 So there's going to be some gloom and doom, but there will be a glittery shiny thing in the end as well a few Most climate talks tell you how terrible situations is during this 50-minute talk five species around the world are going extinct I think that's terrible And the the links are there you could follow those as generally links food notes and there's more references in there in the download if I think about Species going extinct. I think which is the which are the ones that we depend on because we do depend on each other in this earth as Humans as well as animals. I don't believe politicians are going to show this and having heard a few climate talks during this This series of lectures. I don't think anyone else agrees that they would have vision knowledge or spine needed to do this Consumers seem to be waiting for a drop-in instant replacement that solves all their problems in one by because that's simple and easy and overlap and cheap and and Maybe making things worse technology is always promising yet. This is nice to solve it But see this is going to be the cheaper one. It will happen in 10 years, but we are here now We need it now and I'm really worried about how these things working Usually when species go extinct Including humans by the way, it's due to resource shortage and something in a habitat changes some Food form falls and falls away and they die they perish By the way, if this happens to human societies and usually the response is that the humans cannibalize on their leaders who have failed We can't stress that often enough towards our politicians. I think and but I'm Jared Diamond has done a lot of research on how societies collapse and The link is a very good Short video. I really recommend it. He compares it like to bacteria in a petri dish I mean it's full of food is munching munching munching and all of a sudden it hits the rim And of course it looks one molecule ahead So only when it hits the rim it realize I now need to die because there's no food for me left anymore And that happens to the entire culture at once while they were munching munching munching. They never saw it, but that the inevitable problem was coming or was hitting them and In humans the same seems to be happening also according to the research by Jared Diamond and it is not because people are stupid It's because they make local and individual choices. I understand the problem, but I really need this now and Sometimes you make excuses sometimes really true for survival, for example, but take taking back to politics if we look at the number of humans and Multiply by the average resource dependency of a human we are using 1.75 earth there is You can compute back if you take the resource for a full year and start on January 1st what's the day at which Resource have been used in this case. It's next Thursday So we're halfway the year roughly and we've used a public resource that we have available for this year How can this be sustainable? Are we not going to consume anymore for the rest of the year? I don't think so So we should be clever about this Muhammad Gandhi said it better than I can I would say be part of solution of the problem But I also very much love be the change you wish to see in the world Well, there might be few people here that agree Hack your way into so what I tend to do is hack my way into physics even biochemistry. I didn't have much chemistry of school Energy but also the microbes are part of that I mean they sort of go together with biochemistry and they have their own classification of resources and What I always try to do is not depend on global solutions the big ones the big schemes because they Tend to be corporal and have completely different interests. So I try to make local find local solutions and gain control personal control if possible So with that, let's talk a bit more about microbes. Anyone here brewed beer Yeah Beer. Yeah, not drinking brewing Anyone here Made sauerkraut Kimchi. Yeah, that's sauerkraut with additional red peppers, but it's basically the same recipe Sauerkraut is normally made with white cabbage, but you can pretty much use any vegetable and just put it in the salt water ferment I'll explain why later Vinegar is usually something that went wrong with your wine and I'll explain how that forms to But let's go for four candidates. Amylase actually is not a microbe It's it's an enzyme so it takes a module and puts it together in another way or splits it or something and What amylase does is takes starch so a chain of glucose molecules Adds water and then forms glucose a lot of different glucose molecules and glucose is the food for all of life So that's why it stores in long chains because then it's not accessible to the others and only to those who have amylase Where do you find it? Well in our In our saliva for example in our small intestines we produce it so that we cannot do that too Plants also need it so it's usually like if you have the seed for which you brew the beer you usually It also needs to take down its own starches So it actually has amylase on board which is activated when there's water so that the glucose catch Is made available so usually what you do with brewing beer if you start growing the seeds a little Until the maximum amount of sugars available you can see that at length and then you cut short a life of the seed And amylase can also be produced by microbes and by chemical plants and there's plenty of places to get it from Yeast is a microbe It's a single cell thing and it takes a sugar and turns to CO2 and alcohol So these are the bubbles and these are the buzz in your beer So we got that already in this hop for maintainability or other things now if you produce a beer you usually take a yeast