This was such an interesting video, and was really well presented, too. Big kudos to the creator, I never thought I'd be this fascinated by a compost pile!
In the industrial era, the phrase 'waste heat' became widely used. In fact, in many cases it's actually 'wasted heat'. I'd bet we can remember old, and find many new, ways to conserve energy costs.
This is indeed done for heating some greenhouses. You put the compost boxes next to the greenhouse and the greenhouse wall has a wire mesh and a sliding panel to control the heat exchange. Contact temperature can be 90+ degrees Fahrenheit / 32+ degrees Celsius. You can take it a step further and run large diameter pipes under ground 150+ feet or 45+ meters to bring the circulating ambient temperature to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius as an easier starting point to heat up, then recirculate some of the air with solar/battery powered fans.
Directly heating a home in this method would not be ideal due to the gasses emitted from the compost. You would need an inductive method such as water or coolant shedding some of the heat from the compost using coils in glass to protect the coils. Between geothermal piping and inductive heating, you could probably raise the home temperature enough to bring the cost of the supplementary heating down significantly, assuming a small home.
It's a great idea and I have about one cubic meter of permanently composting material every year, but I don't shower in the garden and can't think of economically feasable use cases for myself.
So I guess it's still just pumpkins in october and humus for the garden in spring.
13 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 42.4 ms ] threadp.s. CDC recommend wearing gloves and mask when working with compost.
In the industrial era, the phrase 'waste heat' became widely used. In fact, in many cases it's actually 'wasted heat'. I'd bet we can remember old, and find many new, ways to conserve energy costs.
"The power output of the core of the Sun is about 276.5 watts per cubic metre...around the same as a compost pile."
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.h...
Directly heating a home in this method would not be ideal due to the gasses emitted from the compost. You would need an inductive method such as water or coolant shedding some of the heat from the compost using coils in glass to protect the coils. Between geothermal piping and inductive heating, you could probably raise the home temperature enough to bring the cost of the supplementary heating down significantly, assuming a small home.
So I guess it's still just pumpkins in october and humus for the garden in spring.