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."

Comments

Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Oil

[Openstandards.net]

I don't know if oil is the primary contributor. I still can't believe that a cow releases 100-200 liters of methane every day in the form of flatulance. Methane has 31x the "global warming" effect of CO2 on atmosphere, so think of that as 3000-6000 liters of CO2 every day.

I just wish I could put a cow on the back of my truck so I wouldn't have to pay the high price of gas today.

500?? 500???????!!!?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:500?? 500???????!!!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we could build 10k of these plants, we could also ignore the Middle East, since that would roughly match our foreign oil imports.

No idea how much it costs to build one of these plants, but let's guess $20M. That'd be $200B to end our dependence on foreign oil. About the cost of the Iraq war.

Re:500?? 500???????!!!?

[phorm]

Regardless of the SUV's... and the fact that the article seems overly optimistic, this is a step in a good direction. While this one plant obviously doesn't come near to providing a solution, time could yield increased efficiency and more plants.

Also, redirection of organic waste that would otherwise end up elsewhere isn't a bad plan either. Perhaps if they started adding reprocessing plants to major landfills we could exchange waste for oil.

In the meantime, while SUV's etc are definately a problem, the high oil prices provide a visible indicator that perhaps such vehicles cost more than they're worth. Lots of oil is still being used for fueling things other than automobiles though.... so to be fair it's a lot more than just SUV drivers that need to cut back - overconsumption is a much more global issue.

Re:500?? 500???????!!!?

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

Guess what? Last time I looked we lived in a free, capitalistic society,

Feh. I can't speak for your country, but the only reason goddamn soccer mothers can afford SUV's in my country is because the government only tarrifs them at 5% instead of the regular 15% for passenger cars - i.e. the very opposite of free capitalism, government price interference.

This tarrif break was originally for farmers who required 4WD's/SUV's to work their land - it should not apply to people who aren't making their primary income from primary industry.

YLFI

I feel obliged to point out, btw, that not all SUV's/4WD's are gas guzzling monsters - Landrover Freelander is a good exception.

Re:500?? 500???????!!!?

[AnotherBlackHat]

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!

Yep, you've got it about right.

US demand is closer to 11 million barrels per day, and with over 20,000 factory farms in the US that could apply the technology, 10,000 is optimistic but not impossible. 5 million barrels a day won't supply all the demand, but it could reduce it 50% which means a lot.

Of course, since the net effect is to reduce the waste produced by factory farms, the government might actually mandate the building of the plants, but since the plants make money they'd probably be built anyway - government involvement will just make it happen faster. American oil is mostly in the oil refining business so they won't really mind have a second source for raw materials. The only companies likely to dislike it would are the oil drillers, oil shippers and of course OPEC.

And while the price will naturally be the same as the stuff that comes out of the ground, the price of both is likely to be lower than it would be without the plants online.

As for quality, it's supposedly the same, but since most oil is simply burned, I doubt it matters much if it's little higher or lower.

-- not a .sig

This *is* useful

[PHPhD2B]

Discover Magazine ran an article on this process, and it's incredibly versatile. It can serve a dual purpose: reducing the dependence on foreign oil, AND reducing the amount of waste going into landfills.

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.

The logical error is your own.

[Behrooz]

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.

Planes and trains beat cars for fuel efficiency.

[Behrooz]

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...

It all has to do with the carbon cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:It all has to do with the carbon cycle

[Smidge204]

Don't tell me that the same amount of CO2 is generated by decaying e.g. a ton biowaste to soil than by burning it.

Of course not, but you're overlooking some critical parts of the process:

First, All of the carbon involved was taken out of the air to begin with as the plants grow. (which are the start of the cycle, whether you are using plant or animal wastes as feedstock). So Even in the worst case scenario, the net increase in CO2 from straight burning of the waste is ZERO.

Second, the TCP process yields more products than just light crude oil:

1) Light Crude oil
2) High quality fertilizer (as a solid)
3) Solid carbon
4) Medium to high quality fuel gas (methane, used internally to the process)

And a few other products in no real quantity...

The key here is that one of the products is solid carbon, which is almost as good as coal in terms of energy density should you use it as fuel. However, it is more useful (physically and economically) to use as an activated carbon filter for water treatment, because of the quality of the product.

In other words, at worst the process has a zero net increase of carbon from the atmosphere if you use 100% of the products as fuel and at best a net decrease if you don't. Plus it produces fertilizers and materials that can be used for water treatment! Talk about eco-friendly!
=Smidge=

Wrong view

[ChiralSoftware]

The problem with looking for solutions to the energy problem is that there isn't a solution. There are a whole bunch of small solutions that, when added up together, will be the solution. One plant producing 500 barrels/day is 1/10,000th of the solution. One thousand such plants is 1/10th of the solution. Add in a few nuclear reactors, some solar panels, wind turbines, more efficient cars, biodiesel, 100% electric cars with lithium batteries, telecommuting, maybe even a Segway, and it starts adding up to a solution to the energy problem. If we did all of those things in parallel, within a few years, OPEC would be sweating and we would not have to spend billions of dollars a year on oil, and then billions more on trying to keep our oil suppliers stable and friendly.

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

Untrue, the actuarial tables are interesting.

[Behrooz]

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.

Re:New RFC?

[Analogy Man]

Whether there is that much waste to convert or not shouldn't be the main point. If you could lock up a load of carbon that would otherwise go up as C02 emissions that would be a good thing in itself. Cleanly and economically generating 5% of the nations energy otherwise coming from fossil fuels would be a tremendous advancement. If there was not enough doodoo to completely replace oil, it is still a step forward.

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.