Firstly, the amount of methane produced by a cockroach a year is 35g. This does not seem to satisfy the demands of the modern world. Secondly, where would these facilities be located? How is carbonic acid beneficial to plants? Isn’t that part of the problem of ocean acidification?
- Sam Storme
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- Team Kakashi
- Simone Dumas - Gusman
- Presenter’s INNOVATETOMITIGATE
- Team Kakashi
Judges’
Choice
Choice
Judges’ Queries and Presenter’s Replies
Presentation Discussion
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Well, first of all there isn’t going to be only one cockroach, we plan to have many. Secondly, Nuclear Power plants aren’t that pleasing to the eye either, we just think it would be more efficient, but thank you for your input.
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Your idea is impressive especially for 8th graders competing against some older kids, including a few high school seniors. If I could give you one piece of advice for the future it would be to make sure to edit your work and remember who you’re writing for. Keeping it professional is key.
As for the actual content of your project I have a few questions. Who will pay for these facilities to be made? Where will they be located? Can you predict how many facilities will be in the United States in say, 5 or 10 years? How big of an impact can this actually make? -
Very cool idea – I’d love to see a prototype in action!
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Further posting is closed as the event has ended.
Janet Barclay
PhD Student
Creative Idea! How many cockroaches do you envision having at one facility and how much electricity would they generate?
Sam Storme
We picture a small setup (with about ten enclosures, ≥1000 cockroaches per) to produce aproxametely 958.9 pounds of methane per day, unfortunately we dont know what rate that this would convert into electricity, but we imagine that if that setup could be multiplied in size, it could produce more than enough.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
Nice work building a prototype of the system! Would you be willing to make a guesstimate about the “carbon budget” of your system? CO2 produced by cockroaches? Carbonic acid resulting? Amount absorbed by grass? Net carbon sequestered?
Constance Roco
PhD Graduate Student
Very neat idea! How expensive do you think this operation would be? Would you need a lot of space to do this, for example, could someone living in a city set this up pretty easily?
Sam Storme
What we where in visioning was more like a large facility, not ideal for a small home. We think it could turn out to be moderately expensive, but most renewable power is, we hope it will play for itself later on.
Ashley Richter
Cultural Heritage Diagnostics Engineering
Wonderful infographic in the video!
How do you think people will react to cockroaches being their source of power? What will the cockroach power plant owners face when they try to set up a facility full of creatures society isn’t fond of?
Any ideas on how they’ll handle the public relations for convincing people to look beyond the bugs and support the science?
Sam Storme
I doubt people would be very pleased know that their power is coming from cockroaches, but We hope that if this does become implemented, that people will just become happy that there is actually enough power being produced.
Sam Storme
I hope that people will find this method as “putting them to better use” instead.