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Purdue Makes Trash To Electricity Generator
musicon writes "A group of scientists at Purdue University have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper, and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power. It could also have widespread civilian applications in the future. Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."
Wake me when they invent the Flux Capacitor.
So this takes WASTE and turns it into USABLE ELECTRICITY!!?!?! If true, this shit could save the planet a lot of pain. No panacea, but a darn good start.
I will not break the second law of thermodynamics
"Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."
Eh...? Am I misunderstanding something?
Ok, wait... It produces 90% more energy than it consumes? I didn't RTFA yet, so I'm sure in there, they state that it produces 90% more energy than it takes to run the thing.
Is this statement predicated on the assumption that the matter being 'converted' to energy does not count toward the amount of energy consumed? Otherwise it's an outright impossibility, no?
"...it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."
Anybody know how that compares to other forms of energy production, say, fossil fuels or nuclear?
The Slashdot Limerick
Well either they are not counting the energy which is contained within the waste (likely)
The submitter generalized a bit to much (more likely)
Or they have invented a perpetual motion machine (I somehow doubt it).
that in order to run the kit and transform the rubbish into a form that actually powers the generaor, they require x energy.
From the consumption of the next stage they get x + 90% energy, , otherwise it's a load of keech.
So, as we've all been commenting, this makes no sense. They simply must mean that it takes a certain amount of energy to power the thing. And that this energy (is it electric?) plus the mass being 'converted', will produce 90% more energy than it took to power the contraption.
Maybe I'm just rationalising outrageous claims or something, but I simply can't think of another way that this could make any sense.
Actually, they combine trash with ethanol to run a diesel engine ... The electricity produced is 90% higher than it would be with only ethanol. ... is what I understood :)
Finally, a way to turn the worlds surplus food & recyclable materals into somthing we really need !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
For instance, the waste issue in Michigan. http://www.cleanwateraction.org/mi/donttrashmi.htm
This could be the beginining of the end for landfills! Not to mention its uses on the interplanetary space missions we all have been waiting for!
This useless space for sale, inquire at front desk.
"No no, this thing needs more kick than that. It's nuclear - that's the only way I can generate the 1.21 gigawatts of energy I need."
It's finally here! Mister Fusion!
Which part of this sentence:
don't you understand?Ignore this signature. By order.
I strongly encourage you to actually read the article before you assume it's a fully electric or fossil fuel powered processor.
It's a bioprocessor. Thermodynamics be damned here. They're using yeast and other biologically engineered critters to break down trash and such into fuels that are used to power a motor that produces electricity.
The real problem here is that the poster did a lousy job of deriving a title and quoting the real meat of the story, giving the "I have no time to RTFA" crowd a moment to think it over before thumping the 2nd Law.
OK, well either way, that's conceptually what I was thinking, too. I was just thinking in terms of electricity. So E = energy consumed, M = matter consumed, so E+M=E*1.90 or something...
I don't know, it's 3:21am here and I've not touched math since college.
Anyway, it's not the poster's fault, the article itself is just as misleading. Eep.
Okay, then disregard what I just posted. Didn't refresh in time see this reply before actually posting the darn thing. :)
This seems to have two uses, both of which are, by them selves very amazing, together even more amazing:
1. It reduces garbage 30:1 and turns it into "ash" which seems to be a very easy thing to dispose of (especially at 1/30th of the amount)
2. It CREATES energy in the process.
As for the 90% thing, i believe they are saying that the input power would be what-ever power source you give it to turn the trash into electricity, I am pretty sure that the energy already in the trash is not counted in the input.
Just think, not only could you use your own garbage to power this thing, but just consider the fact that the one thing we have been trying to find a way to get rid of, and inadvertently stockpiling in land fills, can now be reduced by a factor of 30 and turned into electricity, just take a bunch of these to a local landfill and viola, less garbage and more electricity.
Any municipal government that does not take advantage of this (assuming it gets further developement) should be considered completely incompetent.
I did RTFA, and I understand what they mean. But the poster, as well as the article, as you can see in my quote above, are both misleading.
No matter what's going on, it's still not creating 90% more energy than is put in. You can't just discount the energy derived from the material being processed because it makes for a more impressive story. Anyway, I've been chatty enough about this. Time to try for bed again!
