Ignoring the blatant ethical issues associated with this question, I’m genuinely curious from a scientific standpoint how efficient the human body is at generating energy. I’m a chemical engineering major and after learning about combustion engines and steam generation, there’s a great deal of inefficiency. After taking an intro to biochemistry course it seems like the human body is incredibly efficient at energy efficiency, using food as the fuel. I was also made curious by that one black mirror episode where people rode those standing bikes as their job, I think it was for power generation but I can’t really remember. Would it actually be a good substitute in terms of equivalent power and clean energy? Again, a horrible hypothetical given the history and current use of people in such dehumanizing ways, and if this really isn’t something to be discussed, I apologize.
In: Engineering
Humans have been said to eat 2000 kCal per day. With some math, this works out to about 97 Watts. Not a lot of power.
To make it worse, a human uses most of that power just keeping themselves warm, or thinking(humans are deeply invested in this activity, about 20% of total energy budget), or digesting food instead of doing useful work.
You can train a human. They can get lean and mean and eat 4000kCal in a day. You can get a lot more work out of them this way, and they do get more efficient, but the problem is muscle mass. Humans gain muscle mass as they do mechanical work(useful or otherwise), and that muscle mass has a baseline energy consumption. You can easily lose your efficiency gains if you let your human get too strong.
If you’re looking to bioreplace a truck engine, you should try a cow. They don’t waste as much energy thinking, and although their digestion is a serious high power system, it also runs on grass.
For commuter transit I’d say a horse. They’re fragile af, but smart, fast, and strong.
Latest Answers