of
energy, is depleting, various scientists and organisations are
on the hunt for new ways to generate electricity and power the
appliances that we have become accustomed to using daily.
When you think about sources of
energy or ways of generating
electricity the first things that
come to mind may be oil, coal or
maybe some renewable energy
sources like solar panels or wind
turbines. These sources of energy
may be the most well-known, and
may seem like the most logical
options, but in fact there are
various sources that we can use to
gain energy from that at first seem
totally unexpected and strange.
Some of these unexpected energy sources are actually found in
Unexpected
Sources of
Energy
our everyday lives, like the food waste in your kitchen. Gills
Onions, a company in California, has already launched their
Advanced Energy Recovery System which can convert the
300,000 pounds of agricultural waste that they produce daily
into methane that can be used as an energy source. This
machine is an anaerobic digester - a sealed, oxygen-free tank -
which breaks down shredded and pressed onion waste via
anaerobic digestion into biogas, which can then be turned into
methane. Since methane is the main component of natural gas,
a commonly used fuel, it can then be put into a fuel cell to be
converted to power, which we can use for electricity. The fuel
cell is an electrochemical cell that can convert the chemical
energy of the methane, along with an oxidising agent, which will
usually be oxygen, into electrical energy that we can use.
Therefore, we can actually use waste onions to generate
electricity. Of course this method is not necessarily useful for
individuals and one household would not generate enough onion
waste daily to sustain their overall need for electricity, but if
larger companies like Gills Onions adopt this method, it would
be a successful way of reducing the use of fossil fuels and
slowing down the depletion of our resources.