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> A banana contains about 100 calories of food energy, and if you incinerate whole bananas as fuel, it would only take about 10 bunches per day to keep your hou
by leto_ii 4y ago
> A banana contains about 100 calories of food energy, and if you incinerate whole bananas as fuel, it would only take about 10 bunches per day to keep your house running.
Just at an intuitive level that sounds like very little to me. 10 bunches is what, 10 kg of bananas? That's roughly 15 euros where I live. Considering my normal wintertime heating + electricity costs that would mean using bananas for energy would only be ~1.5x more expensive than the natural gas I currently use. Does that make sense?
- deepsun 4y agoKinda yes. The problem is utilizing the food energy efficiently. But if we could utilize it at only, say, 20%, that sounds reasonable to me, comparing to heating the house with wood, then 50kg of bananas should be enough. Natural gas is just more convenient, as it doesn't require you to feed the stove/dispose the ashes.
- Tade0 4y agoI suppose so. After all, many people use wood to heat their homes, and dry wood has around 400-500kcal of energy per 100g while dried bananas go up to 360kcal/100g.
- leto_ii 4y agoOk, but 10kg of dried bananas is something different. I imagine that can get close to 100 kg of raw bananas.