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Posts Tagged ‘May 2010’

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It's the Energizer Cow!

Taylor has invented, among other contraptions, a better manure mixer and a pen that prevents cows from kicking vets during medical procedures on his farm in Northern Ireland.

But this was his first foray into making power. Cows walk as many as eight hours a day while grazing, and one day Taylor realized that he could turn that free motion into electricity. On his Livestock Power Mill, a cow stands on a nonpowered inclined belt that the animal will slowly slide down unless it walks forward, turning the belt, which spins a gearbox to drive a generator. A feed box entices the cow to keep trekking. The one-cow prototype generates up to two kilowatts, enough to power four milking machines. A small farm could earn back a 50-cow system’s estimated $100,000 price in three years.

Some studies suggest that cows that exercise make more milk, so Taylor plans to study the system’s health benefits this fall. As a bonus, he speculates that it might cut cattle’s methane problem—cows burp up to 20 percent of the world’s emissions of this powerful greenhouse gas. Humans, he notes, tend to be more gassy if they lounge around. “Helping cows produce less methane while cranking out energy should get them better PR.”

On paper, this is a fantastic way to wipe our hands clean of all that pesky waste. The sun is a constant nuclear reaction that’s about 330,000 times as massive as Earth; it could swallow the tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear rods as easily as a forest fire consumes a drop of gasoline. And NASA currently has two probes orbiting the sun, so the technology exists to get the job done. Alas, the benefits fall far short of the risk involved.

There isn’t a space agency or private firm on the planet with a spotless launch record. And we’re not talking about cheapo rockets—last year, the craft carrying NASA’s $280-million Orbiting Carbon Observatory fizzled out and crashed into the ocean near Antarctica. It’s a bummer when a satellite ends up underwater, but it’s an entirely different story if that rocket is packing a few hundred pounds of uranium. And if the uranium caught fire, it could stay airborne and circulate for months, dusting the globe with radioactive ash. Still seem like a good idea?

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