Slashdot Mirror
From Turkey Guts to Fuel Oil
Untimely Ripp'd writes "The latest issue of Discover Magazine reports that any day now a plant will go online in Carthage, Missouri that processes turkey guts into high grade oil, natural gas, some minerals, and water. Unfortunately, the Discover article isn't online yet, but here's a newspaper article. The system, developed by Changing World Technologies uses thermal depolymerization and apparently works on almost any and every kind of organic waste. They assert that applying it to 100% of the US' agricultural waste would produce about 4 billion barrels of oil per year -- about the amount we currently import.
It sounds too good to be true, it sounds like one of those fly-by-night-in-the-face-of-the-second-law deals, but it isn't happening in somebody's basement -- it's happening in a multi-million dollar facility developed with Con-Agra."
This is really just fossil fuels for the extremely impatient.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I was expecting that evil 'bit' story...
Where's my IPv4 story dammit?
Something like this could really help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I betcha the oil industry is going to try to discredit this breakthrough in energy technology.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
petro products stunk... I bet this smells much more foul... ;)
I'm so paranoid, I can't tell if this is another April Fools or not!
I am without speech! Get out!!!
(Seinfield impression)
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Just think what we could do with recycled roadkill!
Why bother with a plant for this? I can already turn chili into ah, "natural gas". :-)
First we take Iraq...next Turkey!
-AC
The date on the article was Dec. 4, 2002, so I think this one is legit.
So does it mean we'll have to invade Kentucky next?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
that E 1.0 was the funniest... but this is by far more funny!
/.
Now lets see if Bush stops war on Irak after reading
------- The last Sig. got fired.
Uhm, Discovery has an april fool's joke like this every year.
I already do. It eventually gets fed to the fish in the ocean
My guess is that the Slashdot eds thought it _was_ an April Fool's joke or they wouldn't have posted it today. If they repost it a second time within the next two hours though, we'll know it must be true.
Hemp for fuel
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
This is just a plan to let President Bush take care of all those PETA wackos. You see, by making oil from turkeys, he'll surely upset any self-righteous PETA member. They'll boycott the new oil and continue to use oil from the middle East, and consequently they'll be supporting terrorism. Thankfully, the Patriot Act will allow the government to lock up these proponents of terrorism for an indefinite amount of time at an undisclosed location.
Now finally, we may all eat meat without fearing harrassment.
This wouldn't happen to be an expansion of the "Little Lisa Slurry Factory" would it?
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
What is important is the fact that this story was supposed to be related to the IP "Evil-bit" RFC, and it's not.
Shame on you Slashdot... Shame on you for not having the guts to stick with the routine in the face of a complaining readership. If you don't think the joke is good enough to beat into the ground, then you shouldn't have begun it.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
It sounds too good to be true, it sounds like one of those fly-by-night-in-the-face-of-the-second-law deals
/. team!
If something is too good to be true, check the calendar.
Out of all the stories posted today, this is the only one that actually looks like news. Nice work,
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
The newspaper article is from Dec. 4, 2002... why the posting today???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Great, now every highway will smell like KFC.
Yeah, just so you know, I read it in the latest Discover I got in the mail. I mean, the process could be, and they're taking Discover for a ride (haven't read the article yet), but I doubt it was posted in jest.
that's "fowl."
The system, developed by Changing World Technologies uses thermal depolymerization
I may be mistaken, but I don't know of too many lifeforms with an abundance of polymers in their makeup.
What happens to the evil bits? Oh no... wait, it's IP packets, not turkeys that have evil bits right? Perhaps someone will remind me?
For those who are concerned that this is a joke, check the date on the article. It's not new.
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
I think they got me. Is this for real?
If so, it will change a lot of things. I mean, I have some turkey in the fridge right now. And it so happens, I need some gas for the truck. Oh, what to do...
What, me Tweet?
