October Blow

I recently learned that from October, the start of autumn, ofgem are going increase the energy price cap by 10%. This means Brits will pay more for electricity and gas in the colder months. It is out of our control at the moment because we import most of our fuel for energy. I want to share my idea with my fellow Brits,it may help. 

It would be nice if the government built metal frames above train tracks that have solar panels on the top. If all the above ground portions of the railways had solar panels above them, we could have the largest solar farm in the world. The solar farm would sell power back to the grid and bring down the cost of running the railways as well. They zig zag many times across the whole country. The frames would act like boxes and keep the heat off the tracks and rain off the trains so it would reduce the need for maintenance a little bit. 

Late Summer

It is the late part of summer, summer 2024 here in Britain is very much about coming to terms with a change of leadership. It was in summer that the conservatives set the general election early and lost. Now Britain is run by a labour leadsrship. I don't have a political polarity, I wish them good luck. I do like the idea of all the railways being nationalised again like it was in the '90s. If they can pull it off then godspeed to them. 

It is nice and warm, the heat is welcome. 

In my town, a bus company removed themselves from my town and the rival company took over all the routes. I think my town is too small to have two bus operators, perhaps the buses around here will be seamless and better value now, we'll see. 

I keep my chin up for progress and better living standards. Perhaps this new government has a good plan to bring down the cost of living in general. 

Poop Road

I remember being told when I was a child to be careful what you wish for. This is so true because I was lost in thought today and if someone wished to know what I was thinking about, I would say I was thinking of ways sewage could be turned into a road.

The reason I was thinking this was because Sewage costs nothing so if you could make a civil infrastructure product out of it, you would save the tax payer a lot of money.

This is what I came up with. The sewage would be burnt and the ashes from the sewage would be combined with waste plastics that have been ground up into a fine powder. When  Feces are burnt then they are no longer Feces but ashes. The microbes that made it stink are destroyed and the compounds that the microbes we're feeding on would be consumed by the fire. Sewage is more than Feces, it is urine, cleaning chemicals, toilet paper and countless other things so when the water content of the sewage is removed and the stuff is burnt to ashes you would find that every grain of ash has different properties. Some of them would be hard glass like grains. Others would be very brittle and some would be heat resistant. When combined to the finely ground waste plastic powder and heated, you would have a composite material that takes advantage of the properties of many different grains. The plastic is sticky when heated and binds things together and it is flexible, it can move and flex slightly without breaking. The ashes would be heat resistant and would not go more brittle when it is exposed to ultra violet Ray's and some of the grains would be as strong as stone.

Like all deep thoughts in this world there is more to this, you see the sewage is almost entirely made up of water. To burn the sewage the water must be removed, to do this I thought that the sewage could be pumped into a large air-tight tank. The air in the tank is pumped out, this would lower the boiling point of the water. The water would boil away and the pump would continue to pump out the water vapour until there is a dry mass of stuff to release into the furnace. The heat form burning the sewage would power the grinding machines that turn waste plastic into fine powder.

Could we build roads out of two products that have no cost? Sewage and Waste Plastic. Who knows?