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AgroWaste Oil Plant Starts Production
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo, and others has a story about the first Waste-to-Oil plant going online, and selling the oil commercially. Using TCP (Thermal Conversion Process), the plant is producing 100-200 barrels of No. 4 oil a day, and has the capacity to produce up to 500 barrels per day. With the amount of agricultural waste in the U.S., and many more of these plants, we could possibly reduce our need for foreign oil."
Decrease our need for foreign oil, and increase our use of domestic oil. Doesn't anyone see oil as the problem behind CO2 increases? The economic short-range thinking sometimes disgusts me.
Wow, since daily US oil consumption is what, 20 *million* barrels per day, I'm
sure it will be no problem to set up another 10,000 of these plants, and there
will be absolutely no government or corporate resistance, and the oil will be
just as good as what comes out of the ground and just as cheap!
Seriously, the only way we will reduce our dependence on foreign oil is if we
reduce our dependence on oil, period. And that will only happen when the price
of oil goes so high we actually have to stop driving our SUVs once in a while.
Then maybe we can just fuckin' IGNORE the middle east.
While these plants are all great in their own way (better to use the waste than just to let it rot), 500 b of oil per day is NOTHING. Worldwide consumption is like 20-22 MILLION b per day. The US is somewhere around 6? million....
Production on a MUCH larger scale will be required for these plants to have any real impact..
Kiss my shiny metal ass
The idea that this (even scaled) could cut our need for foriegn oil is absurd. We consume such vast quantities of oil that 500 barrels a day isn't even a drop in the bucket.
The biggest single problem besides raw crude supply is our environmental laws that have gone totally wild. Thanks to all the environmental regulations we have, there are currently only a handful of refineries capable of producing all these "boutique" blends of gasoline that are required in crazy places like California. (I should know, I live here.) Less competition and less refining supply means higher prices.
So why is there not more competition and more capacity in the refining business? Probably because there hasn't been a single new refinery built in over 17+ years. Why not? Probably because of these wacko environmental laws that make it ridiculously easy for all the Not In MY Back Yard (NIMBY) people to stop any progress from ever being made. Thanks to them, it is almost completely impossible to build any new refineries anymore.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, NIMBY people, for making me pay more for my gasoline!!
You have a good point however/unfortunatly every time the public sector comes out with a way to "screw" the oil companys out of money (ie water engine, electromagnetic, etc) the oil company's end up buying the company / patent and tucking new technology's / products away and out of public reach.
You are unique, just like everybody else.
100-200 barrels a day is NOT to laugh at, many privately owned oil wells produce far less than that per day. It still pays off to run them. And yes, it is realistic to set up hundreds or even thousands of these plants - I'd imagine many municipalities would be interested in using a plant like this to turn their waste into a resource rather than a drain. The process isn't just for turkey guts, it can convert plastic scrap, old tires, and other such refuse into oil as well.
So don't knock it just because the output seems puny - this can be used not only to reduce the dependence on foreign oil, it is also useful in creating a decentralized energy infrastructure.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
OPEC. Not OPEG. This is what happens when the world no longer reads, just watches the tube.
It really amazes me how nobody here seems to realize that oil is not JUST for burning; it has other uses. Many products, like Vaseline (petroleum jelly), and even some synthetic materials used for things like jackets, are derived from oil.
You people really make me sick the way you think oil is only good for burning.
I just wonder how much energy this oil production plant needs to keep going if it wouldn't be able to run itself on the products of its refinement process, then it's not a net gain.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
...then what would your military do?
Invisible hand, baby. Get those pesky market externalities under control, and people will decide for themselves whether they need a SUV.
Some good starting methods for making SUV owners bear a more proportionate share of their vehicles' burden on society:
- Increase gas taxes.
- Safety surcharge based on vehicle weight/height. (My personal favorite!)
- Increase emissions standards for vehicles.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Error. You ignore the fact that the rollover risk is partly under the driver's control, by avoiding driving in ways that are prone to rollover. The heavier frame, on the other hand, helps in accidents caused by other people that the driver could not avoid. ...and not incidentally, kills other people in accidents that the driver causes.
As for driving in ways that are prone to rollover; if you drive at highway speeds, you are prone to rollover if you have to avoid any sudden obstacle. Unless you're planning to avoid driving over say, 35 miles an hour, there's not a shitload you can do to actively avoid rollovers other than drive with reasonable caution.
