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."

Comments

Economical?

[Compugoat.biz]

Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?

Re:Economical?

[Carnildo]

I don't know about cases like medical waste or electronics, but when it's using turkey guts or other agricultural waste as a feedstock, it is able to run itself off the natural gas produced, leaving crude oil as an energy-producing product.

Re:Economical?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I wrote a report on this company last year for a college assignment. This process consumes less energy than it produces, but not enough to be economical yet. Really the only benifit from it now is disposal of organic waste as the oil produced isnt cost effective for the market yet.

Re:Economical?

[nephorm]

Well. That would be one of those pesky laws of thermodynamics, wouldn't it?

Re:Economical?

[syphax]

From TFA:


Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

Re:Economical?

[MyLongNickName]

You do not understand the laws of Thermodynamics. The grandparent was asking about the refinement process, not the entire system from conception of the turkey, to its growth, to when it got whacked, and its guts and crap were shipped.

By the later definition, nothing is economical, and we shouldn't even bother getting up in the morning.

Re:Economical?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has value even if it consumes energy in the process. The 'beauty' of diesel/gas/petrol is that the energy is portable; you can put it into a gas tank and consume it hundreds of miles away. While it might not make sense to take this diesel and put it in a power plant, it does make sense to pipe it to a gas station. Same goes for fuel cells.

Frankly, I'd love to see the Dakotas were turned into solar/wind farms with chicken crapping farms under them, piping the feces into contraptions that turned it into diesel, and see the USA tell the Saudis to screw themselves. (Fat Chance)

Re:Economical?

[Overt Coward]

Yes, and no.

No process can be 100% (or more) efficient -- the CWT process is about 80%-85% efficient. That means that the remaining energy is turned to waste, so it obviously produces less energy at the end than when it started.

However, when looking at usable energy, the system is highly efficient. Most of the energy in the CWT comes from the energy stored in the "feedstock" (turkey guts, etc.). This is energy that would normally be slowly released as waste energy as the feedstocks decomposed. instead, this process turns that energy into useful products, primarily diesel fuel. Removing the energy from the feedstock, the process produces about 4-5 times more usable energy than it uses.

Re:Economical?

[jthayden]

Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?

No, there is a net energy gain. Part of the reason is they are burning the natural gas they produce to heat the mixture. If it was just that though, they would lose energy. But they are also recycling the super heated water they produce back into the new mixtures in order to save energy on the heating process. This allows them to only have to use the natural gas they produce and leave the crude oil for other purposes.

Discover magazine has run a few stories about it in the past. This tech is impressive. I just wish they'd go public so I could invest a little. I think it would do quite a bit better than my environmentaly friendly mutual funds. It would also be nice to help them expand faster.

Re:Economical?

[Carnildo]

And to make things even better, the energy the process requires comes from natural gas produced in the later stages of the thermal depolymerization process. The only energy a TDP plant needs is an initial shot of natural gas to get things going, and an electical supply for such things as controlling valves and running sensors.

Re:Economical?

[ThosLives]

Yes, but so does every other process in the known universe(*). The point is that they are taking "waste" and getting use out of it. This wouldn't be a net energy "source" like drilled oil, but it would be an energy currency like hydrogen. The advantage here is that, since it is hydrocarbons they are producing, you can use it in manufacturing of plastics, etc.; hydrogen's not a useful construction resource (until metallic hydrogen becomes practical, that is).

With the volatility of crude oil the way it is (heck, it's gone up over 5% today!) for no logical reason (they cite "unseasonably cold weather in the northeast US and Britain" - winter is always cold, and our reserves are higher than they were last year - go figure), any other alternatives that don't require a huge infrastructure change are welcome. Producing "petroleum" from waste is potentially a great way to reduce the volatility of crude oil.

It does nothing, though, to address the issues of using a carbon-based energy currency and the CO2 byproducts from that. It's definitely a novel idea, and the sooner we develop alternatives the better (it's a whole lot more difficult to develop alternatives when your reserves are depleted due to increased periodic costs - i.e., higher cost for crude oil).

* As my physics prof put it: "The first law says the best you can do is break even, and the second law says you can't even come close."

Re:Economical?

[Rei]

Actually, it does address the fact that there's CO2 byproducts: It's recycled carbon. The problem with using petroleum pumped up from the depths was that this was carbon that was locked up. If we grow plants, turn them into oil, and then burn them, the net change in CO2 is zero.

Re:Economical?

[homer_ca]

If their cost is $80/barrel, I'd expect the energy cost of processing is included in that price. Since the plant is powered by natural gas from its own process, it doesn't depend on cheap energy from outside except for maybe some electricity from the grid.

Re:Economical?

[Rei]

Not to mention that a process can waste far more energy than goes into it and still be viable - for example, the liquifaction of coal during WWII which partly powered the Nazi war machine. The only important thing is whether you can put into your car (or tank or whatever) the end product, when you couldn't the input products.

I think that this process has the following applications:

1) Disposal of waste that costs more than 30$ per barrel to dispose of as-is.

2) Creation of oil in remote locations from waste - e.g., bringing plane flights of petroleum to a remote village in the canadian or siberian wilderness might make it cost more than 80$/barrel. The same would hold true on an even greater scale with antarctic coal.

3) Ensuring that there never will be an overly dramatic "oil shock" - while it wasn't a realistic prospect anyways, the ability to turn essentially anything organic (even people - soylent diesel, anyone? :) ) into oil for 80$ per barrel pretty much sets that as an upper limit on costs. And as tech advances, that price per barrel will drop.

4) Being a "clean fuel" source. Since all of the carbon involved was already in the system, there's no net increase in CO2.

Any other benefits?

Re:Economical?

[Rei]

Just a followup: I ran into a page that cited 12 cents per gallon as the cost for treating regular community sewage at a processing plant. With 42 gallons per barrel, that's $5 per barrel. So, if you had waste that cost 6 times as much to process, this first generation facility would be economical. For all I know, turkey offal might fall into that category ;)

Hmm... many other pages are citing widely ranging sewage costs, from just a cent or two to 25 cents per gallon. I think subsidies and fees might be involved here, plus differences in the environments in different areas and the types of sewage handled.

Re:Economical?

[ThosLives]

Not entirely; The overall cycle has a net of zero, but the instantaneous amount of carbon in the atmosphere will definitely not remain constant if we start using this type of scheme. I can't claim to know if the net CO2 levels would increase or decrease, but I know they wouldn't stay the same.

The reason is that the rate of consumption of atmospheric CO2 is not the same as the rate of production; while the average net is zero, you'll have this really bizarre dynamic equilibrium thing happening. I'm guessing that this won't be any better or worse than the current CO2 situation; I'd like to see if anyone has really done any reports on the what the effects of fluxuating CO2 levels have rather than the level itself...

Re:Economical?

[nephorm]

Obviously *you* do not understand thermodynamics. You can not get more energy out of a system than you put in. Full stop. No assumptions about a lifetime of turkey farming need to be made.

Re:Economical?

[Sir Holo]

Did you happen to find out if he used anything more than the offal feedstock? Specifically, does he inject hydrogen into the reactors at any point?

I don't understand how they could achieve such reducing conditions otherwise, or how they could shorten chains and get rid of oxygen, without addind hydrogen.

If they do add hydrogen, do they count the energy of producing that in their energy balance equation?

Re:Economical?

[arivanov]

80$ per barrel is still considerably less then the retail price of diesel in the UK and many other countries. This is due to the tax on diesel. In most of these countries the tax on renewable fuel is lower and the removal of agricultural waste is more expensive as well, so it may end up being economically feasible.

So numbers which do not add up in the US may in fact add up nicely in the UK, Japan or some of the European countries. And from what I read in the article this is exactly what the company is planning to do. To go onto the right side of the ocean for this kind of technology (from a regulatory and economical perspective).

Re:Economical?

[Bahumat]

The hydrogen is liberated from the water that goes into the stage; it bonds with the carbon while the oxygen binds itself to the metals or more carbon.

There's no magic bullet here; just a lot of basic chemistry being applied surprisingly efficiently (15 watts consumed, 100 watts produced).

What's the surprise isn't that this works so well, it's that it hasn't gone worldwide already!

Re:Economical?

[Rei]

Actually, rereading the article, the turkey guts are costing 15-20$ of the difference. So, it's really only about 10-15$ a gallon away from normal diesel prices. Then, factor in a biofuels tax break like ethanol gets (even conventional oil companies have a number of significant tax breaks), and you're competitive. You just need a free or cheap feedstock, and even this first-generation plant will be efficient.

Re:Economical?

[Bahumat]

Or as I've heard it:

"The Three Laws of Thermodynamics: You can't win. You can't break even. And you can't stop playing the game."

Re:Economical?

[Master Bait]

They hold actual figures very close to their chest. I wrote them last year asking them about the efficiency and conversion products which come from cellulose. They answered the email, but offered no information.

They claim that the methane produced from their process produces all the energy to drive their distillation process, and I think that's perpetual motion machine junk science.

Re:Economical?

[Dyolf Knip]

The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics

1) You can't win.
2) You can't break even.
3) You can't quit the game.

Re:Economical?

[MindStalker]

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!

Re:Economical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Organic "waste" is already fuel for the growing plants.

Re:Economical?

[Anonymous Coward]

They claim that the methane produced from their process produces all the energy to drive their distillation process, and I think that's perpetual motion machine junk science.

Perpetual Motion? I don't think you know what that means. They are adding TONS of turkey offal. That is where the energy is coming from. It isn't perpetual motion if you are constantly adding things (like, um, turkey offal).

Re:Economical?

[georgewilliamherbert]

Not entirely; The overall cycle has a net of zero, but the instantaneous amount of carbon in the atmosphere will definitely not remain constant if we start using this type of scheme. I can't claim to know if the net CO2 levels would increase or decrease, but I know they wouldn't stay the same.

The amount of bump you get due to the cycle startup is very small compared to total atmospheric CO2 content. And, as you have acknowledged, once it's going it's a net zero input into the atmospheric CO2 reservoir.

The initial bump isn't perfect, but it's not a global effects issue. Cutting over to cycles like bio-ethanol, bio-methanol, vegetable biodiesel or Thermally Depolymerized biodiesel do reduce the CO2 impact of transportation fuels to effectively nothing.

Re:Economical?

[X0563511]

Well, this is $80 per barrel of crude oil. Deisel is refined from it, so in actuality this is more expensive.

Re:Economical?

[Mysticalfruit]

At last check, I believe masturbation is against Islamic law...

Re:Economical?

[sunspot42]

Doesn't this process consume more energy than it produces?

Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Looks like they are getting more energy out of the recycling process than they're putting into it, which is a plus. OTOH, everything they're recycling ultimately took a lot of oil to produce, and they're not able to turn most of that back into oil.

I mean, think about it with just the turkeys. In order to raise a bunch of turkeys, it takes oil to get oil out of the ground. Then it takes oil to transport the oil to the United States. Then it takes oil to refine that oil into gas or other fuel. Then it takes oil to transport that fuel to its destination. Then the fuel is used in a tractor - which took a ton of oil to make - to grow the grain that the turkeys are fed. Oh, and the crops are fertilized with oil-derived fertilizers, so there's more oil dumped in the system. The grain is then harvested, consuming more fuel, processed and transported to where the turkeys are being raised. It took oil to build the factory farm where the turkeys are being raised, and they're fed a steady stream of pharmaceuticals that were made from and transported by oil. The turkeys are then slaughtered (they may be transported first, using oil), processed and typically frozen. They're then transported, in giant oil-gulping refrigerated trucks, wrapped in oil (plastic), to the local Albertsons. There, suburban housewives show up in their oil-guzzling SUV's to lug the birds home.

Now, even if you were able to convert all of the unused bits of the turkeys and their waste to oil or some other fuel at 100% efficiency, you still would only produce a fraction of the oil it took to raise those turkeys in the first place. That leaves a tremendous energy gap to be addressed, and we don't have any technology in place or on the horizon capable of filling that void. (Please, don't say "nuclear" anybody. If we tried to replace our petroleum consumption with nuclear, we'd rapidly run out of uranium and be left with a lot of dead nuclear plants. And South Africa, that bastion of political and social stability, has the world's largest reserves of uranium. We'd just be trading our problems in the Middle East for a whole new set of problems.)

Technologies like this waste-to-oil recycling will help to boost overall energy efficiency a teeny little bit, but they won't come close to providing a substitute for our colossal consumption of petroleum. Remember too, these technologies take oil to develop and construct, and that oil is about to become far more expensive, making these technologies less and less efficient as a result. Unfortunately, global demand continues to skyrocket, while global supply may well have peaked (thanks to political instability, if nothing else). This does not bode well for our oil-based civilization.

Re:Economical?

[lgw]

It's quite a good deal if you are a turkey processing plant, as it turns the considerable cost of waste disposal into a potential source of profit. However, that's different from it being profitable for a thrid party to make, and the turkey plant may have different uses for its capital.

Long term, I have to agree this looks like a huge win.

Re:Economical?

[ShieldW0lf]

I don't know if it's Insightful or Funny, but mod him up.

Re:Economical?

[lgw]

The system described is not a closed system. Turkey offal contains plenty of stored energy. 15% of that stored energy is used to convert the rest into a form more easily burned.

Re:Economical?

[maxshirley]

For example... if we all sent in our numerous "Try AOL 9.0 90 Days Free" CD's - they'd be 4-5 times more usable as oil than as coasters, decorations and junk.

Re:Economical?

[jthayden]

1 gallon of waste does not produce 1 gallon of oil. You'll likely get a majority of water produced with a much smaller fraction being natural gas and oil.

Re:Economical?

[Doc Ruby]

They've said since the beginning (a couple of years ago, at latest) that their process is 80% efficient. Every kilowatt of theoretically extractible energy chemically bound in the raw feedstock (at least turkey offal) produces 800W of energy chemically bound in the oil they barrel at the output. The process fractions the feedstock into simple in/organic chemicals, including methane. The methane accounts for at least 20% of the energy content of the products, and is the most difficult to transport offsite (compared to barrels of oil, carbon and metal flakes.). So they burn the methane onsite, the fuel for their complex machine which primarily generates a lot of steam at the right times, at the right pressures/gradients.

Their process isn't that opaque, nor are their figures. They're busy revolutionizing the energy and recycling markets - unless your email came as a useful bizdev proposition, I'm not surprised they didn't spend more time on your questions, the FUD from which is dispelled in their website.

Re:Economical?

[Doc Ruby]

The estimates I've seen from CWT over the past couple of years say that the annual US agwaste, funneled through their process, would produce the same amount of oil we import - including the oil we use to grow the agwaste, from fuel to fertilizer to pesticides etc. That's extremely powerful, in every way, in getting the US (and therefore the world) out of all of our petrofuel problems.

Re:Economical?

[jgalun]

You're comparing apples to oranges - the retail price of diesel in the UK to the wholesale price of this oil. If the wholesale price of this oil is $80/barrel, you then need to add on the various taxes that are imposed on oil in the UK to find out what the retail price would be in the UK.

The wholesale price of oil is essentially the same in the US as it is in the UK - oil is traded in a global marketplace, after all. The difference in the cost is taxes and surcharges, not production costs.

Re:Economical?

[david.given]

And to make things even better, the energy the process requires comes from natural gas produced in the later stages of the thermal depolymerization process. The only energy a TDP plant needs is an initial shot of natural gas to get things going, and an electical supply for such things as controlling valves and running sensors.

And that's really impressive. A decade from now we're probably going to see miniaturised versions of this being used as standard sewage treatment plants.

(Which will really piss off the village in Scotland where my parents live; they've just spent vast amounts of money building a sewage treatment plant only to discover that due to incompetence it's been located slightly below the high tide mark. Which means that every time there's a spring tide, unpleasant stuff happens.)

I wonder if it would be economically viable to funnel all the sewage produced by some random big city into one of these things, producing biodiesel and electricity that are fed back into the city?

Re:Economical?

[ikkonoishi]

Umm if total energy of output is less than total energy of input then it is hardly perpetual motion.

If the thing gets a total of say 100 units of energy in unusable chicken-shit, and then converts it into 60 units of usable oil then it is quite possible that the extra 40 units power the process.

Re:Economical?

[ikkonoishi]

If not they would probally have to use their shit wiping hand. (Yes Islam specifies how you wipe your ass. And people say the Bible is strange.)

Re:Economical?

[nephorm]

I wasn't talking about Economics. I was talking about physics. Different things.

I was poking fun at a poster who used imprecise language in complaining about the conversion process.

Woooo, look at me, I'm being attacked by slashdotters who take themselves too seriously!

And I never claimed to understand economics.

Re:Economical?

[ikkonoishi]

Just wait till nanotech gets going.

We will drill for oil just for the carbon to make our diamonoid buddies.

I for one welcome our diamond skinned nanotech enhanced overlords. I would like to remind them that as a naturally lazy slashdot poster I can be useful for guiding the hunter seeker droids to find the various anti-social anarcist hackers in their dystopian paradise.

Re:Economical?

[ikkonoishi]

All we have to do is hook thousands of people into a cybernetic Virtual Reality matrix. Combined with a form of fusion we will have all the energy we will ever need!

Re:Economical?

[Carnildo]

Actually, it's $80 per barrel of #2 heating oil, which is basically crude oil with the heavy fractions separated out.

Re:Economical?

[gessel]

It's a useful minor energy source, but primarily it's good for converting a stinky, unpleasant, difficult to handle waste stream into something useful. There's simply not enough food waste to supply the system. Growing targeted crops would be absurdly inefficient. At best photosynthesis is 2.5% efficient, compared to 12% for commercially available solar panels. Take system inefficiencies in the stream from sunlight to depolymerizable crop and there isn't enough arable land on earth to meet our energy demands.

There's a basic energy balance concept that seems to escape most supposedly intelligent pundits on this issue. It's the sort of thing you're supposed to learn in 7th grade with rate problems: the world is a closed system, with energy in and energy out. Energy in comes from the sun, energy out is radiated heat. Over time there has been very slightly more energy in than out, which is stored as fossil fuels.

Ignoring the consequences of liberating all the CO2 ever captured in the history of the world over the next century, there's neither enough fossil fuel to last nor enough arable land to build an economy around a sustainable biofuel stream.

But Solar is trivial. It easily answers the world's energy needs at an entirely manageable cost.

A 16kWh/day (5.8E3 kWh/y) complete grid tie system costs $15k (12% efficient BP panels). 2E10 of these systems would power the whole world (volume discount?) which would cost $3.1E14 at today's retail which is roughly the GDP of the world for 7.5 years. Now figure you're asking BP to manufacture 4E11 solar panels... that's 400,000,000,000 panels. Maybe they'd be bit cheaper at that volume.

But we can reasonably assume typical cost reductions and a combination of PV and solar heating; the world uses 1.2E14 total kwh/year for all purposes, but only 1.3E13 kWh global consumption of electricity. If we replaced only electricity consumption for the whole world at RETAIL prices it would cost only 70% of the world GDP for one year and require only 4E10 panels and 5.6E10 square meters of land area - out of 1.3E14 available in the world, or 0.04% of the planet's land (0.4% to replace all energy consumed for all reasons with PV).

The US used 2.8E13 kWh total energy in all forms last year (3.6E12 kWh electricity) which would require 9.6E10 solar panels to generate or 1.3E11 square meters and $7.2E13 at retail. This would occupy 1.4% of our land area of 9.4E12 square meters..

We've paved 1.6E11 square meters: that is we've subsidized the auto and petroleum industry with a welfare gift of 1.7% of the total land area of the nation, more than it would take to be entirely energy independent.

Continuing the car comparison, our roadways, taxpayer financed at a cost of about $2M/lane mile or $340/sq meter, cost $1.9E13 in today's dollars compared to $7.2E13 to convert the entire country's entire energy use to PV. Realistically we'd convert only the electricity consumption of 3.6E12 kWh at $9.3E12 at RETAIL, less than half of what we taxpayers have given the auto and oil industry, not including the value of the real estate.

Converting the entire world to PV entirely as a collective effort would piss off the libertarians and the oil magnates (generally for different reasons) but doing so would cost less than the corporate welfare we've dumped on the oil and auto industries. Even today it's hardly insurmountable. Compared to the value of a zero emissions, entirely sustainable energy economy, it's trivial.

One argument I had with a friend about our capture of the Iraqi oil was over the counter argument presented by some math challenged conservative pundits (are any conservative pundits not math challenged?) that the oil costs would not offset the cost of taking Iraq, as if the suggestion that we are there to protect our oil was somehow ludicrous.

This argument ignores the most obvious counter that taxpayers are footing the $200B bill while Haliburton takes the profits, which before the invasion were going to Fr

Re:Economical?

[alw53]

Yeah, that'll work :) although it would be better to just use them as feedstock.

