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.

[kevkrom]

How many turkeys per day would it take to replace all imported oil?

It's not just turkeys, it's any hydrocarbon waste material (organic scraps plus other hydrocarbons like plastic). I believe the plant design allows for up to 500 barrels of oil to be produced, at full capacity. With some 19-20 million barrels a day usage, obviously a single plant would be insufficient, but hundreds of these plants around the country could eventually produce maybe 10-20% off that total, perhaps more.

[ckilmer]

100 gallons of fuel oil per day
I think the article has a mistake. Should the output read 100 barrels instead of 100 gallons!!??

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agreed

[IamConservative]

"Turkey waste" in the literal sense - the poop - is mighty powerful stuff as well. VERY high nitrogen content. It's the only natural nitrogen source I have ever seen that could kill a corn plant.

[narby]

It would kill two birds with one stone if they can get this process to work economically with raw sewage. It might even put a dent in the oil imports.

There was an article in one of the Scientific monthlies a while back that talked about this technology. Apparently they can make oil out of virtually any organic substance. Only the efficiency varies. The Turkey thing was merely because they wanted to get rid of the turkey stuff anyway, and this process is very efficient at it, and the by-products are litterally EPA approved as "products", rather than "waste", which changes the approval process around completly.

They apparently already have run tests turning human waste into oil. I don't know their costs for that, but the original article mentioned $18per barrel for turning Turkey guts to oil.

[RightWhale]

Depolymerization works. The question is economic. If we have to find 10 million barrels of oil per day sometime in the next decade, can we do it? Peak easy says no, not by a long shot.

[ckilmer]

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could FLY!"

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you mean pigs don't you?

as it happens there have been a number of people from north carolina looking into the technology. because North carolina has some very big and very nasty pig farms that could use some bright and shiny way to monetize their pig manure.

[ModelBreaker]

The company hopes that some of those plants will be used to process so-called "high-risk materials" - brains, spinal cords and certain other animal parts that are more likely to contain the proteins called prions that can cause mad cow disease.

So when my truck burns gas made from this stuff, it's at risk for mad truck disease? Not sure I like that at all . . .

[ckilmer]

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

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yeah I checked into that angle awhile back too without success.

[shield]

Is this for real....if it is this is great!!!

[RightWhale]

Sure, but such a car would just make a lot of noise and run over here, and make a lot of noise and run over there. It wouldn't be possible to make it go anywhere useful. Like that teen in a man's body just up the street.

[ckilmer]

How many different sources for this story are we going to see? The basic story has been posted repeatedly for the last few months.
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there's some seriously beautiful and poetic justice involved with this business imho. if successful an enormous number of problems would simply dissappear in 25 years.

[kevkrom]

If we have to find 10 million barrels of oil per day sometime in the next decade, can we do it? Peak easy says no, not by a long shot.

Agreed. But the best comment I heard on the subject is that there really is no one "silver bullet" technology to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. But the sum of multiple alternate energy sources can (eventually) do it -- this would be one step toward that goal.

[ckilmer]

Was in Discover Magazine last year.


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yeah they thought this time last year the thing would be in operation but there was a years worth of delays getting the kinks out of the operation.

[D Rider]

But animal scraps are only one potential source of "fuel" for Changing World's oil-making process.....

Exactly! It has been estimated that the agricultural waste of this country could produce about 12 billion barrels a year.

[AntiGuv]

There are over 100 million metric tons of biomass waste produced in the United States annually. How many barrels could you make out of that?

[ckilmer]

... a great start, but even if they can get a profit of one dollar a gallon, the $31 Million startup will be paid back in, oh... about 850 years.. ( not counting interest )
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we don't know what's included in the $16 cost per barrel.

[RightWhale]

Peak easy says we're not going to make it. I think they are unduly pessimistic, but there will be some massive structural changes.

[Fiddlstix]

Ping

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Ok, think about this in terms of economics. Let's leave behind the cost of savings by the production of oil. Let's look at the cost of savings in the loss of waste tonnage that must be processed and stored. By converting a net loss (turkey waste products) into a net gain (usable fuel oil and solid fertalizer), we are doing more than just adding to the gain side, we are also subtracting from the loss side.

Even if this doesn't result in the Saudi's losing their shirts due to independancy in terms of oil, this is a huge gain in terms of solid waste treatment and storage.

[L,TOWM]

I discovered that Con-Agra, Inc. holds a majority "ownership" in CWT. They have put up most of the financing for the model plants, due to their high interest in disposing of agricultural waste.

I'm waiting for the spin-off--the ratios and performance numbers for Con-Agra are'nt that hot.