Yes it’s true – the bad smells from the bottom of the pond have been harvested and cunningly transformed to power a motorcycle. The gas would have burped out of the swamp eventually and just wafted around adding to the general countryside ‘fresh air’, but now pond methane is reborn as a fuel! Completely sustainable - yes, nice one!

Gijs Schalkx is a Dutch artist and an engineer and has just finished his motorcycle with its Honda GX160 four stroke engine converted to run on marsh gas methane. It’s appropriately named the Sloot (Ditch) motor, paying homage to the stinky origin of its fuel.

Schalkx converted the bike from petrol to marsh gas by drilling a hole in the airbox, allowing this tiny hole to suck in the methane, which is then collected in a little balloon. The bike starts up conventionally using petrol but once it is running it entirely switches over to run on marsh fumes!
The inspiration for this genius idea came - not as you might think - from Heath Robinson or Professor Branestawm, but from a fisherman Schalkx read about who apparently used swamp gas from the lake when he was fishing to cook his eggs!

Harvesting the gas does not require a rig and helicopter transport, just a specialist floating device invented by Schalkx called the Plompstation. This has collection equipment which is anchored in the pond or lake and uses a pressure pump to transfer the gas from the lake bottom mud into the collection unit – definitely more Heath Robinson than anything else!
What’s not to like you might ask? Welllll... it takes at least eight hours after donning waders and paddling out into the pond or lake, to collect enough gas to run the motorcycle for 12 miles - patience is required - but it’s still a great idea!
Maybe it just needs a bit of fine tuning…  Whatever, it’s good to see people thinking outside the box and into the swamp for creative alternatives to fossil fuels. You never know, we may all be gassing our way round in a few years time! At least the Isle of Man’s Purple Helmets will be!

Is this a clever idea or just full of gas? Let us know at [email protected] or drop us a message on Facebook.