From Farts to Fuel

Ok, this is sort of a prequel to the Soy bean bio diesel post. What really got me thinking about beans is their ability to produce methane in people (well at least me, and a lot of methane). I was like if I can produce something that can be a fuel, why couldn't it be applied to a fuel source outside the body?

That said I did some searches on how beans are turned into gas in the body. Turns out, it is not us that cause the lighter than air experience, but rather a lack of certain enzyme in our small intestine that would break down the complex sugars in beans. Since we lack that enzyme, the complex sugars pass into our large intestine and the bacteria there feast! The by-product is methane. So if a positive comes out of this conversation, it is we are not to be blamed for farts, but rather we are collecting billions of bacteria's farts. :) I got this info from Discovery.com's Skinny on why beans give you gas.

Read in there too about how Beano works. It adds the enzyme back in that you need to break the sugars down (incidentally it is made from mold... I wonder if certain people are allergic to Beano for that reason). Oh, a side thought about Beano and diabetics. I wonder if taking Beano when eating beans, would it raise your sugar, because you now have that enzyme that will break down the complex sugars into something your body can use (where as before it just "passed through").

So, that said, why not process the beans with acids and the enzymes to produce the complex sugars and then run it through that particular bacteria? It would be cleaner in results than bio diesel when burned (methane is about as non-polluting as they come for gases).

You could also breed bacteria that ate less of the sugars and produced more methane (increasing energy yield) as well as some that don't add any "sulfur" to the gas (so we don't get fart smelling cars or power plants). Maybe this is how biomass works? I think that is heat, but I am unsure... still researching.

Some farts, I mean fuel for thought.