90% more energy than it consumes, eh. So all we have to do now is hook this thing up to, say, a pastry factory, a good supply of flour, fat, water and such, and there will be free, unlimited pastry and energy for everyone, assuming we feed the pastry scraps and uneaten pies, pasties and tarts back in the other end! :D
// cinn
Well, of course.
This has been put in layman terms, so of course nitpickers will start with the 'that's unpossible' routine... but it's simply the statement, from what I'd understood, that for each X of energy consumed for the running of the plant itself, it gives out 0.9X in useful electricity.
Gods, the farther you go in layman's terms, the worse this looks...
Ignore this signature. By order.
Looks like they're distilling something from garbage and then burning everything in a diesel engine or something. What about the toxic fumes you get when you burn plastic?
"Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."
Young Lady, in this house we obey the rules of thermodynamics!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
My delorean runs on this for twenty years AND is able to travel time.
Way to go US military...
--
Doc
What sig ?
If I remember right we should not be able to purchase this building until 2050, and we are still closer to 2000 than 3000 so how can we do this anyway? Did one of the researchers hack reality and enter the code "garbage in, garbage out" to get this waste to energy incinerator?
If a lot of people have been working on a problem for a long time, you shouldn't expect a huge breakthrough. The reason I say these people are dreaming in technicolor is that they imagine that every restaurant will want one of these to process its food waste. The technology to do that has existed for a long time. The reason everyone isn't doing it is because it isn't economic.
People have been doing biodigesters since forever. The guys at Purdue haven't said they have found a magical new process. AFAICT, they are using the same process as everyone else. Ergo, they should have the same results as everyone else.
The other part of their system involves gassifying paper and plastic trash. That's another area where people have been working for a long time. It's the holy grail for municipal trash disposal. In fact, many municipalities are generating electricity from garbage but their plants are glorified incinerators not gas generators. In the early twentieth century many/most cities had gassification plants for coal. Now they are having to clean up the coal tar that was left behind to pollute the environment. The guys at Purdue didn't mention how nasty the waste product from their process might be. The people converting turkey guts to oil said that was one of the main problems they had to solve.
The guys in the story seem to have combined existing technologies and they haven't mentioned the known issues that the existing technologies suffer from. I don't expect to see one of these behind my local restaurant any time soon.
The local landfill where I live, the Johnston landfill, here in Rhode Island, operates a methane recovery plant. This methane gas then flow through eleven twelve-cylinder turbocharged engines, to power a bank of generators.
This produces 15.3 megawatts of power. 1.3 megawatts is used to power the plant and landfill site. The remaining 14 megawatts is sold back to the grid, and provides power for 21,000 homes.
It's not quite 1.21 gigawatts, but it's still pretty cool.
No, it gives out 1.9x the energy consumed. If it gave 0.9x, that would be costing you energy to run it, not generating it.
... and then they built the supercollider.
OK, so it's 90% efficient, producing 190% of the fuel energy that's required to get it going.
;)
The question is, how much power is that? And does it merit the machine's use.
Thinking about it, it requires a couple of hours running on diesel to prime itself - so a rough guess, assuming its engine is similar to that of a small car, would be that it takes half a dozen to a dozen gallons of diesel to prime it.
In exchange, you get 190% of that in low grade fuel that its robust enough generator can process. So the equivalent energy output of maybe two dozen gallons of diesel but in a low enough grade form that you wouldn't want to put it near a regular engine.
The unit's described as about the size of a small van. Except it's likely denser so let's guess around five tons and it's cumbersome as all hell.
So, end result, you get the equivalent power output of maybe ten gallons of diesel, in a form you can't use to actually power anything much else, several hours later... in a form that likely consumes far more than that ten gallons or so to get it in to the field it's supposed to be used in.
It's cool as a concept but 190% of not a lot is still not a lot - and when the pain of getting it there and waiting for it outweighs the 90% of not a lot extra you get, it starts making more sense on efficiency grounds to stick with lugging a small generator and a couple of five gallon cans of a far more usable fuel.
In short: Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do it.
But I'm guessing the publicity will get them their second round funding, which is, I'm guessing, the real point of this.
Hmm, powered on trash you say?
Sure, this is only a small amount of power when given a small amount of trash.
But think what a big enough one could do with New Jersey!
If there are efficiencies of scale, mankind's dreams of infinite free power could finally be realized.
