I wonder if he used a MAGIC CHEF?........
Posted on 12/11/2007 9:06:07 AM PST by #1CTYankee
Frank Pringle has found a way to squeeze oil and gas from just about anything
I’m not sure if I’m watching a magic trick, or an invention that will make the cigar-chomping 64-year-old next to me the richest man on the planet. Everything that goes into Frank Pringle’s recycling machine—a piece of tire, a rock, a plastic cup—turns to oil and natural gas seconds later. “I’ve been told the oil companies might try to assassinate me,” Pringle says without sarcasm.
The machine is a microwave emitter that extracts the petroleum and gas hidden inside everyday objects—or at least anything made with hydrocarbons, which, it turns out, is most of what’s around you. Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running).
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
ROTFLMAO! Shot, hey, now that’s a legacy!
Yeah, but what about the cars that can run on water? They're legit, right? (snicker)
I really hope it works as advertised.
There’s no violation of the laws of thermodynamics here. He’s taking materials containing complex hydrocarbon chains and depolymerizing them. This is a well known process.
The rub is always whether you use dry heat or wet heat, and where you get the mechanical pressure to aid the cracking.
Excellent point!....Now if he'd said the Bilderbergers, CFR or Tri-lateral Commission, THEN I'd have taken another look!..............
Yes, nothing mysterious here. Just wonder how much microwave energy is required? and is the FREQUENCY a special key?......
Shale oil......Oil Sandstone........Asphalt......
They had a big plant down in Missouri using turkey offal (ie, turkey guts, feathers, dung, etc).
The neighboring community started pitching a fit about the odors surrounding the plant. It works, but the complications are that it needs to be near the feedstock, which in that case was turkey by-products. A turkey plant already isn’t on a winning basis with most urban neighbors due to their own smells and issues.
It always comes back to NIMBY. Urban America wants cheap fuel. They don’t want the fuel produced in their neighborhood.
I wonder if he used a MAGIC CHEF?........
Yes, I’d assume (without any additional information) that the frequency is important.
The reason why microwave ovens heat your food is that they’re operating in the “water hole” in the electromagnetic spectrum — they’re literally causing the H2O molecule to flex the two O’s off the side of the H atom.
If I were a betting man, I’d wager that the frequency here is exciting the C-H molecular bond in the same way - you’d be able to break down hydrocarbons of every sort simply by applying enough energy to frac them. Since natural gas (ie, methane) is CH4, that’s a stable base-level hydrocarbon which results if you were able to break down a complex hydrocarbon in the presence of some excess hydrogen to fill up the carbon atom’s bonds.
Oooh! Oooh-ooh! I choose ‘wet’ for sure!
If you hit the “right” frequency, and everything has an inherent one, then the C-H bonds could be broken without much additional energy applied. Kind of like vibrating them until the electrons’ orbits suddenly change or maybe even jump across to another molecule......
shale is a rock, some shale has oil in it.
This reminds me of an individual from South America who gave a speech in our Toastmaster club about his mother in law who had kidney stones, only he called them kidney rocks.
Words have meaning and rocks to me are those things I picked up out of the field as a kid(grin).
I blame it on the reporter who didn’t know how to spell shale but could spell rock.
If your going to use the quote at least use the whole quote. Otherwise your no better than an agenda driven N.Y. Times editor.
They called it destructive distillation when I was in high school chemistry class. Of course that was back in the days when public schools in this country actually taught useful things.
A bit of chemistry and why microwaves heat things up.
The water molecule has two hydrogens and one oxygen, they are arranged in a V configuration with the Oxygen being the point of the V. The angle is 109 degrees or thereabouts.
The oxygen end has a higher electronegativity, which basically means it wants the hydrogens electrons a bit more than the hydrogens themselves want them. So the molecule becomes a miniature electric dipole - slightly more negatice at the oxygen end than the hydrogen side.
Now here comes a microwave, tuned to the right frequency.
The “electric” part of the microwave pushes the water molecule.. just like a child on a swing. The more it pushes, the more the water molecule starts to rotate - it literally spins, end over end, and absorbs the energy of the microwaves.
Now this is NOT the classical definition of heat. Heat is molecules bouncing around like pool balls. But the rotational energy of the water molecules causes huge disturbances and soon, things are zipping around and bumping into each other all over the place.
You are correct that microwaves of the correct energy can break apart various bonds. Each substance might require different frequencies, but there is no magic here.
As far as understand it, thats it.
One more neat thing. Ever see frost crystals on windows during the winter? Notice the intricate patterns and sworls that get formed? Or a snowflake itself?
You can thank thank the 109 degree angle for that. At 109 degrees, there is no nice, easy geometrical form that can happen. Can’t very easily make a cube, or tetrahedron, or hexagonal structure.
And because these molecules are notoriously difficult to stack up, there is one more effect.
It takes more volume to “stack them” than just leave them liquid.
Ice floats!
Minor nit:
The “water hole” in the electromagnetic spectrum is at ~1cm or 300GHz. Most modern microwaves operate at 12.24cm or 2.45GHz.
This "de-tuning" ensures that the radiation is not totally adsorbed by the first layer of water it encounters. Otherwise your microwave hamburger would be ashes on the outside and still frozen on the inside.
If this thing really works, that may not be the case.
Quiz of the day:
What was the very first food ever cooked by microwave?
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