and you inoculate the beer with so much yeast That no other species basically has a chance and that's usually how it works if something is really Persistent really everywhere. It's going to take over everything a bit like humans are doing with earth perhaps But if you make a lambic beer you do it completely differently You do not inoculate it with an explicit species, which you could say is a very technical approach a very controlled approach Lumbic is more the natural way of saying just we take shallow pan. We put our sugar water Basically you take these seeds you boil them out so the sugar comes out you sift out The seeds and you have sugary water They put that in a hollow pan Open the windows overnight and then the wind gust over it go over it And then you get yeast from nature, which can be varieties. It's in the air everywhere anyway But you may also get lactobacilli and aceto-bacter and these are different breeds Lactobacilli transforms lactose but also leave all the sugars into lactic acid. This is what makes yogurt sour and And Aceto-bacter are slightly different they take an alcohol and they turn it into acetic acid and Acetic acid is what makes vinegar acetic and We will see this comeback actually because we also produce something called acetate and We actually use it for energy But basically the process for beer is then amylase and yeast and if it's lambic One or two of these might also help to get a more acidic beer and that's indeed what a lambic is And of course if aceto-bacter land up in your wine it is also going to turn the finnacle We also know that effect so keep your fruit flies away because they carry them on their little paws Because they go from rotting fruit to rotting fruit to rotting fruit In general microbes form collaborative communities They have resources that they pass from one to the other and basically they're munching away at each other's excrements But even a single cell like yeast is extremely extremely clever It takes glucose it takes sugar apart and puts it out in two ways But different sugars need different enzymes to take apart I mean, it's just a different machine of machine that needs done Now these enzymes are produced by transcribing bits of DNA And what you can do and that's called epigenetics. It also works for humans is put a clamp on The part that would otherwise get transcribed and by that you can basically control switch on or off Transition and it uses that because glucose offers it more energy So when there's glucose it will gladly turn that into CO2 and alcohol But when there's another sugar which is But when there are only other sugars it will use those because it will help it survive even though it's at a lower energy state So what what it does to achieve that is that to avoid spending resources for those other enzymes every time Is it puts this clamp on it whenever there's glucose available when the glucose drops it goes away So yeast can actually be hungry Start nibbling a wood or something Why does it do this because it gives it the best chance of survival? eat the most energetic food when available if not do what we need for survival and That's another aspect of microbes. They compete If they want the same resource they are going to compete for it And an example will be the alcohol that should I Sorry the lactose That could be taken up by the yeast or by the lactobacilli So Lumbic generally has both alcohol and acidity because both communities evolve if you were to splash in an incredible amount of Lactobacilli, I don't think there will be much alcohol. You would definitely influence ratios So this is sort of how this muggy brew comes together by a combination of Microbes and I think it's really is exciting especially comparing technology to nature. I think is really interesting. I love technology I mean, it's simple. It's clean. It's abstract. It's got this beautiful mathematical depending very often But maybe a downside it is a single Solution thingy and everything we do must be enforced by energy Whereas in nature everything is complex and that just take all the possible solutions you ever found and throw it at there I mean everywhere around us are microbes But what survives on this pool is different because well, I just touched it. It's a bit fatty now So quite likely that fat specialized microbes are going to form a film on there Whereas in your nostril, there's another specification Specialization then in your ears and on your skin and they're everywhere and they're useful and we want them around Hygiene step. Sorry sterility. It's a stupid way of achieving hygiene Washing your hands with soap is good enough antibacterial soap is stupid because you are killing all the species and Probably giving way to the strongest one to survive. We're creating a new I'll get to that But the interesting thing is that because of this throwing every solution at every problem It's nature always comes with all-purpose solutions and whatever happens is voluntary Because there's energy to be had So the microbes would really like to work on there and when they're successful they will they will grow and get more more dominant Now I'm not saying technology in nature are opponents. I think they are best when they're brought together And that's why I'm giving this talk Permaculture is an area of expertise that tends to do this with plants and technology In fact, solar cells and heating your your greenhouse and that sort of thing Um, I'm taking a bit of a special angle by saying well, let's see what we can do with microbes That's a bit of an experiment. I might go mad, but you might call me mad. It's not quite the same thing So when I was born I got a symbiote implanted That's pretty unique. Nobody else has the symbiotes