The nice thing about this is that it puts a cap of around $80/barrel on oil, at least till we run out of turkey guts and poop.

Re:Economical?

[diablomonic]

one benefit not yet mentioned is the fact that no(well probably a tiny bit) unburnt methane is released into the environment, as would happen if this waste was allowed to decompose normally. This is VERY good in terms of the greenhouse effect as methane is MANY TIMES(6 maybe? cant remember) WORSE as a greenhouse gas than CO2, SO

- renewable (if used to decompose products which are renewable, eg sewage/offal) source of energy

- saves having to figure out what to do with that waste

- perhaps mini versions could be built, to allow us to have one in our back yard?

- MUCH better for the environment in terms of greenhouse gasses and water polution from waste

- where can i buy one NOW lol

Lets hope this doesnt get regulated into oblivion or similar by politicians who have sold their souls to the DEVIL ....I mean current petroleum companies, although, with this many benifits, i dont think even they could stop it.

Re:Economical?

[pipingguy]

Anyone with detailed knowledge of co-gen want to comment?

Re:Economical?

[Jarvo]

Yes, a lot of oil is required to build the infrastructure of, and to run, a turkey farm.

You are forgetting a significant external source of energy: the sun. (sun shines, plants grow, turkeys eat plants)

Right now, turkeys might be the most economical or the easiest source material for their process. It may be better to feed the machine plant material directly.

You then replace processes like:
- Extraction of turkey-edible material (e.g. grain)
- Transportation of turkey-edible material.
- Conversion of turkey-edible material to turkey guts.
- Extraction of turkey guts.
- Transportation of turkey guts.

With:
- Transportation of plant matter.

Re:Economical?

[sunspot42]

The estimates I've seen from CWT over the past couple of years say that the annual US agwaste, funneled through their process, would produce the same amount of oil we import

Yeah, but we've heard that before from other alternative energy proponents, and it's never come close to panning out. Remember, these guys are all looking for investors. I still don't think we could economically convert coal into gasoline (the Nazis were desperate enough to try it at the end of WWII - didn't save 'em), which makes me doubt we could convert an even less dense source of energy to oil with any great efficiency.

Even if we could do it at the $80 a barrel figure being tossed around, that's close to twice what we were paying for oil a couple of years ago. How expensive will that make it to grow crops - especially subsidy crops like much (most?) of the corn grown in the United States? My guess is $80 a barrel oil will lead to a decline in the amount of useless crap grown in the United States, in turn reducing the amount of agricultural waste available to "replace" imported oil in the first place. Whoops.

On top of that, our oil consumption continues to increase at the same time our domestic supplies (offshore, Alaska) are dwindling, increasing the amount of oil we need to import (and its cost).

I also wonder if their estimates take into consideration the amount of electricity it takes to run their plants - where's that going to come from as the natural gas begins to run out? Are they also factoring in how much it's going to cost to collect and transport ag waste to the "refinery"? Or how much energy it's going to take to build and maintain all of these ag waste conversion plants?

Re:Economical?

[Doc Ruby]

You're not reading the article, or their website. Their efficiency numbers have not been contradicted, though they've been consistent and detailed, with explanations. The $80:bbl is because they're paying the ridiculous $30-40:ton of turkey offal - there's plenty of agwaste that producers pay to dispose, like the $200:ton NYC pays to send its sewage to Texas. And the "natural gas" isn't going to run out - it's a byproduct of their process, which is net 80-85% efficient - including their transport costs, for which they already account.

The energy game is a game of alternatives. If we don't build CWT plants, we'll build other, more expensive petro or nuke plants. And recycling all that waste saves not only consumption of petrofuel, but the expense of discarding the waste, and the transport of all that energy and waste. Not to mention all the pollution savings, from recycling waste, forgoing petro, and the increased efficiencies. BTW, coal -> crude oil is now about $50:bbl, with a huge startup cost. And the waste from that process - even the radiation generated would dwarf our whole history of (plus unreported) nuclear leaks, not to mention the CO2 and smog. CWT is clearly the way to go, unless someone actually can contest their numbers.

Re:Economical?

[Rei]

>There's simply not enough food waste to supply the system.

You're kidding right? Here in Iowa, we're having huge problems with all of the ag waste that we don't know how to get rid of. Hog farming alone is posing a serious threat to our rivers, as they can't use the *manure* fast enough (natural fertilizer, in the corn belt, and they can't even use that fast enough!).

> Growing targeted crops would be absurdly inefficient. At best photosynthesis
> is 2.5% efficient, compared to 12% for commercially available solar panels.

So very wrong. At best, photosynthesis is 11% efficient - 45% of light is PAR (photosynthetically active radiation), of which due to limitations on how much energy is needed per CO2 molecule brings it down to 25%; factoring in the whole cycle, you get 11%. On average, plants get 3-6% efficiency.

On a cost per energy converted basis, plants blow solar panels so far out of the competition that they'll have to go through reentry to get back ;)

> Take system inefficiencies in the stream from > sunlight to depolymerizable crop and
> there isn't enough arable land on earth to
> meet our energy demands.

Land *and* water. Sunlight striking earth is 15,000 times more than all global energy consumption. Given that anywhere from 10% to over 70% of the energy from all crop growth (depending on the crop) is given up to decomposition of the non-harvested parts by bacteria at the end of the plant's life, current ag waste is more than enough to provide *all* of Earth's energy. Of course, if you don't let your plants decompose at all, they don't put the nutrients back into the soil; however, this process gives the nutrients right back for fertilizer.

> Over time there has been very slightly more energy in than out, which is stored
> as fossil fuels.

Can you honestly call 178,000 terrawatts "slightly"? With a straight face?

> But Solar is trivial.

As someone who has actually run the numbers for converting their home to solar (and wind, for that matter), I can assure you that it is anything but.

> which would cost $3.1E14 at today's retail which is roughly the GDP of the
> world for 7.5 years.

And then you factor in interest....

> Now figure you're asking BP to manufacture 4E11 solar panels... that's
> 400,000,000,000 panels. Maybe they'd be bit cheaper at that volume.

Probably. But most of the limitation is due to how cheap we can produce sufficient-quality silicon, which is no simple technical task.

> If we replaced only electricity consumption for the whole world at RETAIL prices

Solar is far more expensive than oil, no matter how you try and spin the numbers. You don't need to multiply by the size of the world - just look at a per-kwh basis. And if you use a free or low cost feedstock, this tech is actually almost as cheap as oil.

I'm very hopeful for solar - I really am. But, at current prices, it's nowhere *close* to competitive, even with this brand new waste-to-fuel tech.

Re:Economical?

[Hadlock]

It would probably be cheaper, in reality. They're trucking chicken guts in to the plant, from rural NJ to Manhattan, and trucking the oil out. The sludge of the sewer system comes in a pipe of it's own accord fed by gravity, probably reducing the total cost by 5%. Of course, you'd need some sort of "waste gate", as a plant like this could only realistically operate on 30% of the maximum sewer output constantly, so any given city would ultimately not be more than 20% energy efficient by using it's own waste alone. Now if you could somehow tap in to the heat of the city/population like they do in the matrix... *holds up a duracell battery*

Re:Economical?

[sunspot42]

You're not reading the article, or their website.

Read the article, read the website. I've read a lot of other publications regarding the conversion of ag waste to energy, too.

The problem is, there are other uses for ag waste besides converting it to expensive oil. Farmers already have ways to make use of most ag "waste" - from using it as fertilizer to selling it as a building material. That means much of the ag "waste" already has a non-zero dollar value to the farmer, and they aren't going to give it away (let alone pay someone to haul it off). That seems to be blowing CWT's model, leading to the $80 a barrel price.

And of course, as petroleum grows more expensive, petroleum fertilizers will grow more expensive, making ag "waste" even more valuable. Funny how that works out. Agribusiness might be willing to part with that "waste" for the right price - but that price may well lead to $120 a barrel oil. Ouch!

there's plenty of agwaste that producers pay to dispose, like the $200:ton NYC pays to send its sewage to Texas.

Yeah, but will they continue doing that in the future? I doubt it. They'll probably end up burning it for fuel at some point, or selling at as fertilizer. Today's trash (with oil at $40-$50 a barrel, plentiful natural gas in the market and cheap electricity as a result) is tomorrow's treasure (with oil at $80 - $100 a barrel, and electricity prices thru the roof as the gas runs out).

And the "natural gas" isn't going to run out - it's a byproduct of their process

You do know that most of the electrical plants built in the US in the past two decades are gas fired, right? Or that many (most?) of the homes built in the last 2 - 3 decades use gas for heating, for hot water, and that many use it for cooking? We're already importing LNG to make up for domestic demand. This process won't come close to meeting demand for natural gas, and of course the process itself will consume a great deal of electricity (or gas) to generate all of the heat and pressure it requires. Not to mention the energy it takes to build the facility in the first place. How many months (years?) does one of these things have to operate to generate enough energy to recoup the energy investment in the facility itself?

BTW, coal -> crude oil is now about $50:bbl, with a huge startup cost.

Now. How expensive will it be though when coal is in even greater demand for electrical generation in a decade? I doubt we'll ever see coal to oil conversion become commercially viable, simply because the coal is better used as a fuel in coal fired electrical plants. China's gonna have to get all their electrical power from somewhere.

Re:Economical?

[Doc Ruby]

I can't make heads or tails of your comments. The weirdest contradiction is where you say NYC won't be redirecting its sewage to CWT-style conversion, or paying to dispose of it, because "[t]hey'll probably end up burning it for fuel". You started the post to which I replied with complaints that other agwaste conversions have claimed high efficiencies before, but there's still no reason to distrust CWT, as their consistent claims, for years, have not been contradicted. You complained about how CWT's process would suffer when "the natural gas begins to run out", but the "natural gas" that powers the CWT process comes from the waste they convert. You've got a problem with the energy cost of building a CWT plant, but what about a coal/oil/gas/nuke plant?

The energy supply/demand problems are severe. CWT lets us take waste, which has been documented as filling landfills, and get energy from it. Without burning more oil or coal - so we get double benefit. Until you can debunk their numbers, or even contradict them consistently, you're not adding to anything but the noise around this issue.

Re:Economical?

[Art_Vandelai]

OK - some numbers from the article:

Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year

So that equals a rate of 6.7 barrels per ton of turkey guts.

The $20 million facility, scheduled to go online any day, is expected to digest more than 200 tons of turkey-processing waste every 24 hours.

OK, 1,333 barrels of oil per day per plant.

In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil.

Or, 10.9 million barrels/day. That means 385 such plants, at a cost of only $7.7 billion to build. So why haven't we done it already? - That's about 1/10 the cost of 1 years worth of the Iraq war.

Re:Economical?

[sunspot42]

Until you can debunk their numbers, or even contradict them consistently, you're not adding to anything but the noise around this issue.

CWT "debunked" their own numbers. They thought they were going to get oil for around $40-$50 a barrel. Now it looks closer to $80. That's twice the price they were aiming for - not great. They apparently based their original estimates on the assumption that they'd get all this ag waste for free. Not gonna happen in the real world, and as the price of oil increases, the value of that "waste" to agribusiness is only going to escalate.

You complained about how CWT's process would suffer when "the natural gas begins to run out", but the "natural gas" that powers the CWT process comes from the waste they convert.

CWT will suffer when gas begins to run out. If they're consuming much (most?) of the gas their process produces, they aren't going to be in a position to contribute much (any?) to the substantial LNG deficit we're going to be running in a few years. That deficit will send the price of electricity skyrocketing - making all that "waste" they were going to use as fuel even more expensive to obtain.

You seem to be making the same mistake the CWT did of looking at their process in isolation, instead of looking at what's going to happen to the market as the price of oil and electricity escalates.

The weirdest contradiction is where you say NYC won't be redirecting its sewage to CWT-style conversion, or paying to dispose of it, because "[t]hey'll probably end up burning it for fuel".

How is that a contradiction? Is this process as efficient at producing electricity as burning the waste? Doesn't appear to be, from what I read. As the cost of electricity skyrockets, efficiency will become king. Even if this process *is* more efficient than simply burning the waste, the demand for electricity will likely drive what oil it does produce into the electrical generation market. It won't do a thing to help satisfy demand for petrochemical products elsewhere (in cars, in fertilizer, in plastics), or cut our reliance on oil imports. At best, it'll help keep the lights on.

I think it's great people are trying to develop processes like these, but there seems to be an unrealistic attitude surrounding their potential for success. These technologies may ultimately prove worthwhile, but they aren't going to come close to supplying our civilization with the kind of cheap energy oil currently provides. And that's quickly going to become a huge, huge problem, as we've built our entire civilization around cheap hydrocarbons.

Re:Economical?

[Doc Ruby]

Depends on what you mean by "we". Who would build one, Exxon? Bush? I'm amazed that CWT is still around, considering the threat they pose to the murderous greedheads running everything. That alone gives hope. The numbers you ran are even more hopeful. Because, where there's new profits, there's always a bigger fish.

Re:Economical?

[SadButTrue]

Actually, if this were the only source of petro we used we would eventually run into dooms day scenarios of global cooling. The reason is that this process isn't perfect, it produces carbon black (pure carbon) as one of it by products. Unless you can find a way of making C02 without C then we will eventually deplete the atmosphere!

Re:Economical?

[quarkscat]

Grants? I have it on good authority that the
US government is not interested in subsidizing
the energy industry (ha.ha.ha). The problem
that the government has is with subsidizing
competition to the big oil/energy companies.

Start-up companies do not, as a rule, have big
bucks to spend on re-election campaigns, lavish
"fact-finding" conferences, and the like. Don't
expect to get much traction on this issue with
your congresscritters.

Re:Economical?

[Moraelin]

Well, I think more important is the ability to convert _other_ sources of energy into stuff that can be put in your car.

E.g., we can create lots of electricity (e.g., nuclear power plants), but batteries still suck. Sure, someone trolls about their super-duper-electric car every year, but invariably it's (A) too big and heavy (thus needing even more energy to move around), (B) slow, (C) ridiculously short ranged, (D) needs to recharge for 10 hours before you can use it again, (E) has no infrastructure available to refuel quickly in the middle of that 500 mile trip, or most often (F) all the above.

On the other hand, if such a plant can use electricity to produce oil, it might just be the missing link. You can use your existing car, and your existing gas station, and still basically get your power from an electricity power plant.

Actually, lemme rephrase that a bit. It's not much a case of "THE missing link". We've known for a long time how to convert stuff into oil: the WW2 German panzers running on synthetic diesel was already mentioned. Until now it was just cheaper to import oil from Iraq, or recently cheaper to invade Iraq for oil, than to make your own oil. (Or even than to extract the oil reserves than the USA already has.) This however might be the link that's efficient enough to be worth using.

And unlike the WW2 coal-to-oil plants, this one promises to be pretty clean too. It just needs _anything_ organic as input. Presumably even wood. We already have species of trees which grow fast enough to be used as a crop, for example for paper: they're planted, left to grow, then harvested, and planted again. One could produce incredible quantities of organic matter that way, for converting into oil. And it's out of carbon that was in the atmosphere to start with.

Re:Economical?

[sarabob]

And that's quickly going to become a huge, huge problem, as we've built our entire civilization around cheap hydrocarbons.

But the useful thing about this process is that it isn't just for electricity generation. We have a whole slew of alternative electricity generating technologies (wind/wave/hydro/geothermal/solar/nuclear) but none of them can be used to make plastics, pharmaceuticals, or other oil-based products.

Personally I think they'd be better off concentrating on sewage rather than turkeys (constant supply, can be piped) but hey.

Re:Economical?

[Silburn_Luke]

The initial bump isn't perfect, but it's not a global effects issue. Cutting over to cycles like bio-ethanol, bio-methanol, vegetable biodiesel or Thermally Depolymerized biodiesel do reduce the CO2 impact of transportation fuels to effectively nothing.

There's a crucial qualification. Its only carbon net-zero for the proportion of transportation fuels that can be effectively switched across to these alternative sources.

Anyone care to take a WAG as to what fraction of the USA's current diesel consumption would be substituted if all of the turkey guts in the USA's agricultural sector were redirected to this process at an 80% recovery efficiency?

I'd do it myself but I need to grab a sandwich before my next meeting.

Regards
Luke

Re:Economical?

[indifferent children]

You are all being silly, by neglecting the fact that this is a solar-powered system, not a closed loop. The turkeys eat vegetable matter to produce muscle-mass and crap. The vegetable matter used solar energy for photosynthesis. Turkey offal and turkey crap are both storage media for solar energy.

Re:Economical?

[Chris Hodges]

Actually, if this were the only source of petro we used we would eventually run into dooms day scenarios of global cooling. The reason is that this process isn't perfect, it produces carbon black (pure carbon) as one of it by products. Unless you can find a way of making C02 without C then we will eventually deplete the atmosphere!

But you wouldn't have to make it without carbon - you've just said carbon is produced, so just burn that. You could probably even press it into blocks and sell it as barbecue fuel.

Re:Economical?

[Spunk]

Michael Jackson agrees with your physics professor.

Re:Economical?

[Mysticalfruit]

Yeah, actually your supposed to wipe your ass with your left hand. Which is why left handed people are practically non existant in the islamic world.

Re:Economical?

[budgenator]

100 pounds of MUNICIPAL LIQUID WASTE: 26 pounds oil, 9 pounds gas, 8 pounds carbon and mineral solids, 57 pounds water.

basicly a waste water treatment plant takes in sewage:
1. skims off the floaties, and settlements which are either a. bacterialy digested or burnt( primary treatment)
2. treated with floculents to settle out addition suspended solids which are also given to primary treatment
3. the remaining liquid wastes are areobicaly digested in the large spray ponds, the discharged

Re:Economical?

[clonan]

yes that is deffinetly true....but wouldn't people use there left hand without having to codify it....I mean you would only make that mistake once...it would probably leave a bad taste in your mouth...

Re:Economical?

[budgenator]

Agribusiness might be willing to part with that "waste" for the right price

CWT and ConAgra formed a joint venture that built a $30 million plant in Carthage, Mo.

That sounds like Agribusiness and CWT are partners to me.

Today's trash (with oil at $40-$50 a barrel, plentiful natural gas in the market and cheap electricity as a result) is tomorrow's treasure (with oil at $80 - $100 a barrel, and electricity prices thru the roof as the gas runs out).

I'll be glad when the Canadian trash trucks aren't lined up for 5 Miles down the 402, and I-94 waiting to bring trash into Michigan land-fills and to return to Toronto.

I doubt we'll ever see coal to oil conversion become commercially viable, simply because the coal is better used as a fuel in coal fired electrical plants.

But the coal industry may become thermal depolymerization's biggest fossil-fuel beneficiary. "We can clean up coal dramatically," says Appel. So far, experiments show the process can extract sulfur, mercury, naphtha, and olefins--all salable commodities--from coal, making it bum hotter and cleaner. Pretreating with thermal depolymerization also makes coal more friable, so less energy is needed to crush it before combustion in electricity-generating plants. -- B.L.

To be honest I don't see any real downside to the process, other than the economies being slightly less than advantagious.

Re:Economical?

[gessel]

If I could mod your reply up, I would. I've been having this conversation as a debate for some years. We're doing the best we can to glean facts from what's available. I'll give you my sources for ag energy efficiency in line - if you read this response please reply with yours. I'd be very glad to learn that ag wastes are a viable source, as they are obviously carbon neutral and mobile energy consumption is so obviously amenable to liquid fuels.

>There's simply not enough food waste to supply the system.

You're kidding right? Here in Iowa, we're having huge problems with all of the ag waste that we don't know how to get rid of. Hog farming alone is posing a serious threat to our rivers, as they can't use the *manure* fast enough (natural fertilizer, in the corn belt, and they can't even use that fast enough!).

Can you tell me what the total energy content of that waste is? Where do you get the numbers? Are they neutral and unbiased? I know the ponds of hog effluent would drown a town, but even so energy numbers are so huge, that it's hard to believe it's not just a drop in the bucket. I couldn't find really good ag numbers, but I got mine from
http://newton.umsl.edu/infophys/lsp.html
wh ich references
E. P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, Saunders 1971
at 1/40th of incident energy into calories in biomass

> Growing targeted crops would be absurdly inefficient. At best photosynthesis
> is 2.5% efficient, compared to 12% for commercially available solar panels.

So very wrong. At best, photosynthesis is 11% efficient - 45% of light is PAR (photosynthetically active radiation), of which due to limitations on how much energy is needed per CO2 molecule brings it down to 25%; factoring in the whole cycle, you get 11%. On average, plants get 3-6% efficiency.