Does this mean we can now *gobble* our gas? ;-)
L
Assuming this isn't just a Fool's gag (and given that the link was from a December article, I'm likely to give it the benefit of the doubt)...well, this seems like a more practical version of "the robots use the humans as batteries" in the Matrix...they don't use our 'bioelectricity', but they need us for oil! Greasy acne-ridden geeks especially.
Though, as with the hydrogen as fuel issue, you have to make sure that the process to turn turkey remains into fuel doesn't take too much energy itself...in which case, you've only won half your battles.
Heh...if this takes off I see a market for "VEGAN ENERGY"...animal-friendly fuel generation.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
The article also talked about no increases in carbon in the environment because oil isn't pulled up from underground, it's created from biological waste (carbon already in the environment). I believe there was a quote in there along the lines of "every living thing becomes a little carbon sink".
Warren Buffett is an investor (via ConAgra) and the field tests should be done by 2005.
Bush will have to invade Turkey
Kilroy was here!
(1) Club baby seal
(2) ?
(3) Oil!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Even funnier if it was 5 months old.
why has it taken so long to get here?!
We call this a tradition, this is in the Slashdot culture...
You are new here, aren't you?
I'd rather be sailing...
This is non-April-related. I read the Discover article yesterday. Neat stuff.
For the conspiracy theorists out there, this one is NOT likely to get squashed by some secretive oil cartel - the process already works, and the oil guys are actually interested in it too, because it can handle the byproducts of current refineries and turn *them* into oil too, thus making them more product and therefore more money.
The inventor's been given money by both the US government and private investors.
No, just instead of raiding their oil supply we'll steal all their fowl.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
A friend reported this story to me in detail 2 or 3 days ago in great detail.
/. posted it today.
There are two plants either in operation now, or just starting up. One is right next to a Butterball Turkey factory.
The process breaks organic materials down thru some process of super-hydration, 500 degree heat, some moderate amount of pressure, and then results in various oils and water (clean enough to go into normal treatment plants).
Also, oil companies reportedly support this because the novel approach is actually easier and cleaner for processing crude oils than existing refineries. So they stand to gain from this as well.
There's a lot of good info on this, so don't discount it just because
I hope it's a huge success.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I think the US imports more than 4 million barrels per year. Last I heard, the US consumes about 20 million barrels per day.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
This is a dup.... err... nevermind. heh
Yeah, but this one is only 4 months old. (Dec. 4, 2002)
Of course, the members of PETTG (People for the Ethical Treatment of Turkey Gibblets) will be holding a protest in Washington DC this weekend.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Ya just gotta love April Fools :)
Billions of barrels a year, lol... I just hope the oil industry doesn't think this is real and people start to mysteriously disappear!
At the web site of Changing World Technologies.
But [James Stoffer] added that while the plant may be a "tough go" economically, it's worth the investment because of what it promises for the environment.
If such companies actually paid fines for breaking environmental laws by polluting with livestock wastes, they would not find reprocessing a "tough go" economically. Unfortunately, the EPA doesn't have the balls to go after even the most blatant of violators, and thus the food-processors get away with murder.
When Con-Agra rolls out such zero-emissions factories everywhere (As William McDonough writes of in Cradle to Cradle) I will happily invest in their stock and buy their products.
And chicken guts produce gold, or is it food? I forget...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
This story reminded me of the slug-killing robot that runs off of decomposing slug corpses. Gross, yet cool.
Cool, I'm changing my will. Just don't put me in a Pontiac Xterra.
If this technology was widely deployed it could almost eliminate foreign oil dependence.
The problem being though... where are you going to get enough Turkeys (or carbon source of choice) to make enough for a whole country? I mean... animal rights activists will be going nuts!
Personally... I want one that attaches to my car. Just stop off at the nearest farm, grab a few turkeys... toss in a garborator, and extract fuel. With all the feathers that fly out, maybe I could make a nice window shade or something?