But it's really helping me. It's doing this epigenetic thing for me And that means I have less risk of cancer of heart disease and diabetes It trains and it calms my immune system. I've been very happy about that last few years and I think that's generally very pleasant to have but it is a symbiote If I don't care for it properly, it will hit back on me You probably guessed what I'm talking about. I mean, this is a picture of one such symbiote This will be the symbiote All these little critters and creatures here all the bacteria and viruses and whatever else you have This is a slime layer and these are body cells and these are the internal these are the cells of the The wall lining of your large intestine. So this one The one that's filled with the dirtiest thing you can think of that you might have always said is dirty But it's actually extremely useful. It does a lot It counts 10 these microbes together have 10 times the number of cells that your body has That DNA is a 150 fold of what we have imagine what food you can mention with that And it's giving that away sometimes to other microbes sometimes to us And that's where I mentioned acetate one of the things they produce is acetate Buta rate and propenate those are the so-called Sure chain fatty acids and they do marvels for us. They are burn this energy first and foremost to make our Lining produce more slime and be more resilient to To all sorts of things close off better They do lots of things, but also they get in bloodstream. They trick tell the trigger to to do different things And they they they will even improve your fat burning for example bitrate improve your fat burning That's what people who eat oats are usually very slim But because oats tends to produce a lot of bitrate And that basically signals to the the epigenetic game is started to Trigger the the the the body towards digesting Fat instead of other things um The condition is that I need to feed it real food. I can get into a definition, but you know real food proper food whole food Pretty much know what I mean. I'm not talking about McDonald's here so um I was really surprised to find That statistical clustering research Found that there are two clusters of these things. I compare them to mafia families Headed by one boss is called betroids and the other boss is called prefetela. I don't care about the names They have vastly different properties one of them Feasts on cholesterol saturated fats. So in other words meat fish dairy and egg And as we know these are pretty detrimental for our health, especially in the long term There's prefetela is Onto fiber and phytophenols As you can see from this it's from plants So basically vegetables fruits grains and pulses and that's constructed for our health. There is an incredible body of nutrition research that So consequently says that this style of food Gives people prosperity health Longevity 14 years extra to their lives and in those lives more Sorry in those years more life. So more years in your life and more life in your years. Good deal Whereas this happens to you magazine And die I think but now i'm interpreting I think first of all this is part of a large chain of of course. This is just one instrument, but I think This is mostly the time-tested DNA code. We've been debugging this system for ages Many people have died out because they ate badly Or had the gene sorry had the genes that didn't adapt to the way they had to eat namely vegetable based the farmers and such Whereas this is more for Occasional partying and if we screw up something in our body the body will heal So there's no natural selection on that. I mean the body incredibly good at healing Especially if you switch back to that later Doing this three times a day might hit upon a few untested code lines on your DNA. And that's I I think the diabetes and the heart disease and the cancer which are greatly on the rise They are very much linked to this style of living and the interesting thing is you are not stuck with the microbes that you're born with Because when you feed them differently their proportions change just like I explained for Inoculating your your beard differently. This changes all the time because imagine every day It goes through and the new food arrives and has a new time new new chance to feast and To feed and find find another balance. So there's very quickly changes in a matter of days Interestingly, they also influence your taste So in three weeks you're actually adapted to whatever you choose That's an interesting fact that most people don't know There's something else that these bacteria would do if we would not be digesting the small chain fatty acids that are meant to acetate to butyrate and propenate Because they might be turned to methane otherwise and you probably know the experiment with the lucifer and farting over it and Getting a flame cows are much better at that than we are. They can burn down entire Forms actually Methane is produced by something called a methanobacter. It's ancient. It's From volcanic ages when we had a methane atmospheres really really old. It's also incredibly sensitive Getting too cold getting under 40 ish degrees under 35 ish degrees. It will die Giving it Oxygen it will die. I mean it's It came to be in another kind of atmosphere and it grows very slowly and yet it has survived until now I'm amazed by that. It can basically only survive in swamps But have one swamp eat have one duck eat one swap Go to another and deposit something there. Probably that's the way it passes over because it can also survive in the gut That's why the experiment works And what it does basically is it takes acetate remember acetic acid So that will be the age attached but take acetate And a