E. P. Odum, Fundamentals of Ecology, Saunders 1971
at 1/40th of incident energy into calories in biomass

Where did you get 3-6% efficiency? That's roughly 2X what I got, though you correctly identified a mistake - that is incorrectly substituting "photosynthesis" for "caloric conversion efficiency". Still, if our goal is electricity to run our computers, commercial cells get 12%, and the best cells get 40%.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/25410.pdf

My calculations say it would take about 1.4% of the US surface area to meet US domestic energy consumption needs, which is plausible given that 1.7% of the US surface area is paved. In desert areas less area would be required because of higher average irradiance compared to the national average, and it would be out of the way, assuming 12% efficient cells.

Taking my referenced number of 2.5% efficiency as a starting point (but remember it could be twice that), it would take 7X as much land to get the equivalent biomass calories, then depolymerize it at a self-reported efficiency of 85% (impressive, if true) and then 45% mechanical efficiency in the generator http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/18175/612. to get electricity, which means 17.5X the land area or 25% of the total US land mass. Unfortunately the total arable land of the US is only 19%.

If 2.5% net conversion to calorie efficiency for biomass is correct, it would simply be impossible to grow enough plants to convert to fuel even if we stopped growing food. If it's 6% then we could, if we all ate a lot less.... that wouldn't be a bad thing... And if you can show me 5-6% efficiency I'll be corrected from "can't work at all" to "a serious contender for supplying some of the US energy demand."

I think a valid claim is that if we were to undo the horrible mistake of the 1920s when Ford and Firestone bribed congress and the president into subsidizing their new inventions and spending public money building roads so those rich bastards could sell cars, and the even more idiotic national defense measures of the '50's which flooded the US with suburban bliss propaganda creating the ecological and social disaster we call "th

Re:Economical?

[Silburn_Luke]

You're comparing apples to oranges - the retail price of diesel in the UK to the wholesale price of this oil. If the wholesale price of this oil is $80/barrel, you then need to add on the various taxes that are imposed on oil in the UK to find out what the retail price would be in the UK.

You are, of course, correct. However it is entirely possible that a UK govt looking for ways to hit the CO2 reduction targets they've set for themselves would look favourably upon tax-breaks for diesel originating from these processes.

We already have mechanisms whereby certain sectors can get duty-free diesel, so it should be relatively easy to transition to an administrative regime whereby fuel duties were tied to their fossil carbon loading and 'recovered' diesel and other bio-fuels could compete at the retail selling point.

The key question would be whether those sectors which currently enjoy duty-free privileges on their diesel (farmers chiefly as it happens) could be transitioned off their cheap fuel without provoking unacceptable political or macroeconomic consequences. *That* is a bullet which is going to have to be bitten at some point (and soon) - but the prospect of agricultural areas getting a new source of income (providing feedstock) and employment (running the facilities) might be enough to sweeten the pill of the increased input costs imposed on the farmers. The devil, as ever, lies in the details however.

Regards
Luke

Re:Economical?

[Silburn_Luke]

Unfortunately, it's almost two orders of magnitude less expensive to use our military to "protect our oil supplies" and ensure we get the oil and not the rest of the world than it is to make ourselves energy independent.

There's also the consideration, implied elsewhere in your post, of sectional and relative advantage.

Being energy independant is nice for the US (as a whole) but for the US's ruling elite its not so good - partly because they are heavily invested (literally and metaphorically) in fossil fuels and partly because ruling an energy-independant USA is not such a great thing if the RoW (by which we mean chiefly mean India, China and Russia) is thus able to bootstrap itself to great power status with the reserves made available to them once the US recuses itself from the world oil market.

As you say the US being primus inter pares (or even just a 'concert of powers' nation) as the C22nd dawns is not what rocks the NSC's socks, even if such a US would be far more comfortable than the alternative 'one eyed man in the country of the blind' sort of scenario you sketched out.

I have no idea if that sort of zero and negative sum long-range thinking is an overt part of what the prognosticators inside the Beltway get up to but (a) I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was and (b) even if it doesn't happen in such a baldly machiavelian fashion the institutional set-up in the beltway circus practically mandates an outcome that would have been produced by said machiavel.

Regards
Luke

Re:Economical?

[Eccles]

I'd do it myself but I need to grab a sandwich before my next meeting.

A turkey sandwich?

Sterile water?

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Does that mean it can't reproduce?

Re:Sterile water?

[elasticwings]

If the product of its reproduction is sewege, then I hope not.

Re:Sterile water?

[MyLongNickName]

Does that mean it can't reproduce? Much like Slashdot readers, yes :)

Re:Sterile water?

[Reignking]

Lighten up, that's funny :)

Re:Sterile water?

[MyLongNickName]

Perhaps if I deadpanned it instead of using the emoticon.... humor is a very difficult subject.

Re:Sterile water?

[zcat_NZ]

Must've been a virgin moderator (and I don't mean someone who's never had mod points before :)

Re:Sterile water?

[rsborg]

Does that mean it can't reproduce?

Hopefully it doesn't mean that if you drink it you won't be able to reproduce :-/

good

[Anonymous Coward]

at least we know there will be a cap of $80 usd for the barrel of oil.

Re:good

[luvirini]

Nope. Economic reality does not work that way. A company is also supposed to be profitable, thus..

And besides, I doubt there are enough turkeys to make this thing work in very large scale...

Re:good

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

at least we know there will be a cap of $80 usd for the barrel of oil.

You forget inflation: when the barrel reaches 80 of today's greenbacks, it'll already cost like 100 of tomorrow's dollars or something.

Then again, another conflict against the Axis of Evil[tm] and the barrel could reach 80 of today's dollars very quickly anyway...

Re:good

[Ced_Ex]

My guess that around Thanksgiving, there will be a huge surplus of turkey's to use.

So cheaper fuel in the fall season?

Re:good

[adpowers]

Well, once oil goes above $80, they can raise their price to match. They can then take their large profit and reinvest in more plants to produce this stuff. This would allow them to have quite rapid expansion. Once they reach a certain number of plants and income, they may choose to reduce their prices, or they may not.

The thing is, they don't make enough of the stuff to justify under cutting petro oil. Even at $80 a barrel now, they are able to sell the stuff to environmental types. They would likely not lower prices until they are unable to sell what they produce.

Re:good

[lgw]

It doesn't scale at all in terms of replacing imported oil. It does scale wonderfully in terms of being a mechanism for the safe disposal of turkey offal, which is nice, since it may also be profitable eventually.

Re:good

[lgw]

TFA claims 85% effeciency - offal goes in, energy is extracted, 15% of that energy is methane used to fuel the process, the rest is oil. No energy goes in once the process is bootstrapped.

Re:good

[Doc Ruby]

Converting coal to oil costs around $50:bbl or less. And the US has literally thousands of times as much coal as oil. CWT economics is just screwed up because they're paying $30-40:ton of turkey waste, which I believe is otherwise a cost to the producers to discard legally. If they can fit these "afterburners" to municipal sewage plants, as they suggest, the economics will become the stuff that dreams are made of. NYC, for example, pays about $2000:ton to dispose its sewage, and has had serious talks about building a $2B water treatement plant for drinking. I bet $2B for CWT to install their system instead would transform NYC into a net exporter of energy to the region, instead of an exporter of waste.

Re:good

[Yartrebo]

And why are you so quick to believe them? I haven't seen any hard-to-fudge data coming out of them, and the whole thing just smacks of a PR stunt. Con Agra really could use a PR facelist considering how rotten a company they are, and they even got the government to fund them.

Re:good

[ksheff]

The reason they have to pay $30-40/ton for turkey guts is because there is currently a market for it for use as ingredients in other products. The company was hoping that it would be made illegal to use turkey guts in feed for other animals. This would drive existing demand down to where they could get it for practically nothing. That didn't happen, so they have to pay what everyone else is currently paying for it. It's just a supply and demand problem. If no one had a use for turkey guts, then yes, a slaughterhouse would have to pay for someone to get rid of it.

Re:good

[njh]

Except that the energy is not being created, merely made available. That energy originally came from the process that created the waste. Put it this way: You are saying that we should all grow turkeys to make oil from, when in fact it would be better to burn the grass that the turkeys ate.

I agree that this is an excellent way to handle waste streams though.

Re:good

[Doc Ruby]

I'm saying that since we're creating all this waste, since we're already growing turkeys to eat instead of eating their grass, we should use the waste. Because we're surely not going to stop growing turkeys - much as I'd like us to, or rather stop growing so many animals on factory farms. We can at least benefit from one end of the problem. Separating wastefulness from resource scarcity from gluttony will give us a chance to solve one at a time.

Re:good

[Technician]

at least we know there will be a cap of $80 usd for the barrel of oil.

WRONG!

Back to economics class. Free market society. Supply and demand.. Your SUV eats 30 gallons of fuel a week for your commute. How many acres of wheat are needed to feed how many turkeys and how fast do they reproduce?

As demand grows, the supply will also need to grow or become scarce. There is a limited amount of farmable land in the US. I doubt it can meet our oil demand without causing an influence on the price of a loaf of bread. Fuel and food will be competing for the same crop off the same field. Don't think for a moment the price is fixed. It isn't. Do think the supply is fixed. It is.

Re:good

[chthon]

There is also cattle and pigs.

Re:good

[njh]

No, you said:
"I bet $2B for CWT to install their system instead would transform NYC into a net exporter of energy to the region, instead of an exporter of waste."

I was merely pointing out that this is thermodynamically impossible. Reducing waste is of course an excellent outcome. I doubt that reducing wastefulness will help reduce gluttony - in water conservation circles it is well understood that putting in place water saving measures often results in an increase in consumption :)

Re:good

[Doc Ruby]

Right - as I said, a $2B CWT waste-regenerating facility could recover all the lost energy that we currently discard in our waste. That could more than cover our energy intake, making surplus energy available for export - net exporter of energy. I am of course not including the energy in the waste, or in the material consumed to make the waste, in the "energy" imported, because it's not currently counted as energy - it's counted as food, packaging, products and publications, mostly. There's no point talking about the "total energy" in those other terms, unless we're talking about some kind of E=mc^2 max-theoretical energy budget.

Reducing wastefulness might not help reduce gluttony. Again, as I actually said, [s]eparating wastefulness from resource scarcity from gluttony will give us a chance to solve one at a time". The separation of different conflated problems offers the increased chances of solutions. Solving one increases the chances further, because we're not focusing on that problem anymore, and the solution frees other resources. Efficiency might increase gluttony by providing more consumables, but separation breaks a gridlock. It's basic problemsolving strategy, totally independent of the kind of problem, as long as there's complexity in the mix.

Re:good

[njh]

Actually, you do want to include the energy in imported goods, as they make up the majority of the energy used by western civilisation. You don't want E=mc^2 energy, however, rather the Gibbs Free energy. What you are saying is "Under my accounting system NYC will be a net exporter of energy". You can move the goal posts if you like, but it doesn't change the basic physics. I can similarly argue that NYC is already a net exporter of energy - energy in the form of waste. No doubt there is some new bacterium out there which can only exist on NYC's output.

I agree that divide and conquer improves the chances, I just don't think it will solve the problem. Solving gluttony will solve the other two problems for free anyway, so we may as well start there (another, more powerful problemsolving strategy - focus where there is the most gain).

Re:good

[Doc Ruby]

There's no point in talking about the total Gibbs free energy of everything "imported" in to NYC, except purely as a physics discussion. Are you including the incident solar energy? The power of the Hudson as it passes through? The Atlantic tides? The continental drift? Of course not. None of those are harnessed (except negligible solar) in the energy budgets anyone uses to plan anything in NYC. It's as irrelevant as the relativistic matter/energy content. What *is* relevant is the actual energy imported into NYC in gas, oil, electric power, which can be eliminated by regenerating energy from waste, which likely would produce a surplus. If this were some perpetual motion discussion, we'd have dropped it by now.

It will be much easier to solve energy generation efficiency than gluttony. So I'd start there first.

SEWAGE!

[Evil W1zard]

Well I have the perfect marketing slogan for this! We can call it STOOL FUEL, Straight from people's butts into your engines.

Re:SEWAGE!

[Mr. Capris]

Hmm...if everyone had a miniture version of these plants in thier home, they could just dump everything (sewage, trash, reclyclables) down a chute and have a sign saying Oil- 25 cents a quart! outside on thier lawn...

Re:SEWAGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Ass2Gas?

Re:SEWAGE!

[JPelorat]

STFUEL?

Re:SEWAGE!

[thekernel32]

I'd say that "Ass Gas" has more of a ring to it.

Re:SEWAGE!

[killermookie]

Straight from people's butts into your engines.

Does this mean the driver's seat will become a toilet?

Re:SEWAGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the Chief Operator at a Wastewater Treatment Plant in So. Maine. Last year we paid about US$67/Ton to dispose of my 1600 Ton's of Sludge ("Biosolids" in NewSpeak).

At 3.0 Million Gal/Day (Licence numbers) we are a SMALL plant - a plant like this located in the southern 3 countys of Maine could very easly get enough sludge from WWTP's alone to keep it running 24/7/365 if sized right, undercut all current options (best cost option - direct land application at about US$40/ton) - and since it would be a "single prodect facility," tweeking/tuning is a non-issue. Make sure you have a well blended input and seasonal vareations and the odd "bad load" mean nothing. Gas spill in the lines? NP! - HomeBizGuy dumps 25 gallons of NastyStripEXL(tm) down the drain? NP! Ever had to deal with Grease Trap Cleanings? (i have - trust me, turkey offal is preferable...) NP!

"In New England, a total of approximately 275,000 dry tons of municipal sewage sludge is produced" (according to NEBRA http://www.nebiosolids.org/how.html)

Dewatered sludge runs from 12->40 % Solids depending on the method used to dewater it and the type of sludge. Given the water issues there and the cost of trucking (in our case) 85% water 200 miles away, i am very much looking forward to this option over the long term.

Re:SEWAGE!

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

So instead of bird shit on my car, they'll be people crapping in it?

Re:SEWAGE!

[LocoMan]

That could actually become an interesting idea.... install a miniature version of these on a car, replace seat with toilet, and on long trips you end up fueling the car yourself.... :)

Re:SEWAGE!

[G-funk]

Sounds like a Metallica track :)

Re:SEWAGE!

[lgw]

Peolpe seem to be missing that this is the key appeal of the technology. It will never scale to the point of being an alternative to imported oil, but it could be a huge win as an alternative for waste disposal, especially for processing plants.

The robustness of the process when dealing with volatiles is, as you pointed out, a bonus. With a bit of tuning, it seems like it could handle everything from used motor oil to much of the plastic in landfills.

And it's a huge win if it needs less water (it needs some, but apparently less thatn what's already present in turkey offal).

Re:SEWAGE!

[MrCreosote]

"Your business is our business"

Cost

[nickirelan]

It would be a great idea if it was cheaper. Maybe other natural ingredients will help bring the price down.

Re:Cost

[Carnildo]

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.

Re:Cost

[FidelCatsro]

It will start to seem far more valuable as our current oil supplys dwindle over the next 50 to 100 years ( maybe 30 , who really knows).
It is great that we start now to find alternatives to ease ourselves into more ecological fuel soloutions,Diesel is far cleaner than petrol to my knowlidge and would help a hell of alot in reducing emmisions(kyoto anyone) till we all drive nuclear powerd electric cars(hopefully hover cars) ;).

Re:Cost

[Overt Coward]

Two things could make this economical in a hurry:

1. Due to problems like Mad Cow disease, many countries have banned feeding animal waste to animals. The U.S. has not banned this. As a result, CWT is paying for waste products that under other circumstances, they would actually get money for disposing of. This is why they're planning on building in Europe -- because acquiring the raw material becomes an asset, not a liability.

2. The U.S. government currently offers a $1/gallon tax credit for certain bio-diesel fuels. The CWT does not currently qualify for this credit because of the language of the law. If that is changed, there are 42 gallons per U.S. barrel, meaning a $42/barrel tax credit, which as far as I know, is as good as cash.

Re:Cost

[Martin Blank]

Diesel has issues with particulate emissions, one of the reasons that it's not so popular in the US. In Europe, where certain smog components are lower thanks to diesel engines, many cities are battling particulates in the air. Win some, lose some.

Re:Cost

[lucifer_666]

I always thought it was 44 gallons per 'drum,' but then again, I'm in Australia...

Re:Cost

[Shalda]

A $1/gallon tax credit is not economical because everyone is subsidising it. For a short term plan, it may help, but long term it's not sustainable. It's a tax credit that will be phased out as alternative fuels come to market. (Unless those fuels come from the state of a well connected Senator).

However the point regarding disposal of animal waste (particularly in response to BSE and other related diseases) is certainly valid. If you can drive down or eliminate the raw materials cost, then the product comes down to about $60-$65/barrel refined. There you're starting to hit a marketable price for diesel fuel, especially if oil prices continue to rise. I don't imagine oil prices will rise much in the next several years, though, as OPEC is smart enough to keep prices just low enough to make alternative fuels not economically viable.

Re:Cost

[lgw]

The number of gallons in a barrel depends on what the barrel contains, oddly enough. The size of a barrel is the size traditionally used for a given commodity. Oil is different from wine which is different from beer. Generally, however, a barrel is 36 gallons, except for oil which is 42.

A barrel is always 4 firkins, however: one more advantage of the furlong/fortnight/firkin system of measure!

Re:Cost

[sjames]

A $1/gallon tax credit is not economical because everyone is subsidising it.

If you consider all of the externalities in foreign oil, a $1/gal subsidy isn't actually all that much. Consider, without all that oil money, there would be no reason at all to be involved in the Middle East, since they wouldn't have all those weapons bought with oil profits.

Of course, it would probably be even better to drop all of the subsidies and send the oil companies a bill.

Re:Cost

[sjames]

Wrong. How much petroleum is necessary to produce the turkey offal, electronics, tires, etc. Much of the energy being extracted with this process is stored energy from petroleum.

But since those things would all be produced anyway, it can be profitable. All that is necessary is that the cost of raw materials (garbage) and processing (machinery, fuel, and personel) is less than the sale value of the output (just like anything else). In some cases, potential suppliers of raw materials might pay to get rid of them (sewage sludge for example).

This is possible because the raw materials are not primary products. They are byproducts that are sold (if possible) for cost recovery. Where it's not possible to sell the byproduct, the manufacturer must pay someone to take it away. Manufacturing turkey guts for the sake of turkey guts is not profitable, but because they are just a byproduct of the profitable poultry industry, there's plenty of turkey guts to buy.

Confusing title...

[wildwood]

How, exactly, does one oil a market?

No, never mind. I don't want to know.

Re:Confusing title...

[MasterOfUniverse]

How, exactly, does one oil a market?

its easy..no ones ever 'oiled' your growing 'market'?

Price may not be a problem for long

[Angst Badger]

Given that there is legitimate concern that we will soon reach -- and maybe already have -- peak oil production, the $80/bbl price may be competitive before too long.

The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil, and the grain that the turkeys are fed is produced by an agricultural industry that is totally dependent on petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[syphax]

The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil

Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise). From TFA:


Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[abigor]

"Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process."

That's one phrase I never thought I'd ever see.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise)...

OMG! Oilent Green is made out of people! People!

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Dan Ost]

This process isn't limited to argricultural waste. For instance, you could
pipe the output of every bathroom in the city into a plant that turns that
waste into usable light crude. All it would take is to build a plant where
the sanitary sewer dumps out.

Added benefit would be that there would be less pollution into rivers and such.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise).

All this is doing is getting greater efficiency from the existing cycles that are there. These ultimately get their energy from the sun. I still don't think, though, that waste would produce the energy used by the modern society. I was reading something somewhere that to run the world on biodiesel (admittedly not waste, but growing plants specifically for making fuel) some huge proportion of the world's crops would need to be converted to this cause. A pretty big chunk of the world's population is already somewhat hungry, but economics being the way it is, poor people would go hungrier in order to feed the West's energy needs.

No, I think the answer may have something to do with reducing energy consumption first.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Overt Coward]

some huge proportion of the world's crops would need to be converted to this cause. A pretty big chunk of the world's population is already somewhat hungry

Non-sequiter. The problem of hunger isn't the availability of crops (hell, we pay people to not grow food int he U.S.), it's distribution.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[homer_ca]

There's a lot of spare agricultural capacity out there. Something like 70% of all U.S. farmland is used to grow livestock feed. Cheap hamburgers aren't that important to me. Also, biodiesel doesn't have to come from food crops. We can get biodiesel from algae that grows in salt water and ethanol from cellulosic plant waste (basically straw and plant stalks). Even with soybeans, there's plenty of nutritious stuff left over after you've extracted the oil.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[DrEldarion]

This raises the question, though, about whether we should try to keep making more oil, or whether we should put all this effort forth into cleaner energies.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Bonhamme Richard]

Given that there is legitimate concern that we will soon reach -- and maybe already have -- peak oil production, the $80/bbl price may be competitive before too long.