SUVs are bad mojo from a safety perspective. Arguing that they'd be safer than cars if everyone drove a certain way is absolutely asinine in light of clear evidence that people don't drive that way.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I still want to know where this vast amount of agro waste is... U.S. farmers, in general, make use of everything they possibly can, to reduce their costs. What some classify as "waste" is reincorporated into the soil to replace nutrients that would otherwise require use of chemical fertilizers, which cause money. Farms don't have manure spreaders just because the farmers don't want a large trash bill! There have been farmers working with municipalities for decades to recycle our post-sewage-treatment crap as fertilizer, when the goverment will allow it.
That's not to say there isn't bio waste that could be recycled. Consumer food waste, for example, after you separate out the inorganics that don't fit municipal recycling rules. But that isn't free - someone (i.e., consumers) is going to have to pay the additional cost to do the separation, or make sure that those costs are less than what landfills charge to accept the waste. The aforementioned output of sewage plants, when blocked by government regulation from being incorporated into the soil, is another source.
The fact is, we don't have enough farm land under tillage in the world to supply both our food and energy needs. And I doubt environmentalists would enthusiastically support any efforts to correct that. This article describes an interesting side note in energy history, and it does point a way towards a way to truly incorporate "solar energy" into our current environment that does not require repaving our world with solar cells.
But (and this is where my hotbutton is triggered) the source of the "waste" used isn't going to be farms as we think of them today. Unless, of course, we find (or design!) a fast-growing plant that doesn't leach away the nutrients needed for food plants in the process, preferably one that can be used to reclaim land by breaking up "bad" soils, and working like legumes to reduce land erosion and add nitrogen to the soil for later food crops, yet provide plenty of biomass for production of fuel. Maybe something socially acceptable enough to turn any vacant city lot into a "fuel farm", rather than using grass. Oh, and it can't kill off any exotic bugs or slugs in the process!
Gee, I wonder if the future biomass fuel companies will make it worth my time and money to take my 3+ acres of grass clippings for fuel production, rather than me just composting them?
747s average about 0.2 miles per gallon for a reasonable-distance flight. When you figure in their larger passenger capacity, it costs significantly less fuel to transport a passenger in a 747 than it does to transport a passenger in even a fully-occupied SUV.
To burst your bubble a little more, diesel-powered trains are significantly more efficient than planes or cars. A representative example would be the aggregate fuel efficiency of Burlington Northern, a large freight railroad. 751.2 GTM (gross ton-miles per gallon) in 2003 for their entire fleet of trains. We'll stick with the previous poster's comparison to the Cadillac Escalade EXT. With a gross curb weight of 3175kg (3.5 standard tons) and highway fuel efficiency of 16 miles per gallon, the Escalade weighs in with a whopping 56.0 GTM.
So, freight trains are 13.41x as fuel-efficient as Escalades. Now that must be a surprise...
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
"Doesn't anyone see oil as the problem behind CO2 increases?"
In this case, no. The waste would decay on its own naturally, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere upon doing so. At least through Thermal Depolymerization, we are harnessing the energy from that process. The reason fossil fuels in general cause global warming is that by drilling and burning them we are taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the air. Carbon from conventional petroleum has been sequestered in the ground for millions of years, while carbon from turkey guts has been part of the closed carbon loop, and thus does not add to the total amount of carbon in the cycle.
Actually, McDonalds would be the PERFECT Company to use this technology. McDonalds own so much farmland with agriculture production; it would be dumb as hell for them NOT to tap into their own waste for extra revenue.
In the future, expect McDonalds to have huge contracts with Shell and Exxon as they have extended refining capability. And with America addicted to fast food and their SUVs, all bets are off. Wanna guess what stocks I'm going to monitor?
Life is not for the lazy.
Not sure if you have any idea what your talking about. The 300 series with the big ass engine V8 new hemi get 26MPG on the highway.
That is about average these days, and the "econobox" cars like the Civic (not including hybrid) get about 30 - 35MPG on the highway (the high end civic si being 30MPG). a whopping 4 - 9 miles per gallon increase.
Not to mention you can't tow a damn thing with a civic, and forget about merging onto the highway with four passengers as well.
more HP != worse gas mileage. It can if the car is geared towards performance, but thats not always the case. Any car thats in the 22MPG + range is fine. above 32MPG is outstanding.