hydrogen atom that's been donated by a bacteria that wants to get rid of them. They do exist And then 23 h4 and co2 what and co2 We haven't burned it yet and we have co2 already. That's a bit early So what i'm now saying is that when you use this process to produce biogas because that's what i'm talking about You are actually producing co2 before you have your biogas That's a bit stupid, isn't it because when you're doubling the amount of co2 be this way Of course, it's quite fine if that co2 is is an annual cycle But burning trees for example is a very bad idea because we had a co2 problem before we started digesting trees My hometown of hensrede and proud to say it's cutting trees like mad And they're doing the biogas but they're still green Because they do it in the waste department where nobody's looking where the co2 goes I mean, yeah waste everything comes out of there can be anything. That's really damaging. This is Politics having a single agenda just a co2 And then saying oh, we want to get away from gas and then saying let's ignore that and let's ignore global heating And let's just do whatever fits a very small Scope it's terrible Before you can make the method methanol back to work you need to do some preparation you need to get to this acetate And that's called estrogenous is before that comes acido genus. These are the four stages that Are done in a in a bio reactor in a bio digestion system to to form methane And well, they do all sorts of cut down But these are basically the three these are the this is the formula of the three the acetate the butyrate and The propionate the short chain fatty acids as well as alcohols Well hydrolyzed issue is what I said what amylase also does It cuts up chains with glucose and or changed like proteins or fats and breaks them into small bundles So it goes from here to here to here to methanol methanol better methanol genesis The problem is in this stage Because there are side products one of them is ammonia and H3 It's a poison to us. Basically. It's very aggressive. I mean look at all those age ages jumping to get off But it can also lead to over fertilization Because what you do to process this stuff is you turn it into nitrous oxide. So N2 N03 and We have a lot of that already in the ground, which is why when it's hot Weeds are starting to grow like mad and then die off take out all the oxygen and we have botulism and we have blue algae problems That's because of over fertilization um Somewhat more positive sort of hydrogen sulfide which is a poison again But it can be easily turned to gypsum by adding Water water damp to it hydrogen of course can be explosive But if you are able to split these streams up you can basically do this But these are all the extra extras you get when you make biogas And usually it's burned along with a man. I'm not sure that's a good idea because that means the nitrogen gets into the air as nitrous oxide that's Exactly the opposite of what we should be doing Also, this introduces a lot of handling overhead and that means you need to do this on a large scale And when you do that you get the same anonymity as you have in a sewer this can actually be used in a sewer treatage plant Flush it away. It's gone. No, it's not the the travel just starts the journey just starts um And there have been examples of farmers doing this as an extra thing to get rid of their green waste for example, but These bacteria must be fed because otherwise they starve um So things like impregnated fencewood might for example end up in there The result is that the output is not completely new Natural anymore when you get heavy metals added all of a sudden their end product is waste is almost nuclear waste You have to be really careful with it Same story if you feed it with waste from animal farms I'm not a fan of animal farms. By the way, um, I'm the only one here. I'm sure Um, I'm not a fan of animal farms the way we do it. The strictly economic optimization is a bad idea Because there's toxins in there. There's medicines in there a copper that sort of thing. You don't want that So and on a small scale you can't do this because of the overhead and also because you need to actively heat the bio digestion system um The methanol back to produce the biogas as as their energy as the energy source And that means you actually need to provide the heat for them um to stay alive and this would not be a problem if you wouldn't have to flush through waste all the time So you're heating up all that waste so that it can do its work It's a wonderful story So I've dealt all that With all that and this would also happen in us if it wasn't that we took up these short chain fatty acids um Or you can of course eat Mcchicken mcnuggets all the time and you probably wouldn't be you wouldn't have any fibers or you wouldn't be producing any short chain fatty acids um microbial fuel cells, however are another thing that is are very close to this And basically what you do then they should say well, there are these microbes that produce hydrogen What if I create a condition Created conditions where I no, sorry. Um, I really need to cut short apparently. I sorry Microbial fuel cells are like fuel cells except you have A cathode and anode that are permissible for microbes and they live on there And they would pass in the hydrogen That will be very interesting to do that with sludge, but in practice research has been done This is not really efficient. If only we had better fuel cells There may be an option for other hydrogen carries and even materials as clay and carbon can be used for that and This has actually been shown to work with urine plain dull urine The research is doing much of that developed this actually this one runs away, but