“Take a quantity of organic materials, whether it be lawn clippings, lumberyard waste, sewage, turkey intestines, or whatever, put it in a retort with enough water to make a slurry, and heat it at temperatures of about 600 degrees Fahrenheit for about four to six hours under pressures of six times normal atmospheric pressure, and the yield is kerogen, the composition depending on what the original organic material was. “
Would that produce a net positive amount of energy?
If you need heat energy to run the system, a very good source would be from a nuclear reactor. A version of thorium-fueled molten salt reactor, set up as a heat source (and ultimately that is a major product of EVERY nuclear reactor), can supply all the energy needed to make the system run on an near-continuous basis, if several several such retorts and a constant supply of organic materials suitable for thermal depolymerization could be assured. In essence, this would be duplicating some of the hellish chemical reactions that take place in the Mohorovičić discontinuity, under a more controlled environment.
We never have to have an environmental problem with the waste stream again. We have the technology, we have the need, it is only a political problem of getting the projects in gear and adopted.