Agreed.

The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil, and the grain that the turkeys are fed is produced by an agricultural industry that is totally dependent on petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides.

Disagree. National Geographic ran an article on the process in 2003. Theoretically, you can use offal (turkey guts, cow parts, etc.) or just about any other natural product. (Tires, human/medical waste, etc.) They said the only thing that the process won't work on is nuclear material, and we already have a realitivly good way to get engery out of that... I don't think we have to worry about raw materials, Americans are great at making trash.

In addition, some of the by-prodcuts of this process can be used in fertilizers.

This certainly will not solve all of our energy problems, but it sounds pretty promising to me. It'll cut down on landfills and on our oil dependence.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Torontoman]

It is however, quite more likely that we've reached peak oil pricing, and production will increase to bring down the price.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[TimeTraveler1884]

If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

Soylent Fuel is people, people!

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[TimeTraveler1884]

Ah, dammit. That other guy said it first.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[EvilTwinSkippy]

And don't forget all that paperwork that is currently shredded and burnt.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[dabigpaybackski]

If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

Awesome. When I die, I want my carcass fed into one of these machines. Seriously. Let something useful be done with the remains, instead of hogging real estate with a cemetary plot.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[silentbozo]

Oil provides feedstocks for manufacturing plastics, in addition to providing things like paraffin, lubricants, solvents, and of course, fuel (for heating, power generation, and transportation - air, ground, and water.) This technology is useful even if the end product is no longer burned for power or transport.

I'd say it's not an either-or proposition - you can still spend money solving this problem (ie, what to do with all this industrial and consumer waste), without detracting from say, trying to produce fusion power. Pyrolytic decomposition just happens to be working now, with net energy out, as opposed to fusion, hence the effort to commercialize...

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[SimonInOz]

Gee, that sounds like a good plot for a movie ... wait, wasn't there a film called Soylent Green ? (almost no relation to the book of the same name)

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Duhavid]

Another input for this might be

Used motor oil,
All the waste grease from fast food joints.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[lgw]

Given that there is legitimate concern that we will soon reach -- and maybe already have -- peak oil production

This is quite unlikely. There is a vast quantity of oil currently untapped simply because it's not econimcal to do so at current prices and with current deep-sea drilling technology. As demand rises (and it is sure to, with India and China becoming more industialized), so will oil supply, along with oil prices and oil technology.

The world is nowhere near a shortage of oil (although I've been hearing "we'll run out of in 20 years" for 30 years now); it's a shortage of affordable oil that's a concern.

This technology is cool because the turkey offal is a waste product that's expensive to dispose of. Turning that into a new supply of oil is worthwhile simply as a useful way to dispose of the offal.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[lgw]

Oil is vastly cleaner than coal. And oil from turkey offal is break-even for CO2, since all the carbon in the turkey came from CO2 recently in the environment, unlike coal or ordinary petroleum.

Until we get fusion working to the point where it's a fraction of the cost of oil per watt-hour, there's not going to be a economic incentive to switch, so we might as well take advantage of opportunities to make things a little better.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Doc Ruby]

CWT's estimates show that converting the US agwaste total to oil their way would replace all the foreign oil imported to the US. Because we waste most of the solar energy that we put through our crops. Chain these CWT recyclers to fuelcells, which will likely push 80% efficiency themselves, and you're talking about 64% of the US imported oil energy. Instead of expending all that energy to import and distribute it (including internal combustion), not to mention defend it, as well as dispose of the waste. We're probably talking about the US becoming a net exporter of energy again, without changing any of our other agriculture. It's the right way to do solar, right away, because it hooks right into our existing supply chains.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[StikyPad]

If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as...

a delicious and nutritious food product.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[falser]

As demand rises ... so will oil supply, along with oil prices and oil technology.

That sounds logical but will probably prove incorrect. Supply and Demand says that if your demand goes up and the supply stays constant the price will inflate. There is no easily recoverable oil in the near future to keep up with demand. According to "Peak Oil" theorists the demand for oil will completely outpace our ability to extract it - no matter the combination of the Canada oilsands, improvments in extration, thermal depolymerization etc. The price of oil will just keep going up because it will never be in more abundance than it is when "the peak" hits sometime before 2010. Oil supply will not go up, it will only go down from that point on.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[lgw]

Just incase you look for responses to older posts, I'll respond. I understand what the theroy is saying, but it's far fetched.

The likes of BP, Exxon, and Shell are pretty sure there are huge quantities of oil untapped in seabottom areas that these companies have spent large sums to acquire rights too. Unlike the folks who say "we'll run out of oil in 20 years", the research depertments of the big petrochem companies have a long track record of correctness about such claims. BP has been especially good at being proven right a decade later.

There's also the rest of the Middle East oil - so far, only the "low hanging fruit" has been pumped, which means there's an impressive amount of oil left that requires a little sophistication to get at, unless the Mid-East oil fields are somehow different from all other oil fields.

Last link through fark?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does that last link run through the fark.com referal bin?

Re:Last link through fark?

[SupremeChalupa]

WHy it's a recycling article you silly. They are recycling the link.

Medical waste?

[Aardpig]

...from sewage, medical waste, electronics...

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.

Re:Medical waste?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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".

Re:Medical waste?

[Aardpig]

I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".

I agree wholeheartedly with you, which is why I cycle to work every day. However, the problem with the cycling approach is that it skips out a crowd-winning step in the drive -> get fat -> liposuction -> biodiesel cycle: there is no satisfying consumption of Krispy Kreme, Twinkies, etc etc.

Re:Medical waste?

[JayPee]

Holy crap.. a sort of perpetual motion machine!

Re:Medical waste?

[buzban]

as long as they're not using any of that tissue to cure disease...that's all i care. :P

Re:Medical waste?

[Surt]

I ate a krispy kreme and then walked to work today. I'm pretty sure if I could afford a bike I could have biked.

Re:Medical waste?

[That's Unpossible!]

I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".

That depends on your definition of "efficient."

I am in decent shape, and only rarely am I able to obtain a speed of 60MPH on my human-powered bicycle, and even then only for moments at a time. (Usually after colliding with a vehicle traveling at 60MPH.)

Re:Medical waste?

[gotih]

there is no satisfying consumption of Krispy Kreme, Twinkies, etc etc.

myself and my cycling-as-transportation friends will disagree strongly with that statement... riding 20 miles a day burns a lot of calories. i usually eat 3500 calories, lots of cyclists consume 4000 or more. and i prefer real doughnuts made by real people (that is, no krispy kreme).

Re:Medical waste?

[Technician]

I am in decent shape, and only rarely am I able to obtain a speed of 60MPH on my human-powered bicycle, and even then only for moments at a time.

It's simply not a question of effeciency. It's capacity. Your SUV doesn't go 60MPH very far on a few ounces of oil either. Now if you could burn 8 Lbs of fat an hour, you could make good time if the effeciency remained the same. Now the problem would be with storage of enough fat for the trip. ;-)

Re:Medical waste?

[TheLoneCabbage]

Traveling at 60MPH a cycle would probably be less effecient than an SUV. Since the major consumer of power at that speed is air resistance. And oddly enough that boxy SUV has a much lower drag coefficient than a human body curled up into a parabolic faceing the wind. Air resistance increases at the square of the velocity. At 20mph that most recreational bikers can avg, wind resistance isn't a big deal. But they nearly double their power requirements to go an extra 5mph!

And you are right, storring that much energy on a humman boddy just isn't that easy. On the Tour De France, the avg speed is 35mph. They are burning over 8000+ calories a day!! They physically can not metablolize and store that many callories every day. Their bodies need additional energy so badly they start to canabalize the riders muscle mass. Riders end The Tour weighing less than when they started, and they are physicaly in worse shape.

Even if you put one of those super aero dynamic canopies, and drop the rider into a recumbant position, you still aren't going to have much speed. An olympic athleat can sustain a 1/4 horse power over 8hrs, and a normal person in good fitness can sustain 1/8th of a horse power over 8hrs. That's not allot of horse power for hauling all the groceries your going to need to eat, at 60mph.

That being said, I commute every day by bike. I average 1.5hrs on my bike on a work day, and more on days I get some freedom. I assure you I enjoy filling my tank more than any driver!

Re:Medical waste?

[Silburn_Luke]

The word you are looking for is 'effective'.

A motor vehicle is a far more effective transportation system, in that it can achieve higher speeds, move larger loads etc etc

The guy on the bike is always going to be more efficient, if only because he's not carrying a ton or so of metal and plastic around with him.

Regards
Luke

It's a start.

[Sheetrock]

I've got a friend that was working on biodiesel development at the uni. At the moment it doesn't appear profitable, although only because we don't factor in the cost of diminishing resources and environmental pollution as costs, but as petroleum becomes scarcer alternative methods of energy reclaimation will look better and better (especially when we get to the point of getting more out than we're putting in.)

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.

Re:It's a start.

[Kotukunui]

There are certain uses for petroleum that we can't reproduce via other means -- powering our cars and homes isn't one of them.

I agree. I have yet to see a viable technology that will allow us to replicate the current level of service we get from jet airliners for air travel. I think they will be burning kero for a while yet. While there is always the option of returning to sailing ships (and solar electric powered airships for the optimistic) I think that air travel will be the last mode of transport to give up on petroleum based hydrocarbons.

Re:It's a start.

[MindStalker]

Dr. Spock btw is a completly different person, and actually came first.. but you knew that :)

Re:It's a start.

[ralphclark]

He knows that. What are the chances he could have made two such egregious errors in the same sig? One of the errors has been genuine "aarrrgh" material for Trekkers going back 40 years. The other is an impossible error, because you could not possibly know the quotation so accurately without knowing the correct attribution. Can you say "telegraph"? He's doing it on purpose. It's an entire troll in a sig.

Re:It's a start.

[StalinsNotDead]

What is it in you humans that requires an overwhelming display of emotion in a situation such as this?

--Jedi Master Yoda, A long Time Ago

Re:It's a start.

[xoboots]

okay, this is gonna cost me mod status for a real dumb thing but, hell, its Star Trek and star wars!!!.

Further compounding the troll, the .sig actually points to a real Star Trek episode, "The Galileo Seven", Stardate 2822.3, Episode 14 in which we get plenty of Mr. Spock/Yoda-like platitudes.

Enjoy:

---

Spock: I realize that command does have its fascination, even under circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of command nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists, and I will do whatever logically needs to be done.

---

McCoy: Life and death are seldom logical.

Spock: But attaining a desired goal always is.

---

Spock: I'm frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life.

---

Spock: There are always alternatives.

---

Spock: It is more rational to sacrifice one life than six.

---

Spock: No! Leave me!

---

Spock: By coming back and helping me, you may have destroyed your chances of rescue. The logical thing to do was to leave me.

McCoy: Spock, I'm sick to death of your logic.

---

Spock: Totally illogical, there was no chance.

Scotty: You said there were always alternatives.

Spock: I did? I may have been mistaken.

McCoy: Well at least I lived long enough to hear that.

Re:It's a start.

[drinkypoo]

Sigh. You are so behind. Biodiesel and ethanol from plant waste are both energy-positive processes today. Biodiesel from plant stocks in particular is some three and a half times more efficient than petrodiesel because it utilizes solar energy... It is very slightly less energy dense than petrodiesel though, by a couple of percent.

Re:It's a start.

[ralphclark]

ferchrissakes and I thought *I* was sad for googling the stardate.

I hope to jeezus you didn't quote that lot from memory!

I am put in mind of a certain SNL sketch with William Shatner and Dana Carvey...you know the one...

Re:It's a start.

[satans_advocate]

I agree. I have yet to see a viable technology that will allow us to replicate the current level of service we get from jet airliners for air travel.

Right, high level of service, but at enourmous cost. If we could get a helium blimp into the Jetstream, then we could be on the other side of the world in 24 hours for a sawbuck each in fuel and 40 bucks in meals.

Re:It's a start.

[andynz]

Come catalyst? Is that like the "Special Sauce" the spotty teen at McDonalds deposits in the mayo when noone is looking.

Wow, some new technology...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Changing World Tech's opening of a plant that converts agricultural waste to oil.

You mean like what you get when you stuff dead trees and foliage in mud, burry it deep underground under billions of tons of rocks, and wait a few million years?

$30-40 a ton for offal?

[Nine Tenths of The W]

A)Do they deliver?
B)What's Darl McBride's address again?

Sigh...I see the protest signs now

[Anonymous Coward]

"NO MORE FECES FOR OIL!"

Re:Sigh...I see the protest signs now

[MyLongNickName]

But just like in America today, no one really gives a shit :)

Why Turkey Guts?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lost of other things I would think that are more viable that are hard to get rid of. I'm sure slaughterhouses would be glad to have a way to get rid of all the shit that the animals produce. Any one remember the CNN story about the giant flaming shitheap in Nebraska?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/28/cow.fire.ap/

Re:Why Turkey Guts?

[Martin Blank]

The main reason is that the largest plant to date is at ConAgra's Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri. The guts of the birds destined for the freezer are shipped across the facility to the TDP plant, where the magic happens.

Re:Why Turkey Guts?

[doombob]

Yeah, that kind of sucked. On a windy day in Lincoln (I went University of Nebraska-Lincoln) you could smell that stuff on the west side of town. Unless Nebraska just kind of smells all over.

Re:Why Turkey Guts?

[Kafka_Canada]

I'm sure slaughterhouses would be glad to have a way to get rid of all the shit that the animals produce.

Ever eaten at Mickey D's?

mad cow, anyone?

[Whumpsnatz]

"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.

Re:mad cow, anyone?

[mortonda]

Yeah, that's really dumb. We have farmers who complain that they don't make enough money. Well, let's start sending animal waste into oil, and let the farmers raise feed for the animals. Win-win for everyone! (Except for our thanksgiving turkey will cost more.)

Re:mad cow, anyone?

[ThosLives]

The oil would be cheap enough to use, but you would be paying more for meat; you really think this wouldn't change the price you have to pay for meat if the meat-producers had to pay to get rid of waste? I'd rather pay less for food and more for oil; this promotes proper conservation. (or, if the gov't subsidised it, you'd pay somewhere else - in taxes or reduced gov't services).

Re:mad cow, anyone?

[Cedric C. Girouard]

"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.

I take it you're a vegan / vegetarian / vegetalist, whatever the flavor of the month is ?

Otherwise, feeding animals with animals is part of your daily calorie intake.

And to quote Homer J. Simpson "Why did god make animals out of meat ?"

Re:mad cow, anyone?

[Halo1]

Feeding herbivores the meat of their dead companions in fact is quite unhealthy for them, and is the (prime?) cause of mad cow desease and the related human desease Creutzfeld-Jacob. That's why it was banned in Europe, not because vegetarians, vegans or animal rights activists asked for it.

Re:mad cow, anyone?

[abigor]

Why not give up the ad hominems, and actually read the question? Since when are cows meat eaters? Or chickens? Yet both are fed feed made from their own species. It's been shown that such forced cannibalism is a vector for mad cow disease, among others.

Or, wait a second...your impossibly stupid reply is just that, impossibly stupid. You're trolling.

Oil from medical waste????

[VAXcat]

It's PEOPLE! Soylent Diesel is PEOPLE!!!!!

Re:Oil from medical waste????

[gotgenes]

Yes, but this is so much cooler than selling people's own fat @$$es back to them as soap.

I think Robert Paulson would agree...

Re:Oil from medical waste????

[Psmylie]

"Soylent Diesel is PEOPLE!!!!!"
I've heard the same rumors about Vin Diesel, and I'm not buying it.

Re:Oil from medical waste????

[tsotha]

Drat! Serves me right for actually working today. I missed my chance for that one.

Re:Oil from medical waste????

[Ziviyr]

Stupid stem-cell guzzling SUVs...

There are some good alternatives out there...

[hsmith]

One of my mothers friends is starting a plant that converts tires into Oil. The process takes old tires and removes the oil from them, basically oil from the rubber and oil they pick up from driving on the road. I forget if it is a qt per tire or something goofy like that.

They are out there, we need to find them.

Re:There are some good alternatives out there...

[binaryzone]

The Homeless are going to need bigger shopping carts.

this was done in 1985

[kevinx]

Great SCOTT marty! I knew I should have patented this process. luckly they haven't figured out how to reproduce the flux capacitor. We have plenty of time........

You misspelled "is"

[Anonymous Coward]

the giant flaming shitheap IS Nebraska....

There, better.

Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Tackhead]

"OMG, they're TURKEYS!"
(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.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, with this proccess you can dump everything in the same vat and it all seperates on its own. You dont have to isolate every different type of product before putting it in.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[ColdChrist]

Your comments are true if the waste streams are really that heterogenous, but waste volume is so incredibly high in this society that I think you have to be wrong for quite a few particular "mixes". Sewage, for example; highly predictable mix and very high volume. Offal is another likely one. I agree that some waste streams -- perhaps household garbage -- are going to be more difficult to separate than others, but just handling sewage, offal, agricultural waste and the waste discharge of the largest volume manufacturing systems is enough to have a huge impact all by itself.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Dan Ost]

No one technology is going to change the world. We're way past that. However,
this will become one of many tools at our disposal that will help us deal
with our energy consumption habits.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[MindStalker]

Do you know this for a fact? :) Yes it can handle just about everything but it should be tuned to efficiently handle certain task.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[wcrowe]

"OMG, they're TURKEYS!"
(God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.)

"They're hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!"

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[ThrasherTT]

chickenshit, pigshit, spammer

Thanks for brightening my day. On a side note, given how slimey they are, I bet they would emit a large percentage of oil per pound of incoming material.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Kozz]

(God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.)

Actually, depending on the breed of turkey and whether domestic or wild, they can fly.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I dunno, city sewage plants produce thousands of tons of crap on a daily basis.

And cities also produce tons of trash on a daily basis. Disposing of both is a problem, to the point that many State's largest export is garbage.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[ralphclark]

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

Talk about the worst job in the world!

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[code shady]

(God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.)

Err . . they can. Well, I can't speak for the farm raised turkeys, what with being fed all day and pumped full of hormones and food for extra delicious-ness (TM). BUt wild turkeys can most certainley fly. Quickly as well. Once, in the wilds of wisconsin, me and a friend were tramping through some field with his dog, when all of a sudden this giant commotion of noise and feathers took off from teh ground so fast i could barely even see it. Just a giant blur. Turns out the dog had stumbled on a wild turkey, and scared it enough to make it fly away very fast. Scared the shit out of both of us as well, since the thing flew up less then 5 feet in front of us.

Just thought you'd want to know. thus endeth my rather inane and rambling tale ;)

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[eriks]

The WKRP reference made me laugh out loud. Dunno why exactly, I havn't even thought about that show since sometime in the eighties. Was that Ed Asner, or someone else?

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[jthayden]

Scared the shit out of both of us as well

You should have saved that, it could have been a quart of oil.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[CWCheese]

It was station manager Arthur Carlson, played by the late Gordon Jump.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[drinkypoo]

You are aware that tires are already transported to central locations before something is done with them, yes? We can accomplish this with practically everything by returning the waste on the same trucks that bring in the materials. Also, even if you're not particularly efficient, if you make up for the lack of efficiency in the conversion process somewhere else like being able to just shovel waste into the system, as long as you at least break even, or achieve (or even approach) the cost of dealing with landfills later then you will at the very least have come up with a better way to deal with garbage, because you eliminate the landfill problem and that in itself is highly valuable.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Frogbert]

Wouldn't a sufficiently large spread of various organic waste have a optimal average if it were all blended together?

What I mean is that if you get 3000 truckloads and average out each load of waste you could get the optimal settings to produce the most oil. It might not be as efficient as a machine tuned to a certain type of waste but it would still work.

Perhaps you could have a system at the dump for this, if the waste is going to just sit there it might as well be converted to oil, its all profit in that case.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[R2.0]

God bless you for the "WKRP" reference - still a sorely underrated show. I catch it sometimes in syndication and still laugh my ass off.

Re:Soylent Oil is(n't always) Turkey!

[Spunk]

a tire dump ... used automobile tyres

I don't think I've ever seen someone use American AND British spelling standards :)

Seems too good to be true

[a_nonamiss]

Pardon me for being skeptical, but this almost sounds too good to be true. I'd love to believe it when I hear something like this, but more often than not, it ends up being a whole bunch of hypothetical crap that never ends up coming to fruition. Either that, or it'll be somehow compromised by the large oil companies so that it is either a) willed out of existance or b) cost prohibitive.

I hate being such a skeptic.