it's the same mechanism These are all microbial fuel cells very small ones You build them from clay as a as a membrane you have two membranes of carbon And basically you fill them with sludge from sewer because that's Microbially rich and you train them for a while with with pee It sounded to me like they had students come and go up and voluntarily peeing and then but um urea is Two percent of urine because urine itself is not is mostly water If you get rid of that then the majority of what's left is called urea That's this formula and it carries a lot of it carries hydrogen not specifically much, but it very easily let's go of it And there are many things in nature that carry electrons and get rid of them But they're usually aggressive and this one isn't it's used in skin lotion for example And it's very stable when dry. It's used as a nitrogen fertilizer and just Stored in bulk in farmer sheds. Now, that's fine as long as it's dry Um You can read up how we get to it, but it's basically a breakdown Now what I found really interesting was doing some math on the density energy density of the different materials both per kilogram If you have to carry it all the time or per liter if you have to store it somewhere in your home And a methane and hydrogen are actually quite low per liter, but of course hydrogen is per kilogram has a lot because It's big But what I found very striking is that even plain urine Is better than a lithium ion battery both per kilogram and per liter I have to say that the urine is known for a lot of energy, but many people don't know it. I have to say This is a theoretic Equation is theoretically derived from the chemistry whereas this is what batteries do in practice So there is a technical percentage here involved but I think this this holds a very great promise and especially if we Get rid of the water in some we have lots of heat in our in our solar boilers. Anyway, we can't get rid of it They price of the the water and then basically you have 50 because it's 2 percent You have a 50 times more potent material both per liter and per kilogram and One percent is already very interesting there So, um, what what does that mean? We produce about 30 grams of urea a day I suppose it differs whether you eat much meat or less or beans or But basically because it's a protein breakdown product But the liver When you break down protein, you basically produce Methane and that's a poison. It's in our blood stream and the liver immediately takes it out And at the expense of energy turns it into urea. It really wants to get rid of it So by the time we pee it out, it has quite a bit of energy And this is the factor. I gave you this is the amount we pee out. So that's 160 watt hours per day Or 9.7 watts continuously more than my laptop does and half of my tf does well I don't have to run my tf full time. So who cares? Um challenge anyone interested in building the first raspberry pee I'm not going to but This is sort of the sort of thing we can do right run a server on pee Why not go for it? So, um If you allow urea to get watery as it is in pee P is when you don't have a infection the bladder infection It is basically sterile But leave it to the air and microbes will get in Discover the energy and make ammonia and we all know how how wonderfully that smells and then Further turn it down to a fertilizer if we avoid that process in instead use electrolysis electrolysis with nickel ish Uh electrodes so pretty cheap and compared to platinum for plain hydrogen winning you need 37 thank you You need a 0.37 volts to use instead of 1.23 volts around your plates Meaning a third of a voltage or a third of the energy to get to the hydrogen I've heard about blue and black and green Hydrogen I haven't heard about yellow yet, but I think it's about time we get started with that Um, I have solar cells. I sure am interested I haven't done all of this yet Good. Oh, sorry. Um, or you could use a direct urea fuel cell Which basically is a fuel cell that you put urea in all the microbial version that I just talked about which you basically infest with sewer water and then train with urine urine urine Um, and that can be done with clay and carbon. This there's a lot of research being done here um in the interest of uh non-industrial poor countries Unfortunately, the researchers claim a lot of patterns make makes me think of rsa. I don't think we want to do that again. So Go around go and play with it try the recipes are basically in the research papers play with it and see if you can you could do it too and score by uh publishing patent avoidance of patent patent prevention things now I my home and the thousands around me in my in my uh hometown Um are connected to a heating system a central heating system for the entire thousand homes It's incredibly efficient inefficient. It's more than 50 years old um, it predates the club of rome And we are forced to use it. So I said, I don't like it. I don't want it because it's all fossil I want to get rid of it and also because of the the waste uh treatment of biogas Greenwashing because I want to I want to get out of it. They said you can't we can't disconnect you so I said well my my neighbouring plumber says I can he can do it so It can be done. So it's technically not a problem It's just because there's lack of will on your side And then I just looked up the uh legal uh the legal situation and they've made so many Mistakes in legal terms. They've broken so many consumer laws and so many heating There's a special one to that especially heating heating law in the Netherlands We've broken so much of it that I just said well you've done that that's wrong We could go to court, but you know I could just destroy the contact because you've