Yes you can, since it was garbage which was otherwise generating no energy at all and was already "extracted" etc. I could see your point if it was coal or something.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
And a DeLorean, of course.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
RTFA they say the generator has to run off diesel oil for several hours to power the bioreactor/reformer. Once the components have had time to break the waste material down into ethanol, methane, and propane that gets funneled back into the generator that the net result is 90% additional output. If it was to take 10 liters of diesel to start the process, after using those 10 liters, and also burning the resultant fuels from the bioreactor/reformer it would be approximatly equal in electric output to having only used a plain old generator with 19 liters of diesel. In addition it reduces the trash input to aproximatly 1/30th of the volume in ash. It is bascially a mobile trash incenerator/generator that can be jumped started with diesel. Electrical plants that burn trash to produce electricty has been around for a long time. This sounds only slightly more efficent/environmentally friendly in that they use a bioreactor to produce ethonal from the biowastes, and use gasification techniques on the other types of trash instead of just plain burning all the trash together with a steam generator.
No matter is 'converted' to energy, it is only a chemical process to rearrange the the energy in the chemical bonds of the existant trash into a more useful form of energy(ie. electricity). Same as burning coal or any other fuel, the energy is released in the form of heat to provide work.
Hmm.. time for the bio-waste eating robots to take over the world.. :-)
So, that means it's got a efficiency of 47.3%.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Note: I probably am redundant already.
"90 percent more energy than it consumed" - Until some tries to feed it a JDAM! :
e d&search=
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dZ6ld5_HD9E&mode=relat
I want one right away. However I see a problem looming here for
for the private sector garbage and recycling industry. I don't
know where you live but over here it costs plenty to have your
garbage can emptied and they wont let you put into the can what
you want either - plastic, cardboard and paper each go into a
different color-coded bag and are collected according to schedule.
These Agenda21-inspired schemes would suffer tremendously if people
reduced their trash by a 30-1 volume reduction _and_ even got
power of it.
I suppose these devices will not be legal for civilian use where
they conflict with trash and recycling industry.
That, and the added sound pollution of the running diesel engine will not alert the enemy at all.
Seems logical.
So does 90% more out than in mean it's overunity?
shouldn't that be
"For each 2.9 units of energy that the fuel provide, 1 is consumed and 1.9 comes out as electricity"?
Spin 'em, slize 'em, dice 'em, burn 'em......
makes a good heat source so they should be able to capture that heat and turn the thing into a CHP type plant instead of just an electricity plant... hmmm lots of nice hot water... so, when can I have a micro one for my house then???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I, for one, fear the military applications of this...not like it wasn't possible before, but perhaps this might give some people ideas that would ultimately be used to kill people...
Uh, nevermind, I just read TFS.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
So when will get these little things to replace our now exploding battiers. I'd love to just throw junk in my laptop to power it, just imagine all those pop tart an hot pocket wrappers finally being put to use to power out little portable laptop. It sure beats batteries exploding in your lap, thats for sure.
No, it shouldn't. total is 90% more than used. total = u+0.9u = 1.9u QED
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Well, the article states it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed. Strictly read, this means that 1.9 units are produced per consumed energy unit, since totals are mentioned.
As such, the energy efficiency would be 100*(1-1/2.9)%=65,51%. I don't know the usual efficiency of this kind of generator, but 65% seems to be far too much (since combustion is used in the process).
As I haven't thrown away much recently and really need something to power my laptop I suppose there is only one thing I can use...
HOOMANS
There were a fairly large number of motor vehicles converted to wood gas during oil shortages in and after WWII.
FEMA wrote a book in 1989 on how to build your own. I think they had the foresight to realize that the U.S. military will eventually commandeer the available oil supplies again and we can try and figure out how to get to work burning garbage and the trees out of the backyard.
/* This is not a Hummer. */
I said, it gives out 0.9x in useful electricity.
Power used for running the plant itself is not useful... only the power coming out of the plant can be used for something.
Ignore this signature. By order.
You have to make sure you separate material with toxic substance first. Like Chlore (some plastics), Heavy Metal etc... On an industrial level I am sure it is happening, but on the local level (house) I am sure this would not.