Re:Seems too good to be true

[SdnSeraphim]

I believe (I have not actually seen the plant myself) that it is already operational. It is creating oil and selling it to a local manufacturer for combustion in a boiler. It is, however, nowhere near the cost range they initially (2003) thought it would be. But first generation technology always has fits and starts.

Ricers will love this

[Nine Tenths of The W]

Ricer A:I just got new rims, dual exhausts and a fuel injection system
River B:That's nothing. My ride runs on recycled turkey shit...er, I'll just get my coat.

Produces?

[iminplaya]

And aside from gas and oil, the only other thing the system produces otherwise is sterile water.

The thing will never get off the ground unless it produces some money.

Re:Produces?

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Hmm, you just need to figure out a way to make paper and dyes ....

Consider Pollution

[lanc]

Yay, We are running out of natural, not-renewing energy containers, that we can burn mostly in cars so smooth to pollute/dirt everything in sight! Lets create new ways to keep up the pollution!

Sarcasm aside - the only positive factor at it is to get waste recycled. That should be triggered more widely. Get your rubbish sorted - and it will be time to build up new industries on recycling.

Re:Consider Pollution

[jthayden]

Actually, the carbon gain from this is 0. It takes carbon that is already in the environment and reintroduces it. This does not have the same environmental impact as taking carbon that is locked up under ground and releasing it into the environment.

Burning oil that is produced in this way has no net effect on the atmosphere.

Re:Consider Pollution

[Martin Blank]

It's a nearly zero-sum carbon solution. All of the carbon that comes from the turkeys is already in the upper part of the system, instead of being buried underground. The idea is that the CO2 is pulled in by the plants, goes into the cycle as various other forms of carbon-involved molecules, and ends up in the turkeys.

Re:Consider Pollution

[Migraineman]

I'd love to see one of these depolymerization plants on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Currently, the chicken farmers dump so much waste into the ecosytem that it's beyond saturation. Fertilizer for plants further exacerbates the problem. All of it washes into the Chesapeake Bay. A TD plant installed by the gub'ment, along with some "no dumping chicken guts/crap on the ground" rules, would go a long way toward controlling pollution. The fact that the system produces a usable product is just sauce for the ... um ... chicken. I'd much rather see pollution control programs that stand a chance of being self sustaining - as opposed to the current crop of "find somewhere else to bury it" methods.

Vehicle exhaust isn't the only kind of pollution.

Re:Consider Pollution

[TykeClone]

Properly applied, chicken guts/crap are fertilizers and not waste - that's why the plant has to purchase the offal in the first place.

Applying too much chicken guts/crap to a given area of land, however, is just asking for problems.

I think that Iowa does have a law about how much, when, and in what manner pig manure can be applied to fields (if we don't, I know it was discussed) in an effort to reduce nitrate runoff in the spring.

Steven Fitzpatrick/Biofine

[mkcheme]

He gave a talk for my organization a couple of months ago on his thermochemical process that converts cellulosic waste to precursor chemicals for fuels and fine chemicals. You can read a litte more on it here or by googling his name and Biofine. He claims the energy inmput/output ratio is quite good--I recall in the 30-40 range--and there is a process-scale facility online in Italy with interest to build a couple in the US.

Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[visionsofmcskill]

80$ a barrell vs 50$ a barell may SEEM to be a failure, but it is actualy an incredible accomplishment that will become increasingly viable in short order.

I've done some research on this topic and found out that californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply.

There is enough un-inhabitable land area in southern california to process all of this waste and thus fully liberate the US from foriegn oil, not to mention create a replenshible power supply compatible with our current prevelant technology (gas based power).

The greatest contorl over per barell pricing is from the supply made available from oil producing states greatly controlled by OPEC. As world consumption increases and known stock piles decrease and cease over the next 30 to 50 years the price per barrell will continualy rise. And will certainly exceed 80$ a barell probably within the next five to ten years.

The only reason oil is at 50$ per barell is due to it's massive scale, if waste based oils had even a hundreth of the scale that our current oil industry uses, or even a thousandth of the money, industry and investment it does, we would probably see prices drop well below the 50$ mark.

And this is speaking of the technology in it's current form. Though it may have some initial ineffeciences which have made the cost 80$ a barrell, cost saving measures through natural refinment of the processing of waste will undoubtably greatly improve the procedure within the next few years and continue.

I would say that 80$ a barrell is an astounding accomplishment which given the finite and defintie bounds of drill based oil will rapdily become an extremly attractive alternative fuel source.

Im surprised at the pesimisitc tone from slashdot. I also speculate that in the next ten years or so we shall see the major players seek control over this new market to sell oil to the world market as their drill based supply dwindles.

--VISION

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[NaruVonWilkins]

Remember, diesel isn't $50/barrel at the pump, either. Since we're getting rid of the middlemen by producing the diesel where we use it, we're making up for that $30/barrel difference by quite a bit.

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[caswelmo]

As you mention, global oil supplies may dwindle over the next 30 to 50 years. Likewise, social security funds will dwindle. I say we start chucking old people into gas-tanks and kill two birds with one stone.

Oh wait, in 50 years I'll be an old person... Damn.

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[utexaspunk]

I've done some research on this topic and found out that californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply

eww! remind me not to order the pie when i'm in CA...

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[waveclaw]

The greatest contorl over per barell pricing is from the supply made available from oil producing states greatly controlled by OPEC. As world consumption increases and known stock piles decrease and cease over the next 30 to 50 years the price per barrell will continualy rise. And will certainly exceed 80$ a barell probably within the next five to ten years.

Everyone at the pump in the USA is just waiting to see what China does. If China uses closed loop technology such as this to handle their wastes, they will significantly reduce their environmental impact (at least from the landfill/watershed point of view.) If they don't, and cars are at least as popular in that large and populous country as in the USA, industrialization of China will put a huge demand on gasoline and lubricant quality oils.

Heck, in the midwest USA, if prices get above $45/barrel crude, everyone and their dog starts pumping oil from any hole in the ground they can find or make. While OPEC may want to avoid that, a highly industrial and mobile China (and gasoline guzzling Chinese military) could care less.

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[tdi1]

Could you give a reference to support your statement that "californias agricultural waste which is mostly funneled down into a southern californian dessert lake area could supply enough fuel to satiate the US oil supply." I find that extremely difficult to believe. Based on US governemnt stats, we used 262 million gallons of oil PER DAY in 1998. That's a couple billion pounds/day. Even if the process is 80% efficient, you're talking about about 2.5 billion pounds of oil rich waste processed per day to supply the country's oil needs. That's 10 pounds for every person in the U.S. per day. If I've done my calculations correctly, than that amounts to about 1.25 million cubic meters of sludge every day. or roughly 1 square kilometer, one meter deep. If your stats are correct, they're simply astounding (and really gross!)

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[tdi1]

well, I Googled and found one reference that says:

In California over 500,000 acres of rice are grown each year. Each acre produces 1-2.5 tons of rice straw which have been until now burned. Alternative methods of disposal are needed, and conversion to ethanol has been under development for several years. There are currently two projects underway proposing to use rice straw: one in California (Gridley) and one in Jennings, LA. If the Gridley project is fully implemented, it will add 25 million gallons of production to California's already-thin 9 million gallons per year. Barriers include collection costs and the high silica content (13%) of rice straw.

Other agricultural wastes include orchard trimmings, walnut and almond shells, and food processing wastes, for a total of about 700 MGY potential if ALL agricultural wastes were used. This is, of course, impractical, as some must be returned to the soil somehow, plus collection and transport costs will have an effect on viability of a particular waste product. Agricultural waste has the potential to satisfy a significant share of demand, with many factors to be considered when proposing a bio-refinery based on any feedstock, which are determined by full life-cycle analysis.

If 25% of the available material were used, about 175 million gallons per year could be produced.

That's good for less than one day of the country's oil consumption.

I still think that the technology is a great thing, since it puts all these waste products to good use, but I don't believe that, it is going to allow the U.S. to free itself from foreign oil any time in the near future.

Re:Supply, Demand, Refinement, Scale

[hawkfish]

The only reason oil is at 50$ per barell is due to it's massive scale, if waste based oils had even a hundreth of the scale that our current oil industry uses, or even a thousandth of the money, industry and investment it does, we would probably see prices drop well below the 50$ mark.

That is unfortunately a very big if. We are currently burning 400x (that's right, 400x) the amount of carbon that the biosphere fixes annually. Waste-based oil is not just below the scale of extracted oil - it is lost in the noise! The only fuel sources that can replace oil are solar (two orders of magnitude on current energy usage), nuclear, geothermal and tidal. (These are gross categories - for example, wind is a solar fuel source.)

This is not to say that the technology here is useless - far from it - but it is not a fuel source. Think of it as a form of recycling that is far cheaper (and less disgusting) than just dumping it somewhere (hog farm waste lagoons, anyone?)

BioDesiel

[MBCook]

While this is nice and all, I think we should be working on BioDesiel more. It would be more profitable to convert soybeans and soybean oil into Desiel fuel than to try to extract that from agg. waste. While recycling is good and all, I would argue that at this point the environment would benefit more from getting large numbers of people over to BioDesiel than from sqeezing some extra oil out of waste.

BioDesiel is the fuel of the (achievable) future, IMHO. Untill we can get Fuel Cells at reasonable prices or batteries get much better power density (or portable nuclear reactors are invented and safe) then getting peopole over to BioDesiel (which conventional Desiel engines can be easily modified to handle) is the solution.

Plus, the exhaust smells like french fries so McDonald's should be pushing this because it will increase demand for their product. McDonald's: Bringing you the green future through fast food cravings ;)

Re:BioDesiel

[NaruVonWilkins]

This *is* Biodiesel.

Re:BioDesiel

[Cryptacool]

I don't understand your argument. Sure biodiesel is nice, but how is it better? If any thing this process is better because it breaks down the waste into more usable parts (water, oil, carbon black) which can then be more efficiently used. Additonally while the cost is rather high right now that is sure to drop precipitously as larger plants come on-line that are able to process greater amounts of waste.

Lastly, only certain kinds of waste are suitable for use as biodiesel, and not things like tukey guts or cow crap. This technology offers an excellent way to control many different kinds of waste.

While biodiesel may be a more accesible use of waste now, I see no reason why the two technologies shouldn't be developed in parallel.

Re:BioDesiel

[the pickle]

You do realise this process works for ANYTHING based on carbon, right? Including soybean plants, and soybeans, and soybean oil. You don't need to process the beans to get the oil -- just throw them in a TDP "machine" and get light crude out the other end. That's the beauty of it: there's no need for expensive and complicated separation of waste material. Just throw it all in, let the TDP process do its work, then recover raw materials at the end.

cl

Re:BioDesiel

[Abcd1234]

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?

Re:BioDesiel

[lost_n_confused]

BioDesiel is fine but this process is converting a product that otherwise would be a waste product. There are limited locations to place waste products. If nothing else this would be a good thing for large cities to dispose of their waste other then burying it in the ground, dumping it in the ocean, or burning it up. So if everyone ran off of BioDesiel then you would still have the problem of what to do with waste products this removes that problem from the equation and provides a high quality product to be sold. Also with this process setting up thousands of small processing plants all over the country you remove shipping costs of BioDesiel. Last time I was in NYC I didn't see many soy beans there but did see trash.

Re:BioDesiel

[Hucifer]

Which would also make more sense to legalize Industrial Hemp. I remember reading an article that researchers from Princeton estimated that an acre of hemp could produce 1,000 gallons of methanol in four months. This aside from the other agricultural benefits of Industrial hemp. Just my 2 cents

Re:BioDesiel

[ornel]

If we switched all cars and industry now to biodiesel, can you imagine the increase in demand for monocrop, genetically-modified, high-yield soy or corn? Soy monocrop is already destroying acres and acres of rainforest in Brazil. Argentina is one of the largest soyabean producers in the world, but every year thousands starve. Most of the soy is for export, most of it to feed farm animals in rich countries. Now add biodiesel to that. We are gonna have to learn to live with less and smaller cars ...

Re:BioDesiel

[TykeClone]

No problem - for soybeans just crush out the oils first or for corn process it into ethanol. Take the "leavings" and feed it to animals. Take the animals, slaughter them, cook them, and eat them (yummy!) During the whole process, capture animal manure (and what the heck, grab that people poop too!) and process it into oil. After slaughtering the animals, process the leftovers into oil. Repeat.

I think converting to that wouldn't increase demand that drastically, and if it did the supply would still keep pace.

Re:BioDesiel

[SEE]

Soybean biodiesel is not an achievable solution to anything. The amount of soybean oil produced per acre is low enough that a conversion of all the arable land on Earth to soybean growing, at American crop yields, wouldn't produce enough biodiesel to replace current diesel usage. Throw in the increase in diesel usage that would accompany a spread of U.S. mechanized farming worldwide, plus the troubles with fertilizer and pesticides, the disruption of food agriculture, and . . . well, it just can't scale.

Now, rapeseed, that's at least marginally plausible, with its much higher oil content. But if biodiesel actually has a future, it's probably in the algae pond, grown on non-arable land and irrigated with salt water. The world has lots of unused non-arable land, and incredible amounts of salt water.

$80/bbl

[glrotate]

Why would the price spike like that?

Google up on "Hotelling model" and "optimal depletion path"

If the price spikes then the oil cartel was only screwing themselves all along, and I don't see them as the type to do many favors.

$80 per barrel

[NaruVonWilkins]

The $80 per barrel number is misleading. When considering large markets, shipping oil all over the place from a root source at $80/barrel is not economically feasible. The key here is that this oil doesn't have to compete in that market. In eastern Washington State, a number of rendering plants are already doing this themselves. They don't have to ship the animal waste anywhere, so they aren't paying for it, and the oil they get it *vastly* cheaper than the diesel at the pump for their distribution. One plant I've seen also provides some electricity through a diesel generator running fuel they produce. I don't really know about the math here, but let's say you're saving $10 per barrel by not having to buy the "offal." Now you're at $70. How much overhead is put on a $50 barrel of diesel before it comes to the pump? Right now, we're seeing spot prices at $2.30 - multiplied by 55 gallons (per barrel, correct me if I'm wrong) - you get over $125. Since you're at the point of purchase already, as long as your equipment costs are less than $55/barrel, you're saving money over filling your trucks at the pump.

Re:$80 per barrel

[TykeClone]

Right now, we're seeing spot prices at $2.30 - multiplied by 55 gallons (per barrel, correct me if I'm wrong) - you get over $125. Since you're at the point of purchase already, as long as your equipment costs are less than $55/barrel, you're saving money over filling your trucks at the pump.

Don't forget fuel taxes - not sure what they are, but they make up a substantial portion of that $2.30. If you are filling up and avoiding the "revenuers", then the savings would be as described. If not, then the savings wouldn't be quite as much.

Re:$80 per barrel

[ralphdaugherty]

The $80 per barrel number is misleading.

Good point, and misleading in more ways than one. The Discover "Anything Into Oil" article quoted Changing World Technologies as saying that "we'll make oil at $15 a barrel".

Ok, their estimate was wrong, the Fortune Small Business "A Turkey In Your Tank" article says that as a result of having to pay for turkey offal with no tax breaks, "CWT's production costs have doubled, to nearly $80 a barrel".

But this implies that if the input stock were free, production costs would be closer to $40 a barrel instead of their estimated $15 a barrel or the cited $80 a barrel.

So why aren't they using nearly free input, for example as suggested by /. posters, manure storage that are huge environmental problems on the east coast? What about the mountains of landfills to be mined?

The problem is a $30 million plant was built next to a turkey plant that could sell the turkey offal, and will, because we still allow animal remains to be made into animal feed. Hopefully without Americans developing something akin to Mad Cow Disease the offal will come cheaper to the plant when it is no longer allowed to be used in feed and becomes less valuable.

But in the meantime, it seems the $80 a barrel is misleading and should be $40 a barrel plus cost of stock, or more importantly, minus cost of being paid to recycle.

Why America is not putting these TMD plants close to gigantic landfills and manure pits immediately is hard to understand. Just eliminating the waste would be sufficient reason, but offsetting the need to import oil would also be sufficient in itself.

Together, this should be #2 heating oil, distilled water, and carbon powder and minerals at less than $40 a barrel. Instead, the company is forced to seek to go overseas to survive.

Maybe if it is stated as $40 a barrel less cost saved from waste instead of $80 a barrel it would no longer be misleading and the comparisons to $50 a barrel would become positive instead of negative.

Because this technology should be a positive story for America today, not something that someday will become cost effective at $80 a barrel.

rd

Re:$80 per barrel

[ralphdaugherty]

Make that TDP plants.

rd

Actual Cost Effective bioprocessing company

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://www.biosourcefuels.com/. They claim they can make biodiesel at competitive rates (way below $80/barrel) and appear to have a pilot plant actually running and proving the technology in Montana.

Re:Actual Cost Effective bioprocessing company

[theclam159]

By using the tax credits for alternative energy, perhaps? I haven't seen anyone prove that you can get more fuel from growing corn (or whatever biodiesel source you want) than it takes to grow the corn. I don't even think thermal depolymerization does this (although it does make use of materials that would just be trash, which is why it is useful).

Re:Actual Cost Effective bioprocessing company

[fossa]

more fuel from growing corn than it takes to grow the corn

Well, of course not. But it takes sunlight to grow corn, among other things. Sunlight is "free". "Other things" are not free. And I have seen statements that the energy output can be greater than the input ("other things").

The total input/output energy ratio shows a very positive return. For every BTU of energy used to produce the crop and process the oil, about 3.3 BTU's is produced as fuel. http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/ageng/machine/ae1 240w.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

That should get you started. I can't find the link I want... it had a nice chart comparing corn, soybeans, rapeseed, and algae. I think corn barely puts out more than you put in (a point of contention I gather), but others are solidly energy positive (discounting, of course, the sun's energy input). Algae is nice because it can be grown in salt water...

There goes my big idea

[HangingChad]

Apparently the Turkey guts are not as profitable to recycle as hoped...

Ah, darn. I guess that makes these futures I bought in turkey guts pretty useless.

not just turkey parts

[bodrell]

The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil, and the grain that the turkeys are fed is produced by an agricultural industry that is totally dependent on petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides.

First, if you had read the article (this time, or the last time thermal depolymerization was mentioned on slashdot), you would know turkey offal is only one type of feed that can be used. Any sort of agricultural waste will do. Any sort of organic waste, including hazardous chemicals (which are often just dumped in the ocean, or even injected into the ground, crazy as that sounds). Do you think there will be a shortage of raw sewage any time soon? Or garbage, in general?

As a side note, fertilizers are certainly NOT derived from petroleum, and pesticides are sometimes synthesized using petroleum products (i.e., organic solvents), but I don't think that makes them petroleum-derived any more than pharmaceuticals are.

Re:not just turkey parts

[qkslvrwolf]

As a side note, fertilizers are certainly NOT derived from petroleum

Actually, they can be. It appears ammonium nitrate, primarily, is somehow eventually refined from petroleum.

Smell

[NardofDoom]

I'd imagine waste vegetable oil would smell significantly better. Do you want your exhaust to smell like poo or like donuts?

Re:Smell

[NaruVonWilkins]

If you've got enough particulate matter in the diesel to smell like poo, it's not well enough filtered and will do engine damage anyway. Regular biodiesel from vegetable oil reminds you of french fries because french fries smell like oil - not because oil smells like french fries.

Re:Smell

[NardofDoom]

No, the *waste* vegetable oil from a deep fryer, after filtering, still contains some VOCs that make your exhaust smell like whatever it was cooked in.

Believe me, I've smelled the exhaust of a veggie powered diesel car on two seperate occassions and it smelled different.

And I'm not talking about biodiesel, i'm talking about straight vegetable oil, filtered, heated, and pumped directly into a diesel engine.

Re:Smell

[NaruVonWilkins]

I see. I thought you were talking about biodiesel, not straight WVO. What kind of block/injectors were they?

Re:Smell

[NardofDoom]

1.9L Volkswagen TDI with stock injectors. The veggie was preheated with hot coolant to lower the viscosity, prefiltered before putting it in the tank, and routed through a 10 micron filter.

If you're interested, it was the 6.5 gallon kit from Greasel

algae based biodiesel

[randall_burns]

Algae based biodiesel may have a lot more promise. I've seen it claimed that a small part of the Mojave desert could supply the US with all necessary vehicle fuel.

Re:algae based biodiesel

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Combine the two ideas. Especially since, unlike other Depolymerization processes, this one actually likes extra water.

Portable Nuclear Reactors

[mestreBimba]

exist and are safe.... for their intended use they are in use in both American and Russian satellites. Do some research on "Nuclear Batteries" http://www.ne.doe.gov/space/space-desc.html
I just don't think, in todays geo-political situation, I would want every Joe to have one in his car. Can you say easy dirty bomb, boys and girls?