done bedroh bedroh And misdrag van de standaigheden, which are reasons to destroy contract meaning the contract never existed So I am now Not connected to that anymore used infrared panels fed with my solar panels Covered by 90 percent by the solar solar panels But I'm very interested now in Opportunistic ways of avoiding using this infrared and because of that I've looked at compost for heating People have done this people have just built a compost pile inside there. They build a structure put a compost pile in Um, and they basically used it for heat. Um, you need to be aware that it needs to have oxygen It needs to get out its co2. So you need to be careful a little But there are a few very good very very simple reasons for making this go stably because Compost is extremely stable Also, it's even I won't cover that today But we can even benefit from recycling phosphor that way This basically how composting goes. There's a first a second a third phase. They usually occur in order But the temperature changes it starts of around 40 ish degrees Celsius if you're american you need to look on the other side And then it can go up to 70 There are bacteria that really like to be that thermolithic bacteria there Yeah, some of them they all have their own niche and some of them like to be hot But they're also cooler version. So you can also do the the process here That process happens in a few weeks. This one takes a few months So if you're looking into heating your home over winter, this is the option until The winter becomes so small that well that will be different Um, so how much energy can we get from there? Well a kilogram of plant waste Calculation calculation a kilogram of plant waste is about 1.2 kilowatt hours Check it for please before before you take it But I've basically assumed that our body is is doing its best to To do the same process because it's quite likely over This is oxygenated But um, basically you have about 1.2 kilowatt hours And I've seen people building showers that they use over summer with with compost Getting these high temperatures, of course, and they did like 500 showers in a cubic meter. So that's just about fits um, a single shower with three kilowatt hours 20 minutes with a saving cap And would need two and a half kilograms of plant waste you produce about half a kilogram a day by the way So that's not a complete solution, but it's interesting Now there are a few few rules. Um, you want to avoid rotting ammonia rodents. It's pretty easy I mean any gardener can do it. It's really quite trivial But you need to get get get some trusting yourself to do that There are three factors by which you can control the speed by which the process happens You you lower the time that I have left all the time. Can't you can't you make it go up? Can't you collaborate here? Come on Oh, well There are three factors of thank you. There are three factors of speed control moist being one The amount of heat that goes out. I mean if you don't want the safety degrees just Take out enough heat so that it drops to 240 of course And basically you could uh, have a thermostat that is very slowly responding Influencing these things. Um, what gardeners also do is they turn the pile inside out. You could figure out some Screw or something that arc you made a screw or something that does that That's a bit fantastic Okay, practice This is what I what I made. I spent eight euros worth of money. I really invested big time. Um I had I had a large bag. I filled it I had large bag I filled it with leaves leaves litter is just about the easiest to compost anyway because it just takes the Micro just add a spoonful of ground is For try it thrives with bacteria. It will happily chew away at that So this is about half cubic meter half a meter thickness I I aim for I added a good layer of insulation so that basically I have when it gets hot Near the insulation it just reflects back. So it's not like getting rid of the heat so it can actually get hot um, unfortunately what I did wrong is um, it belched out So I had a really thick piece here that burned really fast. So in short time. I had a pretty hot warm home So I know to to be a better constructor, but I also know I'm not very good at that. So maybe you could help whatever um But this is underneath a concrete staircase in my home. It's central while the sides are usually warm There are actual rooms and there's just a hallway and that hallway tends to be chilly in the winter And this actually helped to make it more comfortable That's just opportunistic just avoiding that heat can escape But um, it really worked well And of course this is a room with there was some floor ventilation. It's it's the the garage and it has some floor ventilation So any co2 would easily get out and that did indeed work So um big lesson was a lot of fun and there are a few concrete lessons as well now Very important is that nature has pretty much figured out all the recipes need So all the microbes that we need are pretty much around us And they will find the spots to work in If we change niches if we find new niches niches to work in We are in trouble because then nature starts inventing new solutions Microbes reproduce very fast. So they will very quickly adapt a genome very quickly form new species If you play around with beer, that's not a problem. That's a known recipe But if you do things like heating up the climate Or having poor hygiene, um where animals suddenly or people suddenly get in touch with poo for example or with dead bodies or or those difficult things or when um animals get in clothes like Rabbits used to get myxomatosa when they get they multiply very easily when they get too close They form myxomatosa and basically contaminate