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AFP / 4-29-2003
A Japanese scientist could soon become stinking rich with an invention to be ready by 2005 that would use Panda dung to create electricity.
Fumiaki Taguchi, emeritus professor of Kitasato University in Tokyo, embarked on the project five years ago when he asked Ueno Zoo for a bucketful of one of their most popular residents' faeces.
Bacteria inside the panda's belly must be pretty special to be able to digest tough bamboo leaves and shoots, he reasoned.
"If a panda can support such a big body by eating bamboo leaves, it's really different from other animals," Professor Taguchi said.
"There might not be any other living thing on the planet able to digest bamboo leaves or the skin of the shoots. They are made of such tough organic materials."
His research team then selected five micro-organisms among the some 270 they discovered in the poop - ones that were the most efficient at breaking down proteins, fats and could reproduce easily even under high heat.
The team mixed the bacteria with 70 to 100kg of raw garbage, such as vegetable stems, for 17 weeks in an industrial waste disposal machine.
The result: only three kilograms of waste remained, while the rest had turned to water and carbon dioxide - way above the 80 per cent efficiency of most commercial disposal bacteria.
The outcome is not just soggy gas.
Professor Taguchi said the company of which he is a director, H2Japan, hopes to create a hydrogen fuel cell and waste disposal unit in one to sell to food processing companies across Japan.
He aims to showcase his invention at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi prefecture, some 250km west of Tokyo, which starts that March.
"For every one kilogram of waste I can get about 100 litres of hydrogen," he said. "It won't amount to much electricity, maybe enough to power the exit lamps in an entire building."
"In the next year, we want to see if we can improve this," he said.
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