Why, you greasy little chicken, posting AC... You just haven't got the guts to insult me in person, do you?!
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Good grief people, do some research. US could get plenty of oil from Iraq by simply lifting sanctions. In fact only about 20% of our oil now comes from the Middle East.
I'm not 100% certain of the government's motives in this area but it is not oil. But I will say that getting rid of Saadaam is a good thing, (just ask the people he's tortured and killed over the last 12 years) IN FACT the reason that Europe is so opposed is because they do get most of their oil from that area, and do not want their prices to go up. France was owed money and Russia had just signed a lucrative oil deal with them. Funny that they were the loudest in opposing the war. I wonder why that was.
Come on! I'm not taking a side in this war, I think the whole thing should have been avoided by getting rid of Sadaam in 91 but the knee jerk reactions are just stupid. BOTH sides of the argument are putting out uninformed propoganda and people on BOTH sides of the big pond are simply believing what their government tells them to.
I feel better now, moderators please mod me offtopic and the above as troll.
The Anti-Blog
... if you do the following google: "(waste OR trash) into oil"
you will find similar articles, mostly from the summer of 2001 ?!!?. (Google cached story from Kansas City Tribune)
Either the people involved are doing a series of pilot plants in scaling this up, or somebody's dragging their feet. Or maybe it's just a case parallel developments utilizing similar technology -- but it sure sounds like the same thing.
The prospect of $14/barrel high-quality oil (the cost quoted in Discover) while providing an environmental service should have the capitalists breaking down the doors. It seems like they're taking a leisurely route to large-scale exploitation -- what's going on here?
Shouldn't we have oil companies partnering with ConAgra and building refineries adjacent to slaughterhouses? Or at least set up a pipeline to a refinery?
is people!!!
Will we have to start selling "vegan-friendly" fuel now?
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
I'm just waiting for them to turn a cup of crude oil into high-quality turkey meat. mmmm.... turkey!
... it's a tragedy. This clearly demonstrates that the government has plenty of money to support the development of new energy technologies. What we ought to be spending all this cash on, though, is alternative energy sources. Perhaps if we started behaving responsibly we could become an oil-independent economy. Just think: no more needless pollution, no more economic slavery to foreign powers, and no need to meddle in the middle east and piss off the rest of the world! Instead (again, if this article is legit), this technology lets us generate even more oil, and we're just going to continue polluting the atmosphere and remove all pressure for the development of cleaner energy technologies.
-Jadrian
As the article points out, this probably won't be economic; however, how much would it cost to build one of these plants? I would think a lot considering all of the hydraulics and heating involved.
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
Yeah, but this one is only 4 months old. (Dec. 4, 2002)
Nit-pickers aren't welcome on slashdot...
If we wanted to be corrected all the time, we'd surround ourselves with bored know it all geeks -
Oh.
Um. Back to the drawing board.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
WTF are you talking about?
Since the only source of information on this is the Springfield News article back-dated to Dec 4, 2002 (even the Carthage Chamber of Commerce doesn't have any info on this) it is a joke.
/. all day (well... I find the repeated evil bit postings funny, simply because they tweak the nose of all the whiners). It managed to sound just real enough, had nice anecdotal information (like Carthage, MI - where Butterball (a subsidiary of ConAgra) has a 7.8M turkey/year processing plant) and included references to enough "outside" sources to fool the idle. Which is what April Fool's day is all about anyway.
Admittedly, the best one that's been posted to
Better yet, there are a few comments from users that either fell for the joke or are playing along with it.
Bravo.
While methane and other gases that are produced are used to power the plant, all the end products except the purified water can be sold, [Halberstadt] said.
Yeah, because nobody needs water.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
I have to think that the amount of energy required to heat all that organic matter up to 500 degrees is not going to be insubstancial.
So just how energy efficient is this process?
Springfield News isn't the source of this information.
Read other people's posts. I believe someone talks specifically about reading this article in Discover Magazine.