each other and massively die out That's a useful regulation mechanism. Um, but it uses basically these mechanisms If you take this to the extreme you're basically doing biologic weapon development research and development strictly forbidden in just about any decent country Um in this case even the Netherlands is pretty decent But somehow Animal farming does exactly those things. It has sick animals locked up in cages too near to each other Can't move out of the way when uh when it gets too hot um We are actually causing Mutations of microbes together with climate change. It's even worse. I can only think of one difference between these two This one is strictly hygienic in a laboratory and this one is open to the plane next to you That really worries me. I've talked to Margaret about this after our prime prime minister. I've written a long letter Um, of course, got no response. I mean, there's probably no money to be made or something um or was too difficult All these letters It didn't fit in his Nokia. I'm sure that must have been it um I asked the responsible government department lmv in our country. Um, how do they protect us against Mutilations, uh, what's the r that we can expect? What's the risk of it passing over to humans? What would then the r factor be they don't have an idea? There are a few brands like the monkey pox. They probably saw that coming that The ones that they know from other countries they know about And they try to monitor and they have a monitor and signaling system basically they start flapping around like headless chicken to Try and contain the problem, which is definitely not Guaranteed if it's going to be flu like virus because they're extremely contagious for us Um, so I'm I'm really concerned about this I'm not saying we should stop animal farming. I should I think I think we should start animal fire They're animal farming again But do it so that animals are healthy a full of life And whatever it takes to do that is what you need to do. I think that's basically what I told margarita, but then again 50 day whole plant Basically, I've covered all of this most important thing There are a few angles where you can play you can make build a Controller for your compost you can play with that. I haven't done that yet. I'm definitely going to And publish it. Please share the knowledge Because if I get something working then I have a thousand similar homes that can do the same They're also very intrigued about getting rid of this incredibly poor heating network anyway And documented please so that nobody can get patents about it So that's what I wanted to say Thank you very much and maybe there are questions We do have some time left. So if there are questions, please line up at the microphones in the middle of the room And feel free to ask Yes, he said I should haste him so that you could ask questions Anyone yes Microphone in the front, please. It's a very unknown area. That's probably why people are a bit They need to think you were talking quite fast, but it was really interesting They need to think you were talking quite fast, but it was really interesting. So Yeah, don't think there's many chemistry talks here, but you said that the energy for the urine and urea was Like purely theoretical Yeah, if that have there been any realistic like attempts at extracting that energy And do we know like what percentage of the theoretical that has reached yet? Yes This machine ran not a urine, by the way, but on flies and such scraps found around But on organic waste for seven days With 48 of these things and you can see it has two volts apparently This is meters have volts over there, I believe And it's been autonomous for for a week. It's basically done. It's done its task There are small scale setups You can definitely burn a lead on it. That's easy And there's more to be had But that basically lead is already a bit of power out compared to a microcontroller I think you could run a microcontroller on it It depends very much because Not all these will have the same output And they're like uneven batteries and you know what happens then one starts charging the other it's it gets out of balance One of the things we might do to improve this We as a community, I mean helping out these researchers is to find ways of switching voltage or something or pile them up Such that we don't get the loss of energy from that There are many things that need to be researched. Basically, it's a tinkering area and the interesting thing is I think there are less than 10 researchers working on this So it's We can expand extra incredibly on this and it has a huge problem Potential Thank you. Okay microphone in the back, please Yeah, hello Thanks for the great talk If I'm if I'm lawn mowing So if I'm mowing grass and put that all on a big pile it gets so hot. I fear it will ignite So could you say what process that is and could we use that that is the composting process? Okay, and yes, you could use that although I don't know how fast your grass grows But yeah, that's exactly that's probably 70 degrees. You could measure it Measure the inside of course, but the outside is going to be colder But yeah, vapor tends to come off as well because CH constructions are turned into two in H2O So you will see steam escaping as well. So you might even cycle that back or retain it or use that for energy Um, yeah, that's basically what I'm talking about when I'm saying compost can be heating source Okay, thanks. Yeah In general when you take plant waste you put it in the pile it's going to turn into compost That's almost always what always what happens Provided there's oxygen if there's no oxygen it's going to rot and you are going to notice Okay, I'm gonna try that Okay microphone