Are we all supposed to get in a circle and sing hymns or some shit ? live in the exact same house, marry the exact same person and drive the exact same cars ? Not to mention having the exact same wants/uses for those cars ?
There is pointless - SUV, and there is slight overkill (350 HP) which would you preffer ? (oh and the reason most SUV's get bad mileage is because the engines are typically underpowered.)
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
I also hear people say "the oil industry has too much power here for anything to change." This is also the wrong view. Sure, the oil industry does have a lot of power, but the result of their machinations is that our entire economy is dependent on a commodity which we must import from politically unstable and hostile parts of the world which are far away. There are plenty of other powerful industries in the US that have nothing to do with oil that must see this as a hazardous situation, one which should be remedied by moving the US to having multiple energy options to choose from, including cost-competitive domestic solutions. Is the oil industry in the US more powerful than all the other non-oil industries? I don't think so.
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Create a WAP server
Your assumptions are false, anonymous one.
To be charitable, I will assume that you are considering only bodily injury liability, since most other insurance coverage is directly related to a vehicle's cost.
The actual costs to an insurance company from an SUV accident are masked by the following factors:
In multiple-vehicle accidents:
Responsibility: The cost of the accident is covered by the insurance of the party who caused the accident. Which vehicle caused the most damage or which vehicle is unsafe has little to no correlation with who pays.
In single-vehicle accidents:
Rollover accident spread: In rollovers, the typical range of injuries is far more narrow than in the aggregate of auto accidents. Typically, either the passengers remain in the vehicle and do not sustain serious injuries, or they are ejected from the vehicle and die. Dead people cost the insurance company significantly less than ongoing hospitalization for serious/chronic injuries.
In a microcosm of the SUV concept in general, the overall increased insurance cost of having SUVs on the road is distributed across the entire spectrum of auto owners.
Look back at historical examples of unsafe vehicles and you will see a similar trend. The risk posed by one model of vehicle has very little relation to the cost of insuring a person driving that vehicle.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
This is the first bit of sensible news to come out of USA for a long, long time, for several reasons:
1. 500 barrels is of course nearly nothing, but this does has the potential to become significant - see other posts.
2. The primary aim is to solve a waste problem, which this technology seems to do in a brilliant way.
3. It may also help reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. When you burn farm waste, you release CO2 into the athmosphere, true, but that's where it came from - the plants have taken CO2 out to build up carbohydrates. Contrast this with fossil fuel, where you produce CO2 that was taken out many hundred million years ago, which can only increase the levels of CO2. On top of that, when the farm waste isn't left to rot, less methane is produced, which again can make a big difference.
All in all - this seems good and sensible through and through. Which makes me fear that some narrowminded and greedy idiot with too much money and power will want to kill it off.
While the americans are debating wheter to drive a 2-wheel or 4-wheel SUV, I'd like to point out that this neccessarily doesnt have to be a good thing.
Our demand is decided upon access. If we have a low oilprice, we WILL use more oil. If we use more oil we will have more exhaustion. This merely means we will be using _more_ oil than before since we have a larger pool of it.
Its an catch-22 argument, but when we humans find new resources to exploit we always increase the surrounding effects on environment. Lets say we succeed to create efficient fusion-power. Yes! Instant o-rama deluxe flying cars with jetpacks. Great thing dr Wilchenstein?
We'll have to build new skyroads, new cars, new jetpacks. Using this new resource will allow us to build other things from the resources we are now already using. With new energy-resources we will be able to do "new things" like going to the moon,
flying more, generally travel more. All of this might sound good, but it will in the long term put more and more strain on the resources we use from earth.
The ice caps melting would produce less potable water because it would melt into the ocean and not into rivers or lakes. This would cause a rise in ocean levels thus causing a reduction in above-water land mass and a reduction in freshwater supplies because of increased salt water penetration in river basins and estuaries. In sum, not only would there be less land, there would be less water, higher temperatures and a hell of a lot more people.
One more thing. If the demand for oil continues to increase at the rate it currently is, in whatever form, then there is no way we could hope to grow enough biomass to replace traditional oil supplies.
A blog about stuff.
Say $41 at the moment on the open market.
The plant produces 500 barrels per day, that's $20,500 per day or $7.5 million per year turnover. They are very cagey about the costs and payback period. This kind of thing has been possible for years, it just has never been economically feasable. It all depends on how much a plant costs to build, how much the waste costs and what the running costs are.