It's funny how you spoke with such authority when you're just making assumptions.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Not that I've RTFA, but I would assume you can't get 100% energy efficency by processing turkey endtrails into oil. And where does the turkey-mulching power come from? Fossil fuels. It's a stupid cycle, we really need to ditch fossil fuels.
OT - I've been wondering why the US doesn't ditch fossils as quickly as possible, to screw up the middle eastern economies. Think about where Iraq would be monitarily without it's precious reserves of crude oil.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
I think that the Evil Bits are embedded in the annoying Stewardship Ozarks logo continuously behind the text.
Automobiles, upon filling the tank with turkey-petrol, tend not to be drivable and prefer to doze on the couch watching NFL football.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
This process isn't going to be free in terms of energy cost. At the very least they're heating a whole bunch of stuff up, pressurizing it, and then separating what's left. I'm curious... what's the energy cost of this method compared to the energy cost of the old way of refining oil?
This quote may not be exact, it's second hand:
"
If a 175 pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end of 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterlized water.
"
Yum!
.sigs are for post^Hers.
It's only a matter of time before we see Alton Brown tell his viewers how to modify his grandmother's turkey soup recipe to make fuel oil.
-- Fratz, human
Why not run our vehicles on veggie oil, rather than animal oil? No PETA problems, and a much smaller environmental footprint, afaict. Given that the technology already exists for coverting diesel engines to run on veggie oil, and the slow adoption despite that, I don't see this animal option as some new panacea.
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
Since Changing World Technology installed their "turkey" depolymerization pilot program, we're swimming in oil. The dramatic upturn in oil revenue, combined with the sudden, unexplained drop in the number of homeless people (and now pigeons) has left the city coffers flush with funds in an economic downturn. And let me tell you, Con-Agra's Soylent Gold runs with less pinging than any of those premium over-priced gasolines.
I'm shaking my head in disbelief at this...
$u(k 1t!!!!11!
APRIL FOOLS! AHAHAHAHA!
--------
Free your mind.
I first read about this in "Science Magazine" but in that article they were using cow manure and at times the farmer was making nearly as much from the electricity as from the milk. You can search on Google but here's one article
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
The process breaks organic materials down thru some process of super-hydration, 500 degree heat, some moderate amount of pressure, and then results in various oils and water... :)
Hey, isn't this the same as KFC's process?
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
If anyone wants any first hand knowledge about this i can probably get it. My dad is working on this project right now as one of the HVAC engineers for it.
I've been following this for a couple of years now, the article in Discover is pretty good.
Here's a link from The KC Star from 2001: kcstar.com
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
http://www.joplinglobe.com/archives/2001/010724/bu siness/story2.html\
Here is an article discussing the ground-breaking of the TDP plant next to the Butterball factory in 2001.
If it is an April Fool's hoax, they went through a LOT of trouble to do it well.
I'll take my Turkey gasoline with cranberries, thank you.
I just hope this doesn't make anyone sleepy on the road! =)
$u(k 1t!!!!11!
I see a new Fox network movie special. A serial killer that disposes of his victims by recycling them and then refueling his car...
;P
Shades of Soylent Green?
"Hey baby. Want to go for a ride?"
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
i actually subscribe to Discover and the article is in there. It describes how it speeds up the process and makes it more efficient than other attempts at doing this by trying not to produce just petroleum, but by creating the other natural byproducts as well. the article also states that the u.s. could produce another 4 billion barrels of oil a year (we import 4.2 billion a year right now) which would help greatly reduce the cost of importing oil. also says that it would only cost $8-$10 a barrel to produce =). also the article states that with an input of 15 units of garbage, they can get an output of 100 units of petrol, and 85% efficiency, many many times better than previously achieved. i recommend going and browsing the discover article at your local bookstore as it is quite interesting
Now Dubya has an excuse to invade Turkey as well!
You just gotta squeegee the seals gently. I got this from a guy in Newfoundland, so you know it can't be an April Fools.
