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| Macomb County Fatberg |
David Casaletto just posted an Ozarks Water Watch newsletter about fatbergs and wipe mountains in our sewers. I was much happier when I hadn't heard of them but I thought I might share it with you (after dinner) as well.
Not to be confused with fatburgers found in fast food restaurants, these "fatbergs" are masses of fats that congeal when they are flushed down sewers. Add a few non-flushables such as condoms, sanitary napkins and plastics and you have the makings of an underground island. Smooth pipes have less of a problem with fat than rough walled pipes which slow the flow and create turbulence, increasing the likelihood of a berg forming. As you might expect, London and older English cities are especially plagued. A 2013 fatberg in London described in Wikipedia weighed 17 tons and was the size of a bus but there are even bigger ones since then.
Canadian scientists have discovered an extremely efficient way to convert the ‘bergs' into methane biofuel. "By heating the fatbergs to between 90 and 110 degrees Celsius and then adding hydrogen peroxide to break down the organic matter, you produce a product that bacteria can then slurp up. These bacteria create methane, also known as natural gas." Cows have been creating methane for thousands of years but apparently the scientists couldn't entice the bovine community to enter the sewers with them.
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| "Yuck, fatbergs!" - The Richest |
Getting a cow into a sewer isn't unheard of. The Richest shows this cow among its 15th Strangest Things found in a sewer. They don't report if it was surviving on fatbergs but they did get it out safely. If you are weird enough to look at all 15 of them I will never tell.
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| Flushable wipes in Fargo |
