The Denver Zoo today will fire up a poo-powered tuk tuk as proof that human trash and animal feces can be converted to energy.

The three-wheeled motorized rickshaw — believed to be the first hybrid-electric gasified tuk tuk — is designed to showcase the innovative energy system that will fuel the Toyota Elephant Passage exhibit, which opens June 1.

“(The tuk tuk) can be a place for us to interact with guests about this great technology,” said the zoo’s sustainability manager, Jennifer Hale. “It was a good theme with the elephants.”

Before the grand opening of the massive new exhibit, the rehabbed vehicle will go on the road, visiting other zoos in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico before making an appearance at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ midyear meeting in Palm Desert, Calif.

The tuk tuk was purchased from Thailand and then re-engineered to run on gasified pellets made from animal droppings and trash generated by the zoo’s human visitors and employees. It is the zoo’s second prototype for the energy system. The first was a blender used to mix margaritas at an event.

The full-fledged system should be complete in the fall.

If it is successful, the energy system could change the future of waste management in many settings.

“This is not just a zoo thing,” Hale said. “It can be applied on campuses, in communities and many other environments.”

The zoo’s system will convert about 1.5 million pounds of waste — using all of the animal droppings plus 90 percent of the solid waste produced by visitors and employees — into energy annually, offsetting 20 percent of the zoo’s total energy consumption.

There are many elements of the technology that are unique and revolutionary. First, it is the first to use a diverse on-site waste stream.

“Usually when people use the gasification process, they have loads and loads of wood chips, but in our case, it’s really unique because it uses animal poop and human trash,” zoo spokeswoman Tiffany Barnhart said.

The whole process will occur on the zoo grounds, reducing the cost of trash and compost removal. Even with the increase in manpower needed to run the system, the zoo will save $150,000 a year in hauling costs.

The waste will be streamed together and compacted into pellets that are thermally broken down and used to charge batteries and fuel heaters, pumps and other machinery that requires energy.

This idea — which is now patent pending — began eight years ago during the early planning for the Elephant Passage. Cutting down energy use was a priority, and as a result, a three-person engineering team was commissioned to develop alternative options. It started with consumption analysis.

“These guys spent a lot of time in Dumpsters figuring out what kind of trash we produce,” Barnhart said.

Once the waste patterns were recorded and analyzed, the engineers began working to reduce unusables and divert anything that must be thrown away into power.

“We will have our own catalog of products that can be gasified,” Hale said.

This catalog includes such items as office products and concessions packaging. The only waste products that cannot be gasified from the zoo’s general trash bins are metals, glass and certain types of plastic.

Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638 or kpainter@denverpost.com