The technology to do this is actually fairly old, as is the basic design. The TDP plant discussed here is new and important because instead of removing water from the second-stage waste by boiling it out, it moves it to a new chamber and rapidly depressurizes it. This keeps the carbon chains from breaking down too far to be useful.
The potential is to be able to break down any amount of carbon-based waste into oil, sterilized water, and useful minerals with only 15% energy loss. It's far-fetched right now, but I imagine the day when people will have small versions of these plants in their basement or, at the very least, on the outskirts of their community for shared use.
....wouldnt this lead to reduced profits by haliburton & co. after we've "awarded" them their contracts to rebuild iraq's oil industry? after all, if we could meet these theoretical production levels then our dependance on foreign oil just shot thru the floor. i guess they'd still have france and germany as customers, but (pardon me if im wrong, as its been awhile since my last economics class) doesnt price come down with demand?
if this is true, how hard do you think this will be fought by our resident oil tyrants?
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Note to self: NEVER submit an article to slashdot on March 31.
A lot of folks seem to be irked because this is "old news", but the "new" news is that the Con-Agra plant is about to go on-line, which to me moves this up out of the pie-in-the-sky category into the this-might-really-work category. And hey, I searched slashdot for "depolymerization" and came up empty.
Which reminds me, to whomever the guy was who sneeringly suggested that turkeys aren't made of polymers -- well, I could make a stupid joke about the quality of factory-farmed food, or I could observe that proteins are polymers. In any event, one of the cool things about this tech is that it can supposedly take plastics and turn them back into petroleum.
And, not to be whiny, but my original submission made the now-common observation that apparently even the REAL reason for the Iraqi war is invalid.
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
Lock them up you say?
Wouldn't it be more efficient to use them to fuel your SUV?
Amoco/BP Green: It's People!
(that's funny on multiple levels...think environmentalists, vegetarians, "BP" stands for British People, Soylent Green...pure comedy gold!)
...
So, like, a bazillion responders are saying, hey, it only references this one old newspaper article and Discover and doncha know Discover does April Fool's articles and blah blah blah blah.
Instead of yackety-yacking, try googling for "thermal depolymerization". You'll see quickly enough that there is plenty of other coverage. How many frickin links should I have put into the original post?
And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd tell thee ...
I hate this day. Slashdot it really difficult to use. Anyways, here are some links to simular articles which makes me think that this is true:
/ bu siness/story1.html
/ re gional/story1.html
s te wardship/alternative072102.html
http://www.joplinglobe.com/archives/2002/020806
http://www.joplinglobe.com/archives/2001/010729
http://www.springfieldnews-leader.com/projects/
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This relates to something I've been wondering for a while. How much carbon do we (humans) bury in the ground compared to how much we pull out of the ground in fossil fuels?
By stipulating that 60% of our oil could be reduced by using biodiesel, it sounds like there's a lot of carbon being buried.
Does anyone know?
Wouldn't it be funny if thowing away your trash into a landfill was saving the earth from global warming?
f Discover Magazine reports that any day now a plant will go online in Carthage
Did anybody else read this and go "oh, great, another webserver built into a silly object"?
That would be cool. Like, a potato "battery" with a tiny webserver. Would it bake if it was slashdotted?
I wrote "battery". Hm. Battery chickens. Turkeys.
I have to go eat now.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I love the sig, but at least get the punch line in there! Bender: Ahhh, what an awful dream! Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two! Fry: Don't worry Bender. There's no such thing as two. BLH
Many of us detest the way things are done here
How do you define "many" - you and a couple of friends?
Tell me, mister troll, if life in Canada is so terrible, why do you continue to live there? Why not emigrate to some country that is more attuned to your (ahem) philosophy? Are you so hooked on the beer and hockey that you are willing to put up with abject poverty, socialist slimeballs and commie ideas?
carrying the stigma of wishy-washy Canadian citizenship
Oh, now that _is_ funny. Canadian citizenship is such a stigma that many Americans travelling abroad claim to be Canadian rather than identify themselves as Americans...