Wait till Bush hears....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

"We invaded Turkey because they've got guts".

That almost makes sense.

[darkonc]

The company is paying $30-$40/ton for animal offaland producing diesel fuel at $80/barrel (compared to $50/barrel for petrolium derived diesel).

This isn't all too shocking when you consider that, once you find it, petrolium comes out of the ground for essentially free. Subtract the cost of the source stock and you end up with a refined product at roughly the same price.

(I realize that it's not quite that simple, but it's an interesting 'coincidence'.)

Useful energy

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What the parent poster really meant was "useful energy", a concept not covered by thermodynamics.

If you input a ton of chicken guts (waste) and a gallon of oil (useful energy) a get two gallons of oil (useful energy) out, then you've got an increase in useful energy.

Re:Useful energy

[The_Dougster]

What the parent poster really meant was "useful energy", a concept not covered by thermodynamics.

This must be a troll, but I'm bored. Thats what the 3rd law and Entropy is all about. Spontaneous reactions only occur such that the usefull energy is decreased overall. Heat at 120 degrees is simply not as useful as heat at 1000 degrees, and electricity is on the high end of the scale for usefulness. Turkey carcasses and ag-waste are somewhere close to the bottom of the scale.

Anytime that you can utilize low availability forms of energy, you're almost getting something for nothing. Truly, a barrel of high energy fuel is pretty useful, but a truckload of stinking crap is not very useful.

Biological reactions are pretty cool in that they try to do just this by utilizing catalyst aided chemical reactions. Enzymes are specially tailored biological catalysts which break down or allow otherwise pretty unreactive things to react in conditions that would normally be unfavorable.

Look at the mashing process in beer brewing. When you mix the malted grains up and heat them to the correct temperature, enzymes from within the seed kernels become active and break up the starch chains into fermentable sugars. When most of the starch is reacted, you have a sweet sugary liquid which is then strained and boiled up with hops.

The point with biological catalysts is you only have to get the solution to like 150 degrees Farenheit, and the enzymes become active. Thats a lot less energy than using electrochemistry or trying some kind of permanganate oxidation reduction scheme to bust up the long chain starch molecules.

Anyways the thermodynamic term Availability is used denote that different types of energy have different amounts of thermodynamic usefulness. However its hard to compare electricity to gasoline to steam because thats electrical, chemical, and pressure/temperature types of energy. You can figure out the total Joules of heat or Watts of work that can be extracted for a rough comparison, but that doesn't take into consideration the convenience of whatever form of energy or how well suited it is doing to a particular kind of work.

See?

Re:Useful energy

[Retric]

I don't think you understand the term "useful energy" as he meant it. Availability is of little use if it's not where you can put it to work. All the energy in crude oil is useless to move cars around unless you refine it. In much the same way that power plant's are useless to you if a tree fell onto the power line outside of your house.

Thus even though the net energy is the same before and after any given process Availability talks about how much of that energy could be used to do work and "useful energy" is talking about how much energy humans can use out of the system.

Re:Useful energy

[The_Dougster]

Not in thermodynamics. "Availability" is an actual definition which for steam IIRC is T*delta(S)

I know the parent does not have a clue about thermodynamics. I was merely trying to awaken him to the fact that thermo does indeed consider all forms of energy. Obviously, chemical energy is fantastically convenient because its a quick refill and provides loads of power. The only things that come remotely close to the power per kilogram of gasoline are things like exotic rocket fuels which require dangerous oxidizers and specialized combustion processes.

I'm all for hydrogen power, solar energy and all that, but chemical energy is really really tough to beat as an energy storage medium. Ideally we would use photovoltaic panels to run a chemical fuel production process, that is a lot more handy than batteries or whatnot.

The science of thermodynamics can and does handle all types of energy.

It won't increase the net carbon in the atmosphere

[sonofagunn]

The last section of the article Forbes explains how it is better than drilling carbon from underground and releasing that into the atmosphere. The TDP process fits into the natural carbon cycle, and does not increase the net carbon involved in the cycle.

Don't Mortgage Our Future!

[Eadwacer]

Sure, it looks like helpful technology, but think about what happens next. The price of turkey guts goes sky high. Pretty soon, we are importing cheap turkey guts from Brazil and Montenegro, and then we find we are in political thrall to the OTEC countries, and have to support them in their wars against Uruguay and Macedonia. That way lies madness!

Re:Don't Mortgage Our Future!

[The One KEA]

The scary thing is that if this technology ever did manage to become widespread, the price of organic offal really would skyrocket - after all, there's only so much organic crap the human race can produce...

Re:Carbon Based Fuel?

[g0bshiTe]

My guess would be because too many people get a piece of that $50/barrell cost.

I've got trouble believing that

[Engineer-Poet]

I ran into a page that cited 12 cents per gallon as the cost for treating regular community sewage at a processing plant.

If the typical person uses 50 gallons/day of water and flushes it down the drain, that's $6/person/day or $360/person/month. Water bills typically include sewage, and run a small fraction of that. Nope, doesn't pass first inspection.

This might be reasonable if you are talking about sewage solids, but that's a small fraction of most sewage and I'd want you to confirm your source and its accuracy before I took it seriously.

That says, CWT did mention that they can process things such as grease-trap waste (cooking grease, mostly). With the amount of grease produced in big cities and the disposal costs in landfills, it appears that the natural place for CWT to build their next plant isn't near rural poultry plants, but Manhattan. All they'd have to do is undercut the cost of trucking the stuff to New Jersey and they'd have all the feedstock a 400 bbl/day plant could handle, and probably much more.

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[Rei]

You know, not all waste is the stuff you find in city sewers. There are all sorts of industrial waste, and I'm not surprised that costs vary a lot. Grease traps are hardly the only ones (plus, using grease for fuel can be dealt with in other ways)

If you want to see how much sewage treatment costs vary, google it for yourself.

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[cayenne8]

"All they'd have to do is undercut the cost of trucking the stuff to New Jersey and they'd have all the feedstock a 400 bbl/day plant could handle, and probably much more."

That and give Tony Soprano his 'cut' off the trucking end of it....else CWT 'might' have some union problems flair up....

:-)

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[TykeClone]

Forget municipal systems - go for the "gold" of sewage and process hog and cattle manure. With confinement livestock, the hardest part is to economically dispose of the contents of the manure pit.

Waste is usually stored up for about a year so that it can be applied to fields after harvest. Because of this, I think that the manure typically has a higher content of solids than what you'd see at a municipal waste facility. Also, hogs produce a lot of manure - I think that I've read that a medium sized confinement operation would produce the same amount of waste as a city of 30,000 people.

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[Rei]

Interesting idea. I'd imagine you probably wouldn't get as much oil as with many other types of organic matter, but it should separate the nitrates nicely.

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[uhlume]

With the amount of grease produced in big cities and the disposal costs in landfills, it appears that the natural place for CWT to build their next plant isn't near rural poultry plants, but Manhattan.

Of course, given the readily-available technology to run diesel engines on vegetable oil with no additional processing, this may simply be redundant...

Re:It won't increase the net carbon in the atmosph

[sonofagunn]

I meant the second article - the one from mindfully.org. There is no Forbes article.

Just think...

[MudButt]

In a few years I can drive my SUV to McDonalds... Get fat... Get lipo... Give the fat to AgroWaste... Convert it to fuel... Gas up my SUV... Drive my SUV to McDonalds...

I've got trouble believing myself

[Engineer-Poet]

... make that $180/person/month.

1 Barrel == 42 gallons

[Dan Ost]

For oil, at least.

Re:1 Barrel == 42 gallons

[NaruVonWilkins]

Thanks. I thought they were 55 gallon drums.

I'm boggled

[Hard_Code]

I don't know how to feel. I can just imagine a mighty column of American military vehicles rolling like a sandstorm through some third world country to liberate its people. And to think it will be fueled not by petroleum, but by McDonald's waste. ph34r!

The recursion just blew the stack of my mind :)

As long as Bush and his cronies are in charge...

[NeuroManson]

Yatta yatta yatta, but you all saw that coming.

I see a way that this could be a boon for flagging state economies. For one, every state is literally being buried in landfills, slowly but surely.

At least 3/4 of the waste being dumped into landfills is organic in nature.

Now if, for example, a state such as Washington, built a municiple biodiesel plant to recycle said waste into fuel, then instead of relying on external fuel sources, they could not only supply their state with energy resources.

That way they can pocket the funds from said resources to pay for education, roads, etc, instead of relying on Uncle Sugar or taxes to make the balance. Each state can do this and improve everything for the better.

However, this is a pipe dream. As long as there's lobbyists and a government that is devoted to their money, such a possibility will never come to pass.

Re:Shame..

[Abcd1234]

Three words: Closed Carbon Cycle.

Carbon cycling vs. energy

[Engineer-Poet]

Just recycling carbon isn't going to save us; land plants aren't efficient enough at converting sunlight to fixed carbon to yield what we need. I suspect that we're going to need to cycle carbon a lot more tightly than that, keeping the atmosphere out of the loop for most of it; look for a future essay on The Ergosphere when I get a Round Tuit.

Re:Shame..

[JustNiz]

Thats just more political weasel words.
Just because the carbon didn't come from drilling, doesn't mean it hurts the atmosphere less.

Tax credits

[Engineer-Poet]

If I understand the law correctly, the biodiesel initiative allows $.50/gallon for biodiesel made from waste oil. If biofuel made from any waste matter qualified, CWT's plants could collect $22/barrel.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Subsidies usually result in overproduction and overconsumption, financed by the taxpayer. If we want to "fix" the problem, let's tax petroleum to pay for all the defense costs of the oil shipping routes instead of the taxpayer paying more for other things.

Re:Tax credits

[Ironsides]

let's tax petroleum to pay for all the defense costs of the oil shipping routes instead of the taxpayer paying more for other things.

Instead of taxing the petroleum just send the companies a bill for the use. Same effect, and it actually on bills the people who use it. Otherwise you tax gas from places that don't need protection. Basically, rent out whoever may be gaurding the tankers. But don't put a tax on the gas. The politicians will just use it as another income source to spend money on pet projects. Also, can you provide links to prove that they are getting protection?

Re:Tax credits

[jthayden]

Subsidies usually result in overproduction and overconsumption, financed by the taxpayer.

Not all subsidies are bad, some are used to correct a wrong that the market cannot. The point of subsidising this is to bring it to an efficient point of production. This process has real benefits to society as a whole that the producer can not factor in to his cost equations. This process reduces pollution and reduces the amount of waste in landfills. The point of a subsidy would be to quantify this benefit and then pass it or a portion of it on to the producer in order to produce at a equilibrium point that is optimal for society.

Re:Tax credits

[barawn]

I'm not sure if this is a good thing. Subsidies usually result in overproduction and overconsumption, financed by the taxpayer. If we want to "fix" the problem, let's tax petroleum to pay for all the defense costs of the oil shipping routes instead of the taxpayer paying more for other things.

They're not necessarily financed by the taxpayer. They could be free. They could even generate cash.

Every dollar spent on locally-generated oil is money that doesn't go overseas.

That money is taxed by the US government.

If the US Government encourages people to spend money on locally generated goods, they get more revenue. In other words, yes, it is possible for the government to make money by giving money away. Neat, that.

Stupid massively oversimplified example: Company A, in the Middle East, sells oil for $100/barrel. Company B, in the US, sells oil for $110/barrel. The US government subsidizes the US oil at $10/barrel. Assume the US company pays 10% in taxes, and the US government actually makes $1/barrel on the whole deal.

As I said, yes, this is oversimplified, and neglected gigantic amounts of things (like the fact that you do pay duty on foreign oil, etc.). But reducing a trade deficit is a very positive thing. And there's a definite bonus to subsidizing local companies to improve their market share.

Re:As long as Bush and his cronies are in charge..

[pyro101]

Are you ok with a 60% increase in your gas prices? That would cost you $3.2 for a gallon of gas then. This sounds all nice and good but the process is a pipe dream. Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble but the reason that electric/eco friendly cars haven't gotten a good foothold isn't the evil oil industry its the cheap walmart mentality. Either come up with a cheaper way or figure out a way to recenter America's value system. But don't just blame it on "Big Oil"

Re:Carbon Based Fuel?

[rw2]

All I know is turkeys are carbon-based life forms and burning turkeys would seem to put carbon into the atmosphere just as oil does.

The carbon in the turkeys came from the air to begin with, so it's a wash.

Haw about "Hog sewage" into oil

[denis-The-menace]

I've seen pictures of the pools of hog sewage in industrial farms that have bursted after a storm and killed people along with the hogs.
This would make such disasters a bad memory and create oil, power and other non-lethal products.

Re:Shame..

[wcrowe]

"... that supposedly intelligent people are atill hell-bent on producing and consuming gasoline by preference."

Yes, you're so much better than those idiots.

And everything from the clothes you wear, the pizzas you eat, and the beverages you drink just magically appears in the store shelves every day without any dependence on fuel too.

Perpetual motion

[WidescreenFreak]

Well, many people have been in search of a perpetual motion engine or an additional natural resource. Maybe...?

1. Extract fat

2. Create fuel for automobile

3. Get fat from using automobile

4. Go to step 1

Fertilizer derivation

[Engineer-Poet]

fertilizers are certainly NOT derived from petroleum

No, they're typically derived from natural gas (steam-reform to hydrogen, Haber process combines H2 and N2 to make ammonia, ammonia is either used as-is or oxidyzed to HNO3. HNO3 is chemically combined with ammonia to make ammonium nitrate or urea to make urea nitrate).

High natural gas prices have driven some users to petroleum fuels, so the demand for fertilizer is increasing petroleum demand even if it isn't a direct petroleum product.

pesticides are sometimes synthesized using petroleum products (i.e., organic solvents), but I don't think that makes them petroleum-derived

If their manufacture involves petrochemicals and their use increases the demand for oil, you might as well call them petroleum-derived.

Re:Shame..

[Abcd1234]

Just because the carbon didn't come from drilling, doesn't mean it hurts the atmosphere less.

Umm, actually it means exactly that. And since you're evidently unable to think for yourself, I will illustrate:

Digging up oil and burning it releases carbon that was previously sequestered underground. Result: significant net positive release of carbon.

Recycling Turkey offal by turning it into oil and burning the result releases carbon that was originally absorbed by plants which were fed to the Turkeys. Result: zero net gain in atmospheric carbon.

In fact, there's likely a net *loss* of carbon, due to the oil manufacturing process, as it produces black carbon as one of it's byproducts.

thank god!

[flacco]

Apparently the Turkey guts are not as profitable to recycle as hoped

i'm a lazy vegetarian - i'd hate to have to choose between walking and cruising on turkey guts.

Re:thank god!

[binaryzone]

As opposed to T-Rex guts?

Has to be said...

[J-Doggqx]

This is all well and good, but when are they going to come out with a miniature version for my De Lorean?

(The ability to hover is also a plus.)

Re:Shame..

[sonofagunn]

"pollution-free alternatives like hydrogen power instead"

It takes energy to produce hydrogen. It is still a carbon-increasing energy source if fossil fuels are used to make the hydrogen. On a side note, using this process to make oil from organic sources, using that oil to produce energy, then finally using that energy to produce hydrogen may be a good idea...

Re:Shame..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it does.

The only problem with the carbon in gasoline is that when you burn it, it produces C02. C02 is a greenhouse gas, and is better avoided.

Now, if you pull C02 out of the air, and turn it into fuel, and then burn the fuel back into C02, there is no net change in the amount of C02 in the air. This is a "closed" carbon cycle, and does not "hurt the atmosphere", because it merely restores what was taken.

With current technology, we can leave the pulling C02 out of the air to plants, and then process the plants (or the animals that eat them, and so on.)

If you pump oil out of the ground, and burn it, you're creating C02 that was not present in the atmosphere anywhere remotely recently. Those swamps that turn into coal and algae into oil pulled C02 out of the air in the far distant past, not currently. So releasing that C02 can be seen as adding more. This "open" carbon cycle is a net change, at least on reasonable small timescales. (You can stil argue that it's closed if you want to think in hundred-million-year terms, of course. The Solar System doesn't have any more carbon in it than it did before. But as far as humans are concerned, it's open.)

That idea is being challenged [by abiotic oil]...

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

There is a growing number of geologists who now wonder whether oil [as we know it] might not be the byproduct of some heretofore unknown process that transpires deep within the earth.

Google on e.g. "abiotic oil":

http://www.google.com/search?q=abiotic+oil&safe=of f

Government the answer?

[jridley]

I know, normally getting government subsidies is bad news, but in this case it may make sense. ASSUMING this is a viable process in the first place (IE net output of energy), reducing the taxes on the diesel fuel made from waste makes sense if it reduces the tax burden elsewhere (like if some waste processing facilities or landfills have to be built or something).
Also, there's something to be said for the old saw of reducing dependence on foreign oil.
If this is a viable way to make the waste diesel competitive with dino-juice diesel, it may be worth considering.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[iggymanz]

eh? plants + sunlight + carbon dioxide -> double bonded carbon compounds and other goodies (sometimes by way of an animal eating them)

Given one of the article's examples...

[wowbagger]

Given one of the article's examples, I think there's a far better name:

"Fillerup?"
"Yes, with new Soylent Green Gas!"

Others have posted interesting stuff like that

[Engineer-Poet]

Check the links in this post and this story (referenced here).

Re:Others have posted interesting stuff like that

[TykeClone]

That, if I might say so, was a pile of crap!

petrochemicals

[bodrell]

fertilizers are certainly NOT derived from petroleum

No, they're typically derived from natural gas (steam-reform to hydrogen, Haber process combines H2 and N2 to make ammonia, ammonia is either used as-is or oxidyzed to HNO3. HNO3 is chemically combined with ammonia to make ammonium nitrate or urea to make urea nitrate).

The cheapest source of methanol and ethanol are also petroleum, but I certainly don't consider those petrochemicals. You can make pretty much anything from petroleum. I could synthesize the amino acids from petroleum, then use those amino acids in a medium to grow yeast. I could use take the CO2 and water byproducts of the refinement process and give those to plants, which would produce glucose. Then I could mash up the plants, feed them to the yeast, and make 100% petrochemical beer.

If that sounds a bit ridiculous, well, that's how I interpret the assertion that fertilizer and pharmaceuticals are petrochemicals. If it doesn't come off of the cat. cracker, and doesn't have a significant hydrocarbon component, it isn't a petrochemical to me. Your definition is too broad to be really meaningful to me.

Re:petrochemicals

[zor_prime]

Well, if the vast majority of the supply of these materials is derived from petroleum, what would you call them?

If oil prices tripled tomorrow, the cost of these goods would rise proportion to their use in the production of crops, as would the cost of food.

This is the reality of agriculture in the US today. Or you are just arguing semantics?

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[Auckerman]

It's a matter of volume, not that it happens. Given a population of 6+ billion, it wouldn't take long to strip the Earth by burning everything so that we can have internal combustion engines.

Not exactly

[grahamsz]

Bear in mind that these turkey guts would probably have been landfilled.

In effect the turkeys serve as a carbon sequestering system... they absorb airborne carbon through the grain they eat, and their guts get buried and will (eventually) turn into oil.

Now if we were to start breeding turkeys specifically for this process... then it'd be zero net.

Re:Not exactly

[grahamsz]

Fortunately most of the world doesn't allow you to feed animals to themselves...

Re:Not exactly

[mortonda]

You are close... Whether the carbon came from turkeys or from underground, if we burn it, it throws the carbon into the air at the same rate. I don't see any net change. To say it another way - the depth from which the oil comes from doesn't matter. It could come from 2 inches or 2 miles... or even from -2 feet. If we burn it, it goes into the air.

Re:Not exactly

[grahamsz]

Well if the "normal" process is to breed turkeys, take the meat off them and landfill the guts, then those guts represent carbon which has been removed from the atmosphere.

If we reconvert those guts to oil and burn them again, then we'll release that carbon back into the atmosphere. While it's true that this carbon did originally come from the atmosphere, our existing process would have been to sequester it rather than release it.

So in some ways this does introduce more carbon.

Re:Not exactly

[Silburn_Luke]

Yeah but over a relatively short time (years or decades) the landfill starts seeping methane and returns the C to the atmosphere.

Some of the C might remain sequestered in the ground permanently (for values of 'permanently' suitable to the timescales our civilisation needs to be thinking over these days), but if a barrel of the gobble-gas substitutes for a barrel of diesel mined out the middle east its a net win carbon-wise.

Regards
Luke

Re:Not exactly

[grahamsz]

Fair point.

I agree it's definitely better than burning oil, but i'm not convinced that it's quite as clean as making fuel from sugar cane or soy.

The other big upside to this approach is it should minimize bio-matter going into landfills. Which will of course minimize leechate and methane production.

