Turkey waste turned into oil

Newsday.com ^ | DAN FAGIN

[ckilmer]

CARTHAGE, Mo. -- A Long Island entrepeneur's dream of building hundreds of garbage- to-oil factories is inching closer to reality, as a prototype plant in this rural town has begun selling more than 100 gallons of fuel oil per day made from scraps of slaughtered turkeys.

[stripes1776]

They should set up one of these waste-to-oil plants next to the DNC headquarters. There is enough BS coming out of that place on a daily basis to make us oil independent immediately.

[ckilmer]

Oh, and let's keep in mind that factoring in the rest of the world we're talking about far, far more than 100 million metric tons of biomass waste produced annually. We're talking something way up in the billions.
///////////////
much of the third world is decapitalized by oil payments...as the price of oil is a regressive tax on business. even in countries like mexico which have lots of oil--oil wealth is centralized--so none but a few benefit from oil production. biomass produced oil would decentralize oil production and redistribute wealth around the globe and stop the process by which oil wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few...many of whom in the mideast can do mischief on a world wide scale.

[L,TOWM]

Then you are talking about a potential of 12 Billion bbls per oil being produced in a year from organic waste.

Twice what the world is expected to consume annually in 2020, and three times consumption in 2000.

[L,TOWM]

LOL

[RightWhale]

It is only law and regulation that makes waste management into a business. There is nothing inherently capitalist about it, unlike the oil business, and producing 100 barrels from a $30 million plant is not good business.

[Consort]

The consumers will gobble it up.

[RightWhale]

decentralize oil production

Oil would immediately become more expensive and investment capital would dry up overnight.

[lafroste]

Well, what are you standing there for. This a competitive capitalist system. They just started, you can catch up quickly. Start a company and get to work!

I'm available for consulting of course....

[agrarianlady]

Hmm.. Too bad Changing World Technologies isn't publicly traded. I'd buy some of their stock.

Well, ConAgra foods is publicly traded under the symbol CAG. They are definitely in cahoots with CWT.

I've been following this company for some time and am glad to hear they're making progress. I couldn't understand why they hadn't been making more news in recent months.

[kevkrom]

producing 100 barrels from a $30 million plant is not good business

1) It's a pilot plant, and will therefore be more expensive than future setups. 2) It currently produces 100 barrels/day but is capable of ramping up to 500/day, as I recall

[AntiGuv]

...and producing 100 barrels from a $30 million plant is not good business.

Did you know that the first commercial electric power plant had one direct current generator capable of lighting 250 streetlamps each equivalent to 50 watts?

[RightWhale]

That's what started all this craziness. We got along without electric lights for 5 billion years, now after 150 years we can't live without them?

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Stop think of it like an oil well. The oil is just a byproduct. There are also tons of fertilizer being produced, as a byproduct.

Eventually the scale may be there to view this technology as a fuel generator, but the immediate application is a waste removal plant, something that will show an immediate impact on thousands of ag based communities throughout the U.S.

You act as though because you disagree with the laws and regulations concerning waste management, that they should be ignored. Sorry, welcome to the real world. The savings in changing this waste into usable product is showing real promise or those capitalists at Con-Agra wouldn't be involved. Real capitalists invest, armchair capitalists tell people on websites why it won't work.

[kevkrom]

Furthermore... let's assume they only produce 200 barrels/day on average, at a production cost of $18/barrel. If the market price for oil is $32/barrel, that's $14/barrel profit, or a little over $1M profit on $2.3M revenue from just the oil side of the operation. At $40/barrel and 500 barrels/day, we're talking $4M profit per year from oil revenues alone.

The you have to add in what the value of disposing of all of that waste is.

[AntiGuv]

Woohoo! Even a fraction of that would be phenomenal.

[monday]

"This could have been done starting 30 years ago. It cannot be done now, it's too late."

lol....you got that backward. Technology costs have gone down dramatically in the last thirty years. These plants could not have been built 30 years ago, now they can, if they make economic sense. If the price of oil remains at $40 a barrel it may make economic sense. May still be cheaper to find oil than convert it, in which case we will.

Don't worry, the sky isn't falling, and we are not about to run out of either oil, or energy.

[AntiGuv]

You aren't one of those supremely annoying Luddites, are you?!

[kevkrom]

According to the EPA there are four billion metric tons of organic waste produced annually worldwide.

And that doesn't even include petro-chemical waste like junk tires and plastics, right?

[AntiGuv]

That four billion tons includes: "..solid waste and sewer sludge landfills, manure lagoons and industrial organic surface impoundments.."

[ckilmer]

According to the EPA there are four billion metric tons of organic waste produced annually worldwide.
And that doesn't even include petro-chemical waste like junk tires and plastics, right?

/////////////////
From the article

"But animal scraps are only one potential source of "fuel" for Changing World's oil-making process, and the company recently reached an agreement with the three major U.S. automakers to investigate the use of auto shredder residue as a feedstock. If a second round of tests shows that the ground-up cars are suitable for thermal conversion, Appel said the company and the automakers may jointly build a plant in the Upper Midwest."