I know that it is April Fool's Day and all, but really...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Or is that gonna be Iraq?
Rich
I happen to have this issue of Discover, but haven't read the article yet. Discover strikes me as not the type of magazine to publish a fake story and mention it on the cover as one of the feature articles when the rest of the entire magazine is not a joke.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
First we're turning horses into glue and now we're turning animals into oil. PETA already gets pissed off at major food producers like McDonalds et al for raising animals solely to be turned into food.
How many animals does it take to feed McDonald's customers vs powering their vehicals?
Also you have to consider how much land and resources would be required to do this on a large scale. Is the amount of oil used to turn a cow into oil more than the amount of oil gained? How much land would it take up? Currently oil is tucked away underground.
It's a novel idea but how feasible is it really? It may not be being adopted quickly because the cost vs benefits might not be there and the animal rights activists are going to have a field day.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
There are some substantial differences (good and bad) relating to this method.
1) Using biomass means that all carbon embodied in the fuel is from CO2 relatively recently removed from the atmosphere. Petrolium products when burned dump carbon into the carbon cycle (CO2->Plant Biomass -> many possible steps (optional) -> decomposition -> CO2. This is good because biomass fuels don't increase CO2 levels in our atmosphere as fossil fuels do.
2) On the negative side, there is a lot of fuel involved in raising, the turkeys (equipment relating to feed, transport of feed, raising the turkeys, transporting them, slaughtering them, transporting the guts to the factory, etc).
My suspician is that we will see it use less fuel than transporting the guts of the turkey to the factory, processing them, etc. and since these parts are currently unused, it will ge a good thing. However, I suspect that we will not see a net fuel gain from this process (more fuel will go into raising/transporting feed, etc. than you will get out of the turkey) and so it can only subsidize the fuel cost of raising a turkey, not completely even mitigate that.
That being said, I am all for it. I think that if we looked at methane digesters for manure of all marge animal farms, this sort of project, etc. it would reduce our petrolium consumption and allow us to leave a smaller ecological footprint.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
turkey makes a fool out of you. ;)
This synthetic hydrocarbon fuel is different from biodiesel by two major things: no engine adjustments necessary to run on this fuel
No adjustments are required to run Biodiesel in any diesel engine made in the last decade or so. The problem is that Biodiesel can eat through some old types of rubber used in seals and fuel lines. Modern diesel engines do not use these types of rubber. Older engines could be retrofitted just by changing out old rubber lines, maybe needed anyway if the car is old enough! The only other thing is that biodiesel will dissolve engine deposits, since American diesel no. 2 is dirty, there can be a lot of deposits. If you have driven a while on regular diesel, biodiesel can lossen deposits, which can then clog fuel filters. Diesels have to replace the fuel filter pretty regularly - so it shouldn't be much of an issue.
Check out Biodiesel.org or BioDieselNow.com for more info.
Lots of Volkswagen TDI owners use Biodiesel.
To remain on topic - there is a plant near Salt Lake City, Utah that is doing something similar to this. Smithfield Foods Inc. will be making BioMethanol from pork waste.
So Discover magazine, a rather highly respected science magazine, makes it practice to send out 1/12 of all it's issues with a giant, enormously untrue cover story and a half dozen pages in the center of the issue devoted to a lie? That is perfectly feasible and nothing really new?
if we looked at methane digesters for manure of all marge animal farms, this sort of project, etc. it would reduce our petrolium consumption and allow us to leave a smaller ecological footprint
Yes, but we'd need higher fossil fuel prices in order for that to be economical. I've often contemplated all the neat technologies that would be commericalized if we saw sustained crude oil prices above $50. In the long run, that would be a very good thing for everyone.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
It CURRENTLY costs $8-10/bbl using their method. And that will only get cheaper.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Not sure what article you read, but according to the one at http://www.springfieldnews-leader.com/projects/ste wardship/turkey120402.html, the first commercial-scale plant (which is still under construction) is not expected to break even, even though an EPA grant paid a good part of the construction cost.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Uhh... I'm waiting for the "April Fools"??
