Could Poop-Powered Cars Take Over the Future?

Australia's first poo-powered car has made its public debut alongside its human mascot, The Stink.

Queensland Urban Utilities (QUU), a treatment plant near Brisbane, processes the waste of about 300,000 Brisbane residents. This waste can be turned into electricity after the biogas (from your poop) is fed into cogeneration unit.

This is how the car runs.

So, no actual waste is entering the car, but it is essentially running off human poop energy.

ABC spoke to a QUU spokesperson who explained that they were looking into ways to sell the biogas for car consumption. For it to run in a car, the purity of the gas has to be 98 per cent. Gas from human excretion is at about 60 per cent purity.

"We are, like others, looking around the world for the technology that will clean or scrub that gas to 98 per cent and then we've got a second energy option," the spokesperson said.

Photo: iStock