Definitely a good idea to see your waste as a resource though.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
does anyone have any idea as to the cost per barrel or the oil produced? maybe the recent price rise in oil made it viable, maybe theyre producing over cost with subsidies from researchers, etc... just wondering
I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
If everyone who drives a car here and all drivers of trucks and deliver vehicles drove the way they do in, for example, Sweden or Germany, we would reduce our demand by 15%:
Turn you car off when stopped and never leave it idling.
The crude supply is drying up
Indeed it is, in 100 years or more.
why else would we be invading other countries despite the human, military, political, and fiscal cost?
Are you suggesting we invaded Afghanistan for oil? We invaded Iraq because it was run by a genocidal maniac who reneged on a previous surrender agreement. The Clinton administration showed us once again that you cannot allow threats to national security to grow unchecked. Clinton's dereliction forced President Bush to clean up the mess.
The White House is full of oil execs - they're just trying to ensure future profitability.
I would say that they are trying to insure future prosperity for America. That is their job after all.
an ill wind that blows no good
This would only be a fair comparison if you had either:
(a) an Escalade that took 15 minutes to go from a dead stop to full speed and took 3 miles to stop
OR
(b) a train that could go from dead stop to full speed in 20 seconds and execute a full-speed brake maneuver in 300 feet.
- Tony
If there was a silver bullet to our tricky problems, the Lone Ranger would have showed up by now. I think our energy dependancy and reliance on fossil fuels will need to change incrementally (not to discount a sense of urgency either). It is a workable problem (always the optimist) and fortunately the business drivers will increase as oil supplies become more both financially and environmentally costly to extract.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
It's this attitude that bothers me. In many cases it's not that we don't choose to use mass transit, it's that we CAN'T choose to use mass transit. Europeans are generally blessed in that nearly every major city in Europe has efficient mass transit. Europe also has a much higher population density, which results in mass transit being more efficient in non-urban areas as well.
In the U.S., however, the population is much more spread out. I currently live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, where subway and bus lines are convenient, and I use them when I can (I am very fortunate in that I live about a mile from my office and can actually walk to work). Only crazy people and those whose office is too distant from a metro station actually drive into the city.
An interesting note, here, however, is that it is actually more economical for my wife to drive to work rather than to metro, even though there is a train station within a couple of blocks of each end of the trip and the trip takes about the same time each way. The cost of the metro for a week is not less than the cost of gas and parking. Why is this? I wish I knew. Fixing this problem would make mass transit a much more attractive solution.
However, in redneck America (rural Michigan) where I grew up, it was twenty miles to the nearest grocery store. Mass transit is nonexistent for a reason: The population is so spread out that it's simply not economical to establish a mass transit system. A sizable percentage of Americans live in locations with similar problems.
Now, with regard to the Maryland and Virginia residents around me who spend three hours in their Ford Battlecruiser or Toyota Juggernaught to get to work when they could have hopped the bus or the train within a block or two of their house... I have no excuse for them. I assume they are mentally incompetent and have too much money, as they seem to be throwing it away on gas and parking. If they are the problem you are referring to, then by all means, flame away. They suck.
The moderators might not necessarilly agree with a post but mod it up because they think it will make for interesting discussion or it raises a question they feel is faulty but widespread and common and would like to see a good rebuttal.
This is actually the mark of a good mod because the points just aren't supposed rewards for good writing, they're ways to bring interesting ideas, questions and answers to the forefront.
Bingo!
Most, not all but MOST, Europeans have no idea how LARGE the United States really is. I've seen even well education Englishman come away awe struck at the size of our country when all they did was visit the east coast and the southern US!
Our country is AWESOMELY large and outside of the coastal areas our population density is fairly low. For instance in Wyoming, where I live, the population density is 13.13 per square kilometer. The state of Nebraska, a next door neighbor, is 25.2 per square kilomter.
For contrast the UK is roughly **242** per square kilometer! France is at 107, Germany 235 and Italy 195!
Now that you can see the difference in population density it is not difficult to understand why many Americans do not have Mass Transit as an option, it is simply not economically feasible to provide them with it.
In all while most of the civilized world bashes on us for our "Car Centric Culture" they are failing to understand the challenges presented to our population by the sheer scale of our landmass.
You can drive across most countries in Europe in less time then it would take me to cross the State of Nebraska!
As for morons driving SUV's in the city, they should be beaten with large sticks.