We seriously need this to work. What they do now with poultry waste is to turn it into a slurry and spray it onto the local pastures as "fertilizer". You can't imagine the god awful smell that produces.
The excess nitrogen from this mess runs off into the streams and lakes causing an algae bloom which kills fish. If this works at all, they are going to make some serious money doing a very good thing.
This isn't new - my family's been making natural gas from turkey every november for generations.
I live just an hour south of that plant in Carthage, in McDonald county, the self-professed "Poultry Capital of the U.S." (Yeah, I know...)
Anyway, I can say from lifelong experience that this IS a Good Thing(tm) for lots of reasons.
1) Oil and related products at a reasonable cost, potentially a reduced cost.
2) Turkey waste is abundant in this area - too abundant. Far too often poultry farmers around here end up spreading it on fields. Anything that produces something good from that cr*p is better than the current alternatives, as long as it isn't cost-prohibitive.
3) As for the arguments I've seen here saying that fuel is wasted on transport... What they fail to realize is that that same waste is currently being transported ANYWAY - either to dumps for processing or to farm fields, where it eventually ends up in our otherwise crystal-clear spring waters... And hurts our canoeing industry. (Didn't I mention that we are also the self-professed "Canoe Capital of the Ozarks"??? http://www.4noel.com *grin*)
This IS a Good Idea(tm) - I'm just waiting ot see how the greedy and ignorant powers-that-be screw it up.
http://www.changingworldtech.com/news.html http://www.ad-astra.net/cgi-bin/BBS/SpacePolicy/re ad/35926
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
http://www.solenagroup.com/html/tech/tech.asp
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Speaking of truly evil waste, it would be cool to set up neighborhood baby poop and organic diaper depolymerization stations. The purified water left over at the end could be used to prepare baby formula, too.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Do some research. You will find out that this is not a joke. They are really trying to improve the environment and make money while they are at it.
I loath restrictors, the ones that claim that we're too stupid to create wealth in abundance and must cut back. Cutting back on people by some unstated means or restricting the wealth to a fixed number of people. I love those who create wealth generating tech like this, it's a smack in the teeth to restrictors. We do wonders with most anything, and we've come a long way from fueling a heating fire with dried dung. We'd be farther along if we truly had a free market, vegtable oils do smell GREAT [1] when used as a diesel fuel and are, well, edible. I suppose that edible could be considered really good biodegradabilty. ;-)
I didn't check but could this be used to make food ? If vegtable oils can do what diesel does why make diesel, just make the dual-use oil.
[1] Check around on making one of those floating candles using olive oil. That smells so good.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Auto fuel.. is... PEOPLE!!
Actually, in the Discover article, they idly mention how much oil, gas, and water would come out if an average person accidentally fell into the device. My first thought was, "Sweet! Blood for oil!"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A good fraction of crude oil is benzyne, right?
Nope. Gasoline is mostly heptane, octane, and other simple carbohydrate chains up to C(11)H(24). Benzene is a simple carbon ring of C(6)H(6) and is very volatile. You can read more about it here. Pay close attention to the second page which talks about which simple hydrocarbon chains go into what kinds of applications. Benzene's volatility means that it wouldn't be filtered out by the refining process (which should also convert it to hexane while we're at it). This cooking process they envision should turn benzene to hexane too, if I recall my organic chemistry correctly.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
There aren't THAT many turkey guts.
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
Benzene's volatility means that it wouldn't be filtered out by the refining process (which should also convert it to hexane while we're at it).
Make that "...would be filtered out..."
Sorry for the ambiguity.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").