Making Crude Oil From Tires

brokeninside writes: "According to this story at allAfrica.com British researchers have found a way to turn scrap old automobile tires into crude oil that is the similiar to "North Sea Brent crude." Needless to say, this could have a profound effect on gas prices should the technology be commercially viable. According to the article, the company Coalite plans to have commercial production of crude from tires by April 2001."

Comments

Re:We need to get off Fossil Fuels

[Tau Zero]

The computer that I am writing this post on is powered by coal. What happens when (and if) all the fossil fuels are used up?

We'll never use up all the fossil fuels. We never used up all the spermaceti (though we came close), but we don't use it any more regardless. It's just not economic.

There are a number of economic and technological forces moving in the favor of alternative energy. To list a few:

1. Electricity from wind is now below US$0.05/KWH, and the trend is still downward. (The problem with wind isn't the supply, it's that it isn't available on-demand. Storage technologies are key to making wind really workable, and storage is still very expensive except in a few places where there is very favorable geography.)
2. Electricity from photovoltaics is about 5x more expensive, but falling pretty steadily. Figure that it's about 10 years behind wind. Storage is the same bugaboo.
3. This year saw a surprise, when it was announced that a common every-day one-celled alga could be made to produce pure hydrogen just by denying it access to light and sulfur. Efficiency is already 1%, and the researchers think they can get it to 10%. Consider what the output of a thousand acres of desert might be...
4. New batteries are on the way, the NEC proton polymer cell is just one of the more interesting.
5. There is a lot of room for improvement in the form of co-generation and other advanced technologies. Fuel cells which heat your house and your shower as a by-product of making your electricity are already on the market and ready to take over lots of functions. When hydrogen comes through the pipeline to your doorstep, anyone with a fuel cell will be ready for it.

If you look at a century-old house in a city, it probably has a coal bunker and a coal chute for filling it. Nobody uses them any more. I expect that we'll find fossil fuels to be increasingly outmoded and disused, like coal and coal chutes. I expect the process to start making noticeable inroads in a relatively short time, perhaps 3-5 years from now. I'm already prepared for a reasonably priced electric car; when it hits the market, I'll buy one.
--
Build a man a fire, and he's warm for a day.

Re:Arithmetic error here

[Mad Hughagi]

Coalite plans to produce up to 35 million litres of oil a year

While it may not solve the oil crisis, it is sufficient to supplement a very desirable commodity. You also have to remember that there are dumps full of old tires that do nothing but take up space - they don't decompose and they aren't worth anything to anyone (unless you like making tire-swings). If anything at least this will free up some landfill space and since many of these tire dumps are unsafe (if they catch on fire you're talking about quite a deadly soup of toxic smoke - it happens!) it's probably a good thing that we get rid of them.

While I think that we should be moving away from fossil fuels, there is no doubt that almost every country on the planet will try to squeeze out every last drop of oil that they can, reusing these tires is just a step in process. Don't be surprised to find a lot of this 'recycling' in the years to come as we quickly work our way down to the bottom of our oil wells - rising oil prices only help to accelerate projects which might currently be deemed uneconomic.