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This whole article sounded a little fishy to me. First of all, why didn't they even mention the more general applications of this generator -- namely converting municipal waste into electricity. I know several attempts have been made in the past, (e.g. Trash to Natural Gas). Universities love bragging about the exciting possibilities for any new technology they develop. Seems strange they'd only mention military applications. One possible explanation is that the work was conducted under a military grant, and that's how they're billing it for now.. but still...
And why haven't they done a real-world test of its capabilities. A simple experiment would be to randomly select some households, have them save their suitable trash in a special bin, and see how well this device handles real-world fare. Their quoted energy balance of +90% sounds pretty dubious. Especially with no real clues about how it does this, other than some handwaving about "parallel processes" and a diesel engine. I'll hold the praise for when this thing is actually put into action in the real world.
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So, something like garbage+fuel+reactant=generator=electricity(out)+w aste(ash)
If the equation were 1:1.9 as you suggest, then the machine would net more energy out than in, which would break a fundamental law of physics (suggesting that E does not equal mc^2).
Has anyone read up on the TDP (Thermal Depolymerization)? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkanto r/2004-01-22-kantor_x.htm I have been reading about it for a few years but very little in the mainstream media other than a casual mention. If the technology works, this would change the world and turn us into Net 0 carbon producers. Is it hype or real???
Sorry, I meant energy out has to equal no more than the energy in.
Nice one team, first things first!
It is generally considered OK to intepret a statement based upon it's context.
C'mon guys, did anyone here really...really...REALLY think that Purdue was claiming to have broken the laws of Thermodynamics?
I'm not picking on this particular thread mind you. Several people posted variations of this statement....and...it's annoying. It's not necessary to pick apart every minor error.
Remember, this is "News for Nerds", not "News for Geeks and Dweebs".
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It all depends of the definition of "produced", I think. If that is the total caloric output of the waste, it is 1,9. If it is the energy left after production, the total is 2,9.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Easy enough to do. What the article means is that for every joule the energy consumes it generates 1.9 joules. The joules it is consuming are not from the trash itself. It might be converting the trash at an efficiency of only 5% (making that number up, of course). It's just saying that it does, in fact, actually generate a net positive amount of energy while consuming the trash.
Somehow I suspect I haven't made this any clearer.
Consider the "Mr. Fusion" reference. We've created fusion generators that actually produce energy through fusion. However, so far, they've all produced less energy than it has actually required to run them, thus resulting in a net negative. All that 90% figure means is that this is a net positive.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
We will never see this thing in action. ExxonMobil will buy the patent and keep it stored in very safe place!
Only globaly/universally. From the point of view of the (non-closed) system of the machine, it is giving out more energy than it is getting in.
Pointing at the mass and saying E=mc^2 is about as useful in this context as pointing to a lump of coal in your living room and saying that it can heat the room for the rest of your life. But it remains a lump of coal until you extract the energy. If you use less energy to ignite and burn the coal than it emits then you're ahead of the game, regardless of E=mc^2 or any other pointless appeals to thermodynamics.
I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm saying that your argument is irrelevant to a discussion of the usefulness of this device.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
One aspect of large scale solar fabrication is that heat management is easier. One only has to get silicon up to temperature but you don't have to keep it there with more energy in, so the 5 year figure you give is coming down dramatically. EROEI should end up near 40 on a single fabrication cycle, and potentially much higher depending on how recycling of the cells is handled during subsequent fabrication cycles. If the dopant gradiant is preserved through a cell-by-cell reannealing process to repair cosmic ray damage, then the energy requirements for recycling solar cells could be quite low compared to the initial fabrication requirements and thus boost the final EROEI over many recovery cycles. If not, one still saves on initial purification costs. Since we are considering a 40 year cycle, it is possible that silicon will be displaced by something more efficient, and it will become a nitch application, in which case determining the recycled EROEI will depend on how much silicon is retained in the energy generation sector.s -selling-solar.html
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Technically, energy out can be more than energy in, but I don't really think they have a nuclear reactor. What I think you meant to say is that mass-energy in has to exactly equal mass-energy out.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Actually, silicon, the traditional material for making solar cells is very abundant. Shortages have been in purified silicon because the solar cell industry has attempted to save on cost by taking semiconductor grade silicon scrap as its raw material. Since there is nowhere near enough pentiums produced to cover everyone's roof with them, the supply of scrap is inadequate for serious solar power production. However, refining silicon expressly for solar power fabrication eliminates this issue. Useful cell lifetimes are approching 40 years with no more than a 20% degradation after 25 years.
s -selling-solar.html
On the biorefinery, the limit is mainly the amount of available fuel. Serious biofuel production probably has to go through algae http://www.greenfuelonline.com/ since the surface area requirements for biofuel production are very constraining and need all the help they can get. The 15% efficiency of solar is much higher even than algae. The curent waste stream is much too small to provide a significant portion of our energy use and conservation does not help since this also implies reducing the waste stream flow rate proportionally.