in the back please again You are front. Hello. That's us. Hey, um, I have a question about the um The bio Gas is I believe what it's called Where you take rotten Fruit and vegetables and stuff. Oh, yeah bio gas. It creates bio gas. Yeah And you mentioned that it creates this gas and co2. Yeah, but isn't the co2 already in the Yes, the bio waste and will will it be released anyway? Um, yes, it would also be released in a composting process. Yes Um, what I'm saying is this is an extra warning that you need to look not just the ch4 But also co2 is a double warning that you should really look where it comes from Um, make sure that it's something that will indeed bind back again next year and not burn down Or break down trees or trunks or or branches or whatever these have been around for very long They probably don't grow anymore, but we had a co2 problem before we started cutting down trees for co2 Like ends today is doing terrible city to live in sometimes So so maybe only makes make a bio gas from things that are already dead like Like bananas bananas peels shells. I I I don't know if it's dead, but yeah Okay, so when it wants decompose when it can't retain its intact structure, and that's what you could call that right. Yes Microphone up front, please I am not actually that familiar of composting myself, but I'm very curious Are there any any waste products that you need to worry about when composting because It the composting would also produce co2 and possibly methane, right? Yes, usually you do composting with stuff you have in your kitchen You don't want to add boiled foods. You don't want to add cheese or meat or that because that would attract rodents You might like them. I most people don't Um, but materially no and if you're any bit afraid you wash wash your hands with soap afterwards Yeah, it is just more about uh, when you do it indoor, uh the gases that come off it Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's what I said when you do this indoors You need to have an exhaust for the co2 and that's why I said in my garage on the bottom Where co2 lands usually there's ventilation. Yes. Thank you. Yeah and microphone in the back, please um You said uh, you asked us if we could Document our findings and I was wondering do you have any pointers for that? Like what should we document? Where should we document it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course TD commons is what I usually do um They're started by google, but they are run by Publisher, I don't know which one anymore, but there's some long term arrangements so that it will work quite well TD commons is the name. It's in one of the food notes. Here it is And basically you print a PDF. You upload it takes two three weeks Of course, you don't need to do this just for this This is just a general if you want to avoid patents use it Please do when I think of new ideas with solar boilers for example I first write it there and then I talk to someone about it Because I don't want a sustainable technology to be patented because it should be everyone's it should be for the people Not for companies and do you have any suggestion? What specifically we should document what parts like? Oh, um, and if If you play around with this you discover something like this material or Like if I put a thread in it or if I use they've they've done things like using um Active car coil with which a car car which has very high surface area They've stuck that in a particular way on a carbon sheet and use that as an electrode so that many But bacteria could could attach for example now those things are wonderful, but I'm not sure that one is Patented or not But that's the sort of thing you don't want to think about right? Um, I I said this shouldn't be a sustainable technology shouldn't be for companies What I actually mean is not for a single company. You don't want monopolies Okay, and the last question from the mic from the front, please Uh, yeah, I was wondering what your thoughts are on uh genetic engineering. For example, uh, cyanobacteria to be able to Take sunlight and see you too and uh produce I think it's scary Because it's an expensive process and it means it can only be done by companies like Monsanto We have a lot of money to spend and who basically want to sell their Um, how do they call it? They've got this terrible poison that kills just about all life Round up. Thank you. Um And basically they genetically engineer things so that they're Compatible and this is spreading And since they have a patent they're actually Filing charges against farms in neighboring fields who happen to have picked up this because they naturally recycle the seeds I'm not a big fan. Do I also think it's dangerous But those are maybe I think in every technology you can have you can use it for good or you can do it Use it for bad things. But there are also for example, iGEM teams that really, um Get into uh, also genetically engineering organisms, but to create Some application that we can use and um Yeah, it's don't you think that that could also provide for a solution sometimes Instead of just being evil. Um, I do agree if you've been here during the previous lecture He said we have a great religious belief in technology, but usually solves one problem and creates five others Um, we are pretty good at abstracting and looking at one section of a problem only and solving that And that's also the mindset behind genetic engineering. So I am incredibly cautious So I I'm not saying black or white. I'm saying dark Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the questions Then you will be open for questions outside if there are more. Oh, yeah, okay, perfect Then thank you very much for this really interesting talk