Posted on 01/10/2006 7:59:50 PM PST by starbase
New Technology Turns Garbage Into Gold
IMAGINE... Imagine a machine that can turn almost anything into oil. Imagine that it uses natural processes like heat and pressure, and produces no pollution. Imagine that waste from landfills, refuse from poultry factories, sludge from city sewage, or even infectious medical waste, are used to make the oil. Everybody says it sounds too good to be true. But now we have the science -- and two factories -- to prove it.
"This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies, Inc., told Discover magazine in a May 2003 feature article. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."
The process is called thermal depolymerization. Waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: High-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing. CWT established a Research & Development plant in Philadelphia in 1999 to test and refine the technology. It successfully processed about seven tons per day of different types of waste, like animal waste, tires, plastics and paper.
ConAgra Foods proposed a joint venture for the first commercial application of the technology. As a result, a $20 million plant is poised to begin operating in September on the grounds of a massive Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri. Funded in part by a $5 million grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the plant will process 200 tons per day of fats, bones, feathers, and grease, turning it into oil, with the only by-product being water.
"This is tremendous!" said Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process, to the Kansas City Star. "From the tests we've run in our pilot, we know that if we took all the agricultural wastes (in America) and converted them into oil we could make billions of barrels per year." (One billion barrels could effectively eliminate the need for Persian Gulf imports.)
The conversion process emulates the earth's natural geothermal activity, whereby organic material is converted into fossil fuel under conditions of extreme heat and pressure over millions of years. By using pipes, pressure vessels, valves, and heat exchange storage tanks to control temperature and pressure, thermal depolymerization shortens the process from millions of years to mere hours. And, the process is simple enough to be completed "on the back of a flatbed truck," says Appel.
The technology is 85% energy efficient because it has very low Btu requirements. It generates its own energy, utilizes recycled water throughout, produces no uncontrollable emissions and no secondary hazardous waste streams. In addition, the process can make both the coal and petroleum industries themselves more clean and profitable by turning their waste and chemical by-products into salable resources.
Imagine that.
For more info: Changing World Technologies
I want one for my kids' rooms.
kickass!
Finally, a way to make constructive use of Chuckie Schumer.
I've been hearing about thermal depolymerization for several years now. The question I have is, why has this remained relatively below the radar for so long? If the process is feasible, it will truly be revolutionary, probably as much for waste disposal as for the fuel it generates. But, something must not add up. It does sound a bit too good to be true.
On the agenda for congress, tax the heck out of flatbed trucks!
This has been out for a bit. The first article I saw on it detailed W. Buffet's son with a group touring the pilot plant. They now have an ~500 barrel a day unit up at a turkey processing facility in Missouri I believe.
Saw a news piece on it on TV a while back with them showing whole computer monitors being fed into the slurry grinder.
This article is from 2003. The current state of CWT production is $80/barrel. It is not cost competitive yet. They are trying to get classified as bio diesel which would knock it down to $50/barrel.
DK
starbase thanks for the post (update) RC - This story rolls around about every 8 weeks. The investors are the biggest names ever in government i.e. Kissinger, Woolsey etc etc. Now with the turkey plant working I look for them to one several each year - after the big IPO.
It is a wonder this took so long.
Folks have been manufacturering diamonds for years now. Essentially it is the same process, but on a larger scale.
"This article is from 2003. The current state of CWT production is $80/barrel. It is not cost competitive yet."
Are the "unincurred costs" (for lack of a better phrase) of disposal, for the waste used as feedstock, calculated into this $80/bbl. number?
The Saudi prince that created OPEC said five years ago - "The end of the stone age didn't happen because of a lack of stones. The end of the oil age will come from new technology." $60 oil is being held in place while new hybrids and new technolgy come on line.
Probably requires more energy to run the process than it is worth it to get out. Basic laws of thermal dynamics, you can't win, break even or get out the game. The natural process of creating crude oil take a long time and enormous energy (pressure of the earth, gravity, energy from the sun, etc.). Thats a LOT of energy in the process.
What about terrorists, what can that machine turn them into?
We have lots of terrorist garbage in Gitmo...
"Probably requires more energy to run the process than it is worth it to get out."
Well, residing in a state with a large number of hog waste lagoons, chicken and turkey farms, etcetera, there is a value that should be assigned to getting rid of the waste. Even if there was a net negative, as far as fuel derived from the process, it could still be promising.
"Soylent Biodiesel is PEOPLE!!!!"
Bio diesel has a tax break that was .50 to $1.00/gal. Bio diesel was defined very narrowly and that needs to be remedied.
I like the idea of using landfills to make oil.
DK
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