[snopercod]

most of the doubters on this site don't care about "science" or "facts"

I'm an engineer and former building contractor, and DO care about science and facts. What's more - unlike many of the alternative energy advocates here - I have actually tried some of these fairy-tale schemes back in my Mother Earth News days.

The fact is that most of them are uneconomical outside of any government-funded laboratory setting. When you start adding in equipment costs, property taxes, interest, permits, maintenance costs, repairs, etc... like those of us in the real world have to do, most of them just aren't worth it.

(I do advocate solar hot water if the climate is right, you have permanent solar access, and if you can build and maintain the system yourself.)

[Hodar]

The fact is that most of them are uneconomical outside of any government-funded laboratory setting.

Ummm, materials cost is zero. Thus, any costs incurred are due to equipment, manpower and process expenses. With a zero materials cost, the feasability becomes much greater. I would encourage you to take a look at the link I provided.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

I like to cover my bases and use words like "most"! I encourage you to read the material on this process and see who is invested (ConAgra is the big partner, but some petro companies are also interested). I have a friend who worked for Monsanto at the time send me the first information I heard about this. He was impressed and he hates the "ethanol people". I figured, if he thought it had promise, it must be good chemistry.

When the plant went up in Carthage last year, it confirmed to me that this was probably going to be big since ConAgra was hooking it up to their own big commercial plant (Butterball Turkey) and not some small out of the way trial farm.

I just encourage people to read up on it and see for themselves.

[CedarDave]

The fact is that most of them are uneconomical outside of any government-funded laboratory setting. When you start adding in equipment costs, property taxes, interest, permits, maintenance costs, repairs, etc... like those of us in the real world have to do, most of them just aren't worth it.

That's where both economy of scale and efficiency come in. These aren't going to be built everywhere (except maybe on land a city already owns and is already used for their landfill or WWTP). However, if the process works and efficiency is high, they could easily pay for themselves in an area like Dodge City, Kansas where gigantic cattle feed lots generate equally gigantic piles of BS. And if it does generate usable quantities of oil and producing oil fields are nearby, crude oil pipelines can be used to transport it to refineries.