Slashdot Mirror
AgroWaste to Oil a Growing Market
EvilTwinSkippy writes "Last May Slashdot covered the story of Changing World Tech's opening of a plant that converts agricultural waste to oil. Fortune magazine has picked up the story, and followed up on their success. Apparently the turkey guts are not as profitable to recycle as hoped, the company paying $30-$40/ton for animal offal. They are producing diesel fuel at $80/barrel (compared to $50/barrel for petroleum derived diesel). However, the plant has been successful enough to spawn ventures in Europe and the U.S. A pilot plant in Philadelphia has successfully used the process to safely break down and extract oil from sewage, medical waste, electronics, even leftovers from petroleum refining. The solids are metal, pure carbon, and fertilizer. And aside from gas and oil, the only other thing the system produces otherwise is sterile water."
at least we know there will be a cap of $80 usd for the barrel of oil.
I think it's important that we research these alternatives now. There are certain uses for petroleum that we can't reproduce via other means -- powering our cars and homes isn't one of them.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Oil prices are rising. A 50% rise is sufficient to make this profitable, and in the mean time, it's a good way to get rid of hard-to-handle wastes like worn-out tires and used motor oil.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
"feeding animals to animals remains standard practice in the U.S"
Really stupid. If politicians weren't in the pocket of industry, this would be outlawed. Make that OUTLAWED! Then, maybe the slaughterhouses would be _paying_ to have the offal disposed of - and not by dumping it anywhere they own a piece of land, either.
Voila! Suddenly the product becomes directly competitive with petroleum.
(God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.)
The problem with the process, as I read the article, is that while thermal depolymerization may scale for any one particular type of waste, no single TD process works as well for all types of waste.
If you're already running a turkey plant, it may be economical to spend $1M to render down turkey guts into $1.1M worth of oil. (Spend time in phase 1 than in phase 2.)
If you're already running a tire dump, it may be economical to spend $1M for the same plant, with the dials set differently, to render used automobile tyres into $1.1M worth of oil. (Spend more time in phase 2 than phase 1.)
The problem is that the process isn't continuous and efficient for all input waste types, such that not worth spending $100M for a really big plant to render 3000 incoming truckloads of raw organic matter into $110M worth of oil, because you can't. You have to separate the truckloads of "stuff with carbon in it" into piles of cow/pig/turkey bones, human bits from hospitals, raw sewage, chickenshit, pigshit, spammer, plastic bottles, used tires, and run different processes to get the most valuable materials out of each of the three waste streams.
Neat idea for small and medium businesses with a uniform waste stream. Not gonna change the world.
Wouldn't it be truly ironic if the medical waste was liposuction fat (think Fight Club)? Then, the clinical obesity afflicting one in three Americans would itself be powering the automobiles that are, in part, responsible for the obesity.
So what you mean is, we should power our vehicles with our own body fat?
I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Dude, these are complimentary technologies. BioDiesel and AgroWaste-based hydrocarbons both provide the same benefit: a closed carbon cycle. The only technical difference is BioDiesel is a glorified way of harnessing solar energy, while AgroWaste-oil provides a way to reclaim energy that's tied up in materials that would otherwise go to the landfill.
Moreover, I believe AgroWaste-oil can be used in polymer production, something not true of BioDiesel.
Seriously... what's with the black-and-white world view?
Personally I'm surprised we havn't seen any federal grants here yet, if the federal government is spending billions to insure the worlds oil suppy, it seems as they would provide some grants to such an operations. Easily bringing the cost to the producers under $50 dollars a barrel. Who here is up for writing their congresscritters!