Beyond Thunderdome

[Mith]

So, it turns out that Mad Max was prophetic. They had refinerys to turn pig waste into fuel. So we started with turkeys, big deal.
Does this mean I can start mounting cool weapons on my car? Anyone know where I can get a good deal on a used AutoCannon-10 or maybe refurbished PPC? I'll break out my tool box...

oil from animal waste != oil pumped from earth

[GooDieZ]

Short facts on oil form animal waste.

It takes alot of enery to produce it, that's true at least.

Oil produced on this method has to be thined becouse it has greater caloric output than regular oil.
For example u cant use this oil directly in your heating, simply becouse your oven can't take such high temperatures.

The best way to make use of this oil is to enrich regular oil so you burn less of it. (Company around here uses this techniqe, and it's working)

The waste that remains from production of this oil still has about 40% of energy to cover the production (if burned).

ObBioDiesel....

[otis wildflower]

... Just chiming in to ask when there'll be a filling station in the tristate NYC area...

I suppose when zero-sulfur diesel mandates go into effect, given that biodiesel doesn't have any sulfur...

Renewable Energy from Algae

[omahajim]

"Renewable" energy has been discussed here fairly regularly. One potentially promising technology, Renewable Energy from Algae, is in fact very feasible, according to an energy conference I helped run recently.

Re:Renewable Energy from Algae

[jeff4747]

So skim off the algae, and toss it into the TDP machine.

Nothing says each of these technologies can't complement each other.

now if you REALLY wanna annoy the Saudis :-)

[clonan]

If you REALLY want to annoy the Saudis build one of these next to the pig farms.

Pigs make as much sewage as a human and many of these farms have 300,000 animals! Sewage treatment from pig farms are MAJOR environmental problems.

So we process the sewage and pig guts left over from slaughter into oil....

I wonder what Islam says about running a car fuled with ex-pig gas?

mindful.org

[Mantorp]

at the end of their post gives this "a unanimous and prolonged thumbs down". I want to know what they would rather have happen with this waste? Being dependent on oil isn't good, but turning otherwise useless waste into something useful has to be better than burying it.

I guess you could argue that turkey waste shouldn't come from factories anyway and we should all be self sufficient farmers but that's not the world we live in.

More of an irate cow actually.

[clonan]

Sort of but not really.

Mad cow disease is caused by cows eating COWS (or sheep). The US has banned canabilistic feed. But remember that most diseases are species specific and by feeding turkeys to cows and cows to turkeys you prevent the spread of disease as efectivly as turning them into oil.

But remember that by doing this you will make the cost of feed go up which will make the cost of meat go up...

Re:More of an irate cow actually.

[slashdot-me]

And yet, feeding cows to humans appears to transmit BSE...

Re:More of an irate cow actually.

[tm2b]

most diseases are species specific

Most are. However, the prion-based spongiform encephalopathies are not, and that's the problem. BSE for cows, vJCD or kuru for humans, there are obvserved cases in squirrels and pigs, as well. This is nasty stuff, and is going to surface any time we create a feedback loop.

Two Cost Factors

[mdielmann]

There are two cost factors that are really afffecting them. Remedying either or both of them could turn the tide.

The first is their exclusion from a tax break for biodiesel. This looks like a gross oversight which they may be able to get corrected. The article mentions this as being equivalent to a $1/gal. reduction in production costs, which would be significant.

The second is the cost of raw materials. Animal wastes are accounting for $15 to $20 per barrel. If they can source a raw material that is either free or they can charge to process, half or more of their cost difference vs. traditional diesel will be removed. The other option would be to remove the current primary market for animal byproducts, use in animal feed. This increases the viability in Europe.

If they could get both of those changes enacted, their cost per barrel could be near zero, certainly competitive with traditional sources.

Just a note

[Andy Dodd]

The article linked to states:
$30-40/ton for input materials
2 tons of offal per barrel

Translates to $60-80 per barrel for raw materials ALONE. The technology is apparently pretty damned good.

Note that in many other countries (such as Europe), using such waste products for feedstock has been banned, and producers of that waste have to PAY to get rid of it.

In short, if CWT opened a plant in Europe, they would not only not need to pay for their raw input materials, they would actually GET PAID to take those materials, in addition to the ability to sell the oil produced from the process.

It's all in the article... While CWT made a bet on the price of their raw materials and lost in the case of their first plant, their strategy is to begin refining things they KNOW they can get for free or even get paid to process. (See the comments in the article about sewage, and poultry offal in Europe.)

Re:Just a note

[Eraser_]

Something tells me if they opened a plant in an area that has to dispose of the waste they would not get paid to take it, as it now has value. You pay someone to haul away your trash, however, they pay you to take away your cans. (Pretend for a moment, however around here I can take aluminum cans and be paid per pound)

The instant there is a demand for that product it has attained a monetary value. It would be stupid to pay to have the waste removed at that point. I would bet the waste makers would either sell their waste cheap (how much to pay a trucker to haul it from farm A to plant B?) to free. What would likely happen is the plants would purchase the waste at a price that would match petroleum oil per barrel refined.

soylent diesel

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

the ability to turn essentially anything organic (even people - soylent diesel, anyone? :) ) into oil

damn... that's an idea that could only come from a sick, twisted mind.

i likes.

Re:soylent diesel

[shawb]

Remember...

It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Ethics for Tomorrow"

(Taken from Alpha Centauri, of course)

Re:soylent diesel

[MaDeR]

...and technology is of course "Synthetic Fossil Fuels! (Level six, type exploration, if remember correctly)

Re:soylent diesel

[True Grit]

(Level six, type exploration, if remember correctly)

You know, you hard-core gamers really scare me sometimes.

:)

People are complaining

[halltk1983]

... about the prices. You could have a ompany make the oil and refine it, built on / near an old landfill (lots of free/cheap materials) have the trash companies still come and PAY to drop off the trash (better than free) and then put gas pumps in an expanding range around the landfill (now a refinery) and sell the gas for a reasonable profit. Then let the dollar decide. If people in the are want to support cleaning up thier land, they will buy the gas. Add this to the relatively short transport distance, and the possibility of a tax break due to the fact that the city no longer has to pay for the landfills, and you could probably be close enough to competitive that I for one would be willing to spend the difference, if not actually make it cheaper.

Your Shit / My Stuff

[Doc Ruby]

NYC pays on the order of $168M for five year contracts to the mafioso Merco corporation, for "disposal" in Texas. That's about 750Ktons, which is over $2000:ton, that NYC pays for disposal. Even skipping the mafia "administration" layer, NYC sewage would be much better recycled into oil and water than into dirty profits for mobsters and Texans.

RECYCLING

[cryptochrome]

This is a great idea.

This is not making energy from nothing. This is capturing energy that would have normally gone to waste. Even better, it is capturing the energy in a highly useful form, oil.

You are correct that although what goes out may come right back in, energy will be gradually lost in the process. You still need a net input of energy. That could come out of the ground as it does now, in which case we would only be slowing down our mad dash to turn all the buried carbon in the world back into carbon dioxide... but it could also just as easily, perhaps even MORE easily, come from other sources. The most obvious being... random biomass. Not even something fancy like rapeseed, whatever you can lay your hands one. Grass, weeds, trash trees. That damned acacia or kudzu or duckweed or cedar that's ruining your local biome. Easily available everywhere, except maybe in the desert. Stuff that doesn't need fertilizer or pesticides or care or energy to produce, just sunlight, water, CO2, and dirt, and produces O2 in the process.

The "hydrogen economy" is a red herring. Hydrogen is a total bitch to store and transport, requires specialized equipment to use, and the energy needed to make it has to come from somewhere. It's only advantage is not producing carbon dioxide at the source. Diesel, OTOH, is ideal to store and use, and has a huge infrastructure built around it. Make that biodiesel, and it becomes renewable. And that is essentially what this technology is producing from waste. Add in some purposefully grown material to make up for losses, and you'll never need to import another barrel.

There's no need to worry about CO2 as a byproduct, if in the larger cycle you take in as much as you put out. If you no longer have to dig carbon out of the ground, you no longer have to worry about putting CO2 in the air.

You might want to build a solar thermal one though. After all, this process requires energy mainly in the form of heat, and a field of mirrors can capture solar thermal energy far better than a field of plants can. Geothermal, where applicable, would work pretty well too. Nukes, which are also thermal, would work, but they're not worth the hassle.

Not only does it produce useful energy carriers like oil and gas, it can also separate out pure carbon (useful for many purposes) and solids which are a mix of metals and minerals. Useful, partially refined minerals and metals which would require less energy to turn them into useful materials than the stuff you dug out of the ground to make the original material in the first place. The oil and gas themselves also make for a good feedstock for various petrochemicals, namely plastics.

That waste can including toxic or hazardous waste. Stuff we normally would have spent energy to dispose of and had to build a landfill for. Bonus!

Hey, you can also use this to produce relatively clean water that can of course be purified further. Since a natural candidate for this technology is wastewater, you'll probably be producing a lot of it too. Double bonus!

I can sum this up in one word. RECYCLING. Not today's bullshit recycling where only aluminum cans can be efficiently reused, because aluminum is so hideously energy intensive (you'd be better off buying plastic bottles and throwing them away energy-wise). Your garbage becomes an important resource. We're talking all types of waste, human, industrial, post-consumer, agricultural, toxic, everything.

Economically viable, universal RECYCLING, that takes care of dangerous materials to boot.

Hell, if it works as advertised, we'll be digging into our landfills instead of virgin soil for resources.

Re:RECYCLING

[TheKidWho]

Umm, the energy comes from the sun... thank you try again.

Re:RECYCLING

[Silburn_Luke]

Which is what he said in the 3rd paragraph.

Regards
Luke

Re:RECYCLING

[TheKidWho]

No he didn't. At least not what im trying to imply which is the "net" energy comes from the sun which gets converted into chemical energy via photosynthesis.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[jeff4747]

Forgetting that you can directly use the waste of those 6+ billion people to make oil. As the human population grows, it would increase the availablity of the 'raw material' for such a plant.

Not to mention there's millions of square miles of farmland in the world that's fallow right now, as well as all the waste products from agribusiness and non-agribusiness. Heck, toss that old PC into the machine and get something useful out of it.

Usually?

[Kwil]

(Usually after colliding with a vehicle traveling at 60MPH.)

Do this often, do you?

Tires

[tsotha]

So when I come out in the morning and find my car on blocks I'll be puttin' my tires back in the gastank instead of buying them back at the swap meet. Great.

Re: Liposuction

[CmdrPorno]

Liposuction, even high-volume liposuction, is no panacea for clinical obesity. High-volume lipo can remove 15-20 pounds of fat, tops. I don't have any personal experience, but bariatric surgery is probably a better option as an obesity "cure" than liposuction.

There's your mistake

[Acy James Stapp]

They're not spending billions to ensure the world's oil supply. They're spending billions to ensure their kickbacks.

NY Sewage

[WindBourne]

Currently, NYC sewage is dried and place on western farmer's fields. Quite honestly, we have more than enough available via Denver, Lincoln, and most certainly, places like dallas, houston, austin, etc.

Instead, of shipping crap to the west, the east coast can now make money and lower their own costs.

nitrogen fixing

[bodrell]

It requires a lot of petroleum to make nitrogen fertilizers. Yes, the nitrogen comes form the air, but the hydrogen (see "Haber-Bosch Process") comes from petroleum. I agree with you that saying it's derived from petroleum is like saying aluminum cans are derived from electricity.

I'm glad you agree with my basic sentiment (and I like your example of aluminum cans). Of course, hydrogen can easily be made from renewable resources (hydrolysis), and legumes (well, symbiants that live in legume roots) have been fixing elemental nitrogen to ammonia for longer than recorded history. Just because we found a cheap, environmentally-unsound way to make a product from oil doesn't mean it must come from oil.

Re:That idea is being challenged [by abiotic oil].

[Yartrebo]

The number of geologists who believe in abiotic oil is directly proportional to how much they are paid to express those views.

No halfway respectable geologist believes in that, just like no respectable biologist believes in creationism (or intelligent design).

There's just too much evidence in favor of oil being organic, and too much evidence against it not being.

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Radical Rad]

Excellent idea. My spider-sense tells me that your math is off by about a magnitude though. Even so, If the city could save $200 bucks per ton and turn that into 2 barrels per ton (assuming its in the same ballpark as turkey guts) which could be burned in city vehicles then they would be about $300 per ton ahead of the game. I think you should email your suggestion to Fortune Magazine,CWT, plus whoever is currently mayor of that stinking cesspool at the mouth of the Hudson.

Barely makes a dent

[dr_davel]

Biodiesel and other biomass technologies are valuable and worth researching; there will be a point in the none-too-distant future when they make sense economically.

But the BIG problem is one of scale. In the US, on average, each person consumes over 10 pounds of gasoline in his/her car each day, and more than that through the other energy we consume. This is a staggeringly large and unsustainable amount of consumption. The US does NOT create enough biomass to match this, even if it were technically feasible to do so.

That said, biomass fuels will help. A little bit. But the scale of our consumption is a big ass problem that we'll have to open our eyes to some day.

wait a minute....

[ksheff]

so you mean to tell me instead of using petroleum to make gasoline, diesel fuel, etc, we could be using it to make booze? If that's the case, why not take the turkey guts and then refine them to make Wild Turkey? That would sell for quite a bit more than $80/barrel.

How useful is this oil?

[AbRASiON]

I'm curious,

Does anyone actually know what kind of oil they get from this process, what condition is it in? is it suitable for _ALL_ of the current uses we currently have for oil (plastics, chemicals, fuel etc?)

Also, as much as I fear peak oil and so on, it really would be nice if we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as well as soon as possible, considering the freak weather happening at the moment in some locations (no nothing dramatic enough for movies but certainly some "odd" weather is occuring in the news of late)

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Doc Ruby]

Your spider-sense is good: The article cites "[dumping] 1.5 billion pounds of sewage sludge over five years" and "a [dumping] contract valued at $168 million dollars over five years". That's $168M for 750Mtons, which is $224:ton. Thanks for setting me straight - I'm advising the NYC Council's Tech committee again tomorrow. BTW - that "C" in NYC doesn't stand for cesspool. Our stinking cesspool, as the article makes clear, is Texas. Maybe you're thinking of New Jersey...

animal right

[oringo]

1. I wonder how long it would take the animal-rights group to start protesting outside their company parking lot. 2. The initial investment and maintenance costs still seems high, but further integration efforts might change the picture

Re:Lunchtime for physics challenged

[EntropyMan]

The 3 Laws of Thermodynamics 1) You can't win. 2) You can't break even. 3) You can't quit the game. Also (for those of us who like analogies): 1) There's no such thing as a free lunch. 2) There's no such thing as a lunch that's even worth what you paid for it. 3) You must have lunch.

What???

[LWATCDR]

"Biodiesel from plant stocks in particular is some three and a half times more efficient than petrodiesel because it utilizes solar energy..."
Okay how is it more efficient? It may be better for the enviroment or even better for nation security but how is it more efficent than petrodiesel?

Re:What???

[satans_advocate]

Okay how is it more efficient? It may be better for the enviroment or even better for nation security but how is it more efficent than petrodiesel?

In oil wells that are pressure negative (ie, you need to pump something in for the oil to come out), like in the US, it costs US$15 a barrel to get the stuff out of the ground.

Then there is the cost of refining the stuff into petroleum, about another 50c to $1 per barrel.

Distribution costs are probably the same for both fules.

SO .... if you can produce biodeisel for less than $15-$16 per barrel, then it is cheaper than petrodeisel. Otherwise, it is not.

Re:What???

[LWATCDR]

When doing the calculations do not forget the other costs of diesel. Right now most biodiesel is made from waste oil. A lot of the growing and processing costs are already covered by the first sale of the oil. If you start growing just for biodiesel then I think you will see the cost go up.
Don't get me wrong I think biodiesel is great. I would like to see more of it for sale and all waste oil converted to biodiesel.
I can even see someplaces only allowing biodesel. A lot of lakes and rivers would be much better off if boats where required to use biodiesel instead of gas or regular diesel.

Re:What???

[satans_advocate]

Probably the best source of biodeisel (in terms of cost and availability) is used cooking oil. God only knows how many millions of gallons of the stuff that MacDonalds throws away each year, not to mention KFC, Hungry Jacks etc etc.

Cooking oil is good because there are several ways you can use it as deisel.
One is an onboard 'cracker' which basically heats the pure vegetable oil before sending it to the engine.
The second is increasing the cetane level by adding ethanol or methanol. Only really works in very high compressing engines.
The third is the conventional method of cracking the oil with (IIRC) caustic soda and some distillation process, details of which escape me at the moment, but are freely available on the web.

If you start growing just for biodiesel then I think you will see the cost go up.

I'm not sure if we would even consider that starting out. We already create oil for cooking burgers/chicken and so forth, so in the short term, we would just use the existing supply.

However, in the long term, we really need to consider that there is more energy to be gained in power efficiency than there is in the ground, and the great thing about efficiency is that it only has a capital cost, not an ongoing cost.

OPEC knows this all too well, which is why they will not let the price of Oil go too high. The last time OPEC did that saw the greatest increase in energy intensity in the United States in over 100 years, a level from which it has slowly declined to the present day. And as long as you have Oilmen in the Whitehouse, that won't change.

So if it came right down to the wire, the current production of vegetable oil, plus a fourfold increase in energy efficiency would probably meet 70-80% of the current energy requirements. The rest would need to be supplied from something else.

Re:What???

[LWATCDR]

"So if it came right down to the wire, the current production of vegetable oil, plus a fourfold increase in energy efficiency would probably meet 70-80% of the current energy requirements."

A four fold increase. Not likely. You might get the average car up to 40mpg but 50 or 60 would be next to impossible. 80 for an average? Not likely. Then you have to ember that it is not just cars but trucks, trains, and power plants. Large trucks and trains are already pretty efficient. Power plants are also pretty efficient. There is no real way make them four times as efficient. For electrical power use there could be some savings but you have all the old appliances and even old homes that would cost a HUGE amount to upgrade in both money and in energy. What is the energy payback on a new fridge VS a 4 year old one? To replace all the cars and appliances that we have right now with more efficient ones would use a HUGE amount of energy and money.
Now what do I think we should do. I do not know but what I do is this.
1. My wife and I take one car to work.
2. We walk to lunch.
3. We combine trips.
4. We have a car that gets good gas mileage. Not great but over 20MPG.
5. When an light bulb burns out we replace it with a compact florescent. BTW just the fact that they do not burn out often makes them worth the extra money to me. Add up that they use less power and put out less heat they are great IMHO.

Re:What???

[satans_advocate]

A four fold increase. Not likely. You might get the average car up to 40mpg but 50 or 60 would be next to impossible.

I have posted on this subject before, so I won't include the details. I'm not sure if you are schilling for the automobile industry here, but not only is 60mpg possible for a standard four door sedan, it has already been done ... twice. There is absolutely no technological impediment to making the average car get 60 in the city and 100 on the freeway. The only impediment is capital investment (new) and existing capital amortization.

Power plants are also pretty efficient. There is no real way make them four times as efficient.

Wrong again. There is and they have (just not for very many).

old appliances and even old homes that would cost a HUGE amount to upgrade in both money and in energy

Yes, but that is not efficiency, it's capital investment.

5. When an light bulb burns out we replace it with a compact florescent.

In the US only there are more than 50 large powerplants to be saved in changing incandescants to compacts alone. And that's just ONE change.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[aXis100]

The only truely renewable energy source available is the sun.

And where do you think oil comes from? Oil is nature's solar battery - plants producing carbohyrdates from sunlight, air and water. If we boost the production of oil from growing the plants ourselves, then I dont see a problem.

Soilent Black

[MichaelPenne]

(see the below post about what would happen to a person falling into this system...)

Re:Economical? Brilliant

[immagain]

I must nod in deference to thermodynamics as I point out that a primary energy source is being forgotten: the animal feed. Sure, use turkey guts or sewage or whatever, but you're ultimately harnessing solar energy through photosynthesis. Turkeys eat (I presume) grain of some sort as part of their feed. The hydrocarbons (err, carbohydrates) that make up much of their offal came about through photosynthesis, whereby the polymer chains were elongated and molecular bonds formed. This process just breaks those bonds down into a more readily ignitable compound: oil. The sun already did the heavy lifting (and pulled carbon out of the air to do it). No energy is created in this process; molecules are re-arranged such that they will more readily release the energy already stored therein. An absoultely brilliant solution, in my book. I could be wrong.

Re:That idea is being challenged [by abiotic oil].

[njh]

Until we run out of breathable air, anyway. Remember that CO2 is poisonous in relatively small quantities.

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Radical Rad]

Oh, you're from New York. Well please accept my apology. I shouldn't take a poke at a whole city just because I've run into a few a-holes from there. That is fantastic that you actually have the ear of somebody in the city government. I hope you can at least convince them to investigate this possiblity because I think it's a great idea.

If it were done as a municipal project just imagine NYC getting paid $200/ton to take other cities sludge and turn it into bio-fuel. The taxpayers would sure like that, wouldn't they? And something like that could help build a new reputation for New York as a clean, modern metropolis. Plus the mobsters could toss dead bodies in with the sludge instead of leaving them float down the East River. So that's a bonus.

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Doc Ruby]

It takes a lot more than calling NYC a "stinking cesspool" to actually rile a New Yorker But we expect that out-of-towners will be nice enough to apologize, without getting too paranoid about why ;). Advising the City Council != opportunity for progress, but at least it's something. That $200:ton is for a mafioso carting company cutting a deal between Giuliani's NYC and Bush's Texas, so it's neither 1> representative of any subsequent deal, especially a sensible one, nor 2> going away any time soon. But at least we can bang our heads against the right wall.

Intellectual Property Rights

[whitis]

It would be a bad thing if the oil industry acquired exclusive rights to this technology. It would be even worse if a single oil company did so. In the latter case, only a single oil company would switch to waste/biomass and the other companies would have to continue to pump oil to stay in business.

As long as the technology remains availible to all, though involvement of the oil companies would be a good thing, at least in the short term. Who else has the capital and the experience to deploy this on a large scale? Also, the second stage of the process looks suspiciously like an oil refinery so it may be possible to "bolt" the first stage onto existing refineries converting them to the ability to run off of waste and biomass.

In the long term, however, it would be desireable to have many smaller plants scattered throughout the country. This would greatly reduce the cost and energy consumption associated with transporting the waste, biomass, and finished products not to mention the hazards of spills. Smaller installations could be placed at each landfill, sewage treatment plant, medical waste facility (medical waste and mad cows might need a separate plant because the grinder would become contaminated), farm coop, large poultry/pig/beef plants, oil storage facilities, and other strategic locations.

So, it could be important to have legislation restricting exclusive ownership of the technology or at least a commitment to use existing anti-trust laws. This is one case where eminent domain would be justified.

green gasoline

[idlake]

Green gasoline--it's PEOPLE.

Vapoorize

[Linuxathome]

Reading the following excerpt of the mindfully.com article, I was intrigued at how this thermal depolymerization process was invented. It reminded me so much of how VaPOOrize was invented (go ahead, follow that Dreamworks link, it's funny, plus Dreamworks supports MPAA anyway, so slashdotting it does a body good):

That's the challenge that Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor who lives in Rantoul, Illinois, confronted in. the late 1980s. He says he "had a flash" of insight about how to improve the basic ideas behind another inventor's waste-reforming process. "The prototype I saw produced a heavy, burned oil," recalls Baskis. "I drew up an improvement and filed the first patents." He spent the early 1990s wooing investors and, in 1996, met Appel, a former commodities trader. "I saw what this could be and took over the patents," says Appel, who formed a partnership with the Gas Technology Institute and had a demonstration plant up and running by 1999.

So where does all this offal go? It just disappears, "up and out" like magic? Put in s#$t in and out comes sweet nectar of the gods. Sounds too good to be true if you ask me---unless there's a bioprocess in there somewhere or a collection of energy from solar or geothermal heat or something along those lines, the amount of energy put in to do this TDP thing sounds too costly (think "Conservation of Energy").

Why not make a deal with city dumps?

[Archimboldo]

Heck, they might even pay you to haul away stuff dumped there.

Totally insignificant

[Ancient_Hacker]

Let's do the math: we use about 1000 million tons of oil a year.

We grow about 300 mllion turkeys a year. Assume 30 pounds/turkey, 30% guts, 20% of that extracted as oil, crunch crunch crunch, turkey guts will produce a bit under 0.03% of our oil needs. Turkey poop you say? Turkeys generate about 3 pounds of poop per pound of body weight, so that only improvs things by a factor of 3, up to 0.1% of our needs.

About as close to insignificant as you can get.

Even if you found TEN TIMES more waste from other animals, we're still not talking about anything significant. Less than one year's energy growth.

This is an excellent example...

[n54]

...of technology (from the USA at that, though I know China has tried somewhat similar stuff) being the solution rather than lip service (like Kyoto).

About 80$ and that's when it is operating within undesirable settings (not getting biofuel incentives as well as high material cost) in addition to being a nascent technology (30 years is nothing) without any economics of scale (yet). The price could drop like a stone within the next fifteen years, no wonder Forbes (as well as the DoE btw (read the article)) got interested.

All you who consider yourself green and liberal and whatnot and haven't yet opened your eyes should do so now: the combination of business and technology will be the solution, not the problem (of course you can still be critical, just drop the naysaying). Some of your leaders have already realized and gone pro-nuclear (just an example) and this is even better.

Flame me all you want, it's still true :)

From TFA

[tehdaemon]

"Appel has lined up federal grant money to help build demonstration plants to process chicken offal and manure in Alabama and crop residuals and grease in Nevada."

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[tehdaemon]

"You NEED to take the waste of the burning and turn it into something can be burned again."

And plants do precisely that. Using the sun's power no less. The only difficulty is to get enough plants so this happens as fast as we burn, and still grow enough food etc. This may not be a simple task, but I believe it is doable.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[tdi1]

arggh!

It's the scalability that makes all of this a losing proposition. The amount of energy that each of us uses every day is significant when you start looking at the amount of biomass necessary to sustain that usage.

Let's do a calculation. If you get 75% of the waste converted to diesel (same as #2 fuel oil), then it takes 9.46 pounds of waste for each gallon of fuel. If a typical person uses 20 gallons a week, then you've got roughly 190 lbs waste needed just to produce this energy.

Add to that the fuel required to heat your home. That's another 1000 gallons/year, so now we're up another 182 lbs/week. If you're generous, let's say that the fuel efficiency doubles and homes go to solar heating for 75% of their needs. Now you're at 190/2 + 182/4 = 140lbs/week => 15 gallons/oil per person for driving and heating. Multiply this by 294 million people in the us, divide by 4 to be generous and say that each family will use this amount of fuel and you get a little over 1 Billion gallons of oil per week.

If you perfectly recycled everything you ate and threw away, you'd still fall far short of energy parity.

And those fields? Of corn/hemp/soybeans/turkeys? You're still looking at needing many pounds per week per person. How many pounds of net energy matter can an acre produce per year?

Any way you slice it, we're living on borrowed energy. Those billion barrels of oil per week supply lots of energy compared with fields of turkeys and other biomass.

The only sustainable long term solutions are:
1 - greatly reduce our consumption of non-renewable energy sources
2 - recycle 100% of all waste matter
3 - use 100% renewable sources for almost all power sources (home power, ground transportation)

Body Disposal

[SeanDuggan]

Check out Stiff : the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach. (I'd try to make a link to Amazon, but I'm not sure how to build one that doesn't refer back to me.) There are a lot more options for your body than just burying it. Personally, I think the option of being flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, then broken up with ultrasonics is an interesting idea. It's a heck of a lot more likely to not leave crunchy bits than cremation is, less polluting too.

Re:Shame..

[JustNiz]

>> Now, if you pull C02 out of the air

Ahh well there's the trick. I don't see any companies currently doing that, do you? they're all hoping nature will do that part for them at a fast enough rate.

>> does not "hurt the atmosphere"
Oh, so if i throw acid on you, but then wash it all off after, you'll be pefectly ok then?

Mr. Burns return to wealth

[Charles Jo]

Reminds me of the Simpson's episode where Mr. Burns loses everything and then Lisa helps him regain his confidence with recycling cans but he rises to the top of the capitalism game by recycling animals.

Charles
www.charlesjo.com

Mindfully.org missed the point.

[Anderlan]

The Mindfully.org article, in the third link, says this about the May03 Discover Magazine article it reprints:

Mindfully.org note: While it does have the bright side of getting rid of a lot of trash, burning the oil from the process is about the same as burning any oil. The combustion waste of burning the byproduct of this technology is definitely toxic and most likely causes global warming. If burning petroleum causes global warming, then so does this.

If it were used, it would prolong oil supplies. But then, we shouldn't be burning oil in the first place.

Beyond it being a get-rich-quick scheme, it is a cure for a symptom, not the problem(s). We need to combat the problems of this world. Rather than compounding the errors of the past, we need to see things for what they really are and deal with them. Adding technology does not solve anything in a sustainable manner.

They are almost completely wrong. Here was my response:

I have to disagree with your rating of Brian Appel's Changing World Technologies, as appended to the May 2003 Discover.com article about it. You give it a unanimous prolonged thumbs down. This shows a lack of knowledge about the petroleum products industry.

The oil produced by the process patented by CWT is invaluable as a source to produce plastic products, even though, Godwilling, we will move to more efficient and less environmentally impactive energy sources than burning hydrocarbons (produced from oil).

Plastic is an excellent material. The word plastics refers to an entire world, not limited to what most people think of as plastic. It may not be best stated as even a class of materials but a currently very developed system of manufacturing a particular class of materials. The problem it has is that it is not cheap to recycle, so it gets put back into the environment. While it is almost never toxic, it still causes problems because of its natural physical properties--its impermeability, and all the other properties that make it useful to us. All of those properties make it bad outside of its intended setting, and in some random place in the biological environment. It is usually very tailored to a precise function.

The other problem with plastics is that they are derived from petroleum--oil. This impacts the environment as it must be removed from the ground. They are also derived from various other chemicals, like, well, like the chemicals described resulting from CWT's processing of plastics and other various organic and mixed feedstocks. These chemicals are now procured from a wide variety of processes, some of them *extremely* deliterious to the environment.

CWT's system is the BEST way I have seen to recycle what society depends on. The replacements for current plastic products are often worse for the environment than plastics themselves, if you take the whole manufacturing system into account. We will always depend on these products. Now we can do so ad infinitum.

We will ween ourselves from consuming our precious oxygen and heating our environment to produce usable energy. This story isn't even tangential to that change in my mind though.

We will alway use plastics in one form or another. This is how we will do it without destroying anything. That's the good story about CWT.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[jeff4747]

This process does most of #2 in your list. That's why we're excited about it.

Biomass? Toss it in. Old PCs? Toss it in. Sewage? Yep. Hazardous waste? Sure.

About the only thing that wouldn't work, in theory, would be something that's primarily built of inorganic materials such as a big hunk of steel or aluminum....which can be recycled by other means.

Obviously this process is not the end-all of energy production, and it's never meant to be. It may be a major step forward in recycling, and provide a 0-net-carbon fuel source for all the stuff we can't engineer away from oil (such as plastics, old vehicles).

Don't forget we could use dead humans as well...

[Smegma4U]

"Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water."

I know some people would object, but dead bodies could be used for this as well - this would not only help with the energy problem, but also with the issue many major cities are currently having where they don't have enough room to bury all their dead.

For those who don't wish to be buried, you could simply be "oil-ized". Not only do you avoid the cost of cremation/casket/burial, but you could get oil out of the process.

Just imagine heating your home with the remains of Ol' Uncle Earl :-)

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Big_Breaker]

Our mayor is Michael Bloomberg and he is rather progressive - certainly not a traditional Republican. I would send the idea to his office.

Bloomberg is also a billionaire, unlike Guliani and Bush, and doesn't need to make backroom deals to fund his political ambitions. PS Bush's dad is super rich be he isn't - at least not yet.

BIOX has a better process

[Mannerism]

The most interesting biodiesel process I've seen so far is Biox's. Their process is actually cost-competitive with existing petroleum.

Re:BIOX has a better process

[haruchai]

As a resident of Ontario, I have high hopes for the BIOX process to succeed. It would be nice to have widely available, affordable biodiesel.
Now what's needed is a wider range of passenger diesel vehicles.

Re:There is no unlimited supply.

[tdi1]

I agree that it's a great thing if it works as advertised. From the sounds of it, it beats just about all the alternatives. So don't get me wrong, I'm all for this technology and feel that the governments of the world should fund this aggressively to get it developed.

The main argument I have is with the sentiment expressed that it alone can solve the world's energy problems.

Argon

[Jru Hym]

Here at our multi-billion dollar refinery in Fairbanks, we're extracting 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil each day from teenagers' faces

Re:Your Shit / My Stuff

[Doc Ruby]

Bloomberg - my mayor too - is like traditional Republicans in many states where Democrats don't have a chance to get elected, so no one ever runs as a Democrat. Like Bernie Sanders, now I-VT. Bloomberg's Republican reregistration gained him Giuliani's endorsement, ensuring his election. He's certainly not the kind of fascist we had in Giuliani, who lowered the bar almost as much as Bush has. But Bush isn't a traditional Republican, either - those old Republicans never wanted to destroy the government, but Bush does. And Bloomberg has been one of the biggest mayoral boosters of Bush, alongside his chosen bedmates Giuliani and Pataki (who are the country's biggest Bush fundraisers).

Bloomberg's billionaire status has proven to be irrelevant to keeping him free of political ambitions and allegiences. Just like Schwarzenegger. They are just as greedy for consuming and risking other people's money as any merely rich politician - that's how you get to be, and stay, rich.

But Bloomberg isn't too bad. He hasn't pushed Giuliani's unnecessary/mobster water treatment plant proposal through. OTOH, from my work directly with the NYC City Council, it's clear that "sending the idea to the mayor's office" will produce exactly nothing. Any idea needs a constituency and a plan for persistent pursuit of its goals, and compromises. Politics is a process. Sure, they're lacking good and new ideas, but the bottleneck is horses to trade, and access of individuals with power to others with power. So the most productive use of the idea is to merely promote it among geeks, and help the idea's time come. Nothing stronger than an idea whose time has come, especially if you're too busy with other, better risks to make it your personal crusade.

good stuff...

[alizard]

More slashdot discussions should look like this.

with respect to waste streams... what about sewage?

With respect to arable land, who says it has to be arable? The following quote discusses the sewage into algae biomass oil research Mike Briggs is doing:

You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here [unh.edu] This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in 1998 and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then. You can find the DOE reports from the UNH link. Biomass algae is a more efficient biodiesel source than food grains, etc. because a single-cell organism doesn't require wasting energy and nutrients on making the rest of the plant (stalks, roots, etc.) and grows in hours, not months. The difference between food grain biomass and algae biomass is the difference between 1-3 barrel / acre / year and 91-360 barrels / acre / year. (see the UNH site for detail) Biodiesel you can burn in a car / truck / plane.

Using algae biomass as a practical energy solution requires removing a couple of process bottlenecks, one being growing the algae while capturing methane generated in its growth cheaply (the DOE solusion used open raceway ponds), and getting the oil out of the algae cheaply. You won't see much about possible solutions for a while because in order to get research funding, anybody with what he thinks are the right answers is discussing them on an NDA basis with potential investors or team members. (based on comments I've seen from researchers... and because I'm looking for money myself in this area)

With respect to solar, neither of you brought up an obvious point. What happens when the sun goes down? ,p.A homeowner on the grid can choose either battery backup (since you've priced this, you know this means REAL BIG batteries) or grid backup, buy power when the rates are low.

The choices are more limited with respect to supplying utility grade power:

• very large-scale storage
• a worldwide electrical grid
• a solar power satellite network

I favor the solar power satellite solution, since JP Aerospace appears to be on the edge of success with their blimp-to-orbit space transportation solution, which promises orders-of-magnitude reductions in the price-per-kilogram for boosting payloads into orbit to less than what NASA says on their solar power satellite project site is required to make a SPS project feasible.

With respect to solar cells themselves, I am not at all certain about whether or not the real problem in getting the cost down in this application is best done through new types of solar cells or through more economical packaging of existing devices. Wafer-scale cells with arrays of cells photolithographed onto them, automated laser testing to mask out defective cells just might reduce costs quite a bit. Or not, this is not my field and I'm not really equipped to run the numbers. But I suspect an effective 100% yield on very high production volumes certainly wouldn't hurt.

The other possibility that occurs to me for reducing the cost of a solar power satellite array is to replace NASA's rigid structure setup with solar cell array modules strung on cables combined with microwave transmitters to make very large phased-array antenna systems to ship the power back without having to carry it back to a central power nexus and separate antenna system. The central control nexus would gather the physical location of the cell arrays and instruct the array transmitters as phase-control information. Not saying this is THE answer, just suggesting that thinking outside NASA's box might be in order here.

The URLs for the NASA project, etc. are on the page in my sig.

Re:good stuff...

[gessel]

You bring up good points.

First, let me cop to my impulse to dismiss breathless press release news. The depolymerization technology is cool. What offends me is the "it'll save the world singlehandledly" hyperventilation that post-wired science journalists seem to think is essential to selling the story.

It won't, but neither would solar power alone. And there was a time, not so very long ago, that solar power advocates got press by promising to solve all of humanities social problems and cure acne with a few flakes of silicon. Some still do, but they don't end up in Fortune.

I generally like the orbiting solar platform concept, not because it makes sense, but because it would serve to increase spending on space research. It's really not practically necessary and the advocates tend to distort numbers in their advocacy, viz Smally's talk at the Army of the Future conference in FL in 2003, who promoted orbiting and Lunar platforms by claiming that terrestrial solar would cause problematic albedo effects (a claim 2 orders of magnitude out of reality).

Still the cost of solar becomes stratospheric, literally, if you add launch costs. If solar panels could be continuously fabricated out of Lunar materials, it would (in the rather longer term) be more practical. And fun. And really, really cool.

Solar cell costs will come down dramatically with volume, just the same as everything else does. Imagine having a machine shop build you a car from scratch - every little part - using general purpose equipment. As continuous fabrication lines come up, solar panels will become very inexpensive.

But, even so, it's not a complete solution. If I were in charge of energy policy, I'd:

Build large scale pilot plants (solar, and, OK, depolymerization) to meet all federal energy needs from domestic sources. This is of obvious strategic value and would protect our interests economically as well as militarily. I would encourage technology transfer to the private sector, but keep federal production on-line to enforce price pressure against private industry.

I'd build a hydrogen distribution system, with hydrogen generated by many means, including solar hydrolysis. This is one solution to "what to do when the sun sets." The calculations I used for the total energy consumption and solar availability are 24/7, year round. But they do not include the efficiency losses for storing energy for night time use (for which I couldn't find any supporting data, i.e. power consumption as a function of time and weather and lattitude, though pieces of that data are available).

A complete answer would include social reorganization to cities and towns that encourage public rail transportation, the elimination of suburban subsidies, the elimination of subsidies that support big-box stores and other "parking lot" retail, elimination of subsidies that encourage companies to locate outside of urban centers, etc. Ill-informed pseudo-libertarian types typically argue that such restructuring is morally suspect government interference in the preferred social order, but that's just not true: the current suburban/car culture was entirely manufactured for military and economic reasons and is completely unnatural. Even the general desire for a "white picket fence and yard in the suburbs" is merely the result of propaganda from the '50s which served to justify strategic roadways to protect in the event of a massive invasion. The goal would be to shift the energy required for transportation to modes more efficient and amenable to electrification than private cars, which would both reduce total energy consumption and make transportation more amenable to renewable resources.

I do not believe that nuclear waste is a trivial issue, nor that we can leave it for mythically inventive future alchemists to magically convert to gold (and I was course 22). But breeder reactors do represent a serious energy source, roughly 3X the total known hydrocarbon reserves. Standard US style therm

Re:As long as Bush and his cronies are in charge..

[Silburn_Luke]

Are you ok with a 60% increase in your gas prices?

Are you? There's a limited supply of the black stuff and as it gets rarer the price will go up. You stateside guys need to be doing things about your addiction to oil now if you want to avoid a nasty bout of cold turkey later in the century.

Regards
Luke

Re:offal as fertilizer

[Migraineman]

On Maryland's Eastern Shore, chicken farming is probably the biggest industry. They've got waaaayy too much offal as a result. They already use it to grow the feed for the chickens, but there's a huge amount that just washes into the Chesapeake Bay. It's uneconomical to truck it elsewhere - transportation costs too much. Having a TD plant locally would fix a number of problems, and would probably pay for itself. Granted, that won't be the case everywhere.

Re:offal as fertilizer

[TykeClone]

I think that the same can be said for any livestock confinement. Chickens, hogs, cattle - poop is poop. The trick is to get rid of it in a useful way.

If the manure can be applied as (cheap) fertilizer - it's a win/win situation. If not, then TD is a great answer.

peta anyone?

[xpyr]

Well if we do end up using this kind of oil, members of PETA are gonna get pissed. It means they can no longer drive cars that use any kind of fossil fuel now as they'll be going against their very beliefs. Same thing with vegans.