--
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Please see this site:
http://www.changingworldtech.com/
"Boiler up!" gets a whole new meaning.
I think you mis-understood the use of the term "tactical". Since the point of the generator was military, i think "tactical" referred to that it is portable and flexible relative to other waste-disposal means and/or energy-generating means. And on what basis do you say "likely to be a very polluting energy source"? The article linked said that the reduction of materials was a 30-1 ratio and that the EPA designated all the output materials (ash) "benign". So where do you get the conjecture "very" from? So it won't power my playstation, but it might power my block.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
The answer to your second question is "yes". For the laymen . . . Let's say you plug a toaster oven into the wall. And in the toaster oven you have a glass that contains solution with two liquids. And those liquids only react to each other at a certain temperature (100 degrees). Let's also say it takes you 50 joules to heat up the solution to 100 degrees. And the solution's interacting gives off the equivalent of 95 joules. You then have a 'net gain' of 45 joules (1.9x) not counting the energy in the solution. No voodoo physics. Just selective measuring.
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before. - Thorstein
I've probably spent about four days on this over the past few years and so far it looks like they are having reasonable rampup problems (such as lots of stink where the trucks go and from the plant) but seem to be for real. To me, this looks viable and I'm tentatively concluding that it's not a scam but I'm not going to be any too comfy until some real replicable, publicly disclosed, lab tests come out.
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Can you.. you know... go in it?
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Second, the very first paragraph says, and I quote, The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power and could have widespread civilian applications in the future. It goes on to say "I think it could be used outside the military shortly thereafter."
Does this technology already exist? Yes, in industrial capacities. Does it exist in a van-sized packages suitable for deployment with forward command and supply posts? No, no it does not. For perma-temp facilities (think M.A.S.H.) that will be in place for months, a series of these would seriously cut down the environmental impact in an energy-positive fashion.
When it finally comes to the non-military markets, McDonalds is not going to pick this up. The park & wildlife service probably will, though. For 10 gallons of diesel fuel, we can destroy all the trash at a fire watch station or a remote wildlife refuge [b]AND[/b] we get the electrical equivalent of 19 gallons of diesel. That cuts the number and size of supply trips dramatically.
Greenpeace/ecologists will lobby for these to be installed on ships rather than dumping waste at sea and given that it is power-positive will be hard to refuse, assuming the operating life is halfway decent.
If they make any major inroads it will probably be at always-on facilities like airports in regions where trash disposal is expensive and ultimately in larger apartment/office buildings that have enough trash generation to keep the beast fed and running 24/7.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
I have been following the alternate energy field with great interest for the last thirty years. I was an early adopter of photo-voltaic technology. The power system I developed saved my employer big bucks by eliminating the necessity of helicopter trips to haul fuel to remote equipment.
The economics of the situation depend on the cost of energy. In the present American context, buying a generator and making your own energy doesn't make sense even if the fuel is free. In Europe, on the other hand, the situation is different and it is quite common to find co-generation of heat and electricity for apartment buildings and even homes.
"Ergo" You haven't been paying attention to what everyone else is doing. You're saying the other researchers are too stupid to do the obvious.
The waste is "mostly" benign. If you burn anything with chlorine you stand a good chance of getting CFCs and dioxins. They are deadly poison and it doesn't take much. Lots of plastics contain chlorine; PVCs for instance.
As for looking; I bet I spot the first one before you do. Having said that, most restaurants run on pretty tight margins and won't do anything that doesn't help the bottom line. So, until the situation changes, I do not indeed expect waste-based electricity generation behind my local restaurant.
No, the ethanol is derived from the trash itself (from the organic bits). The input is diesel fuel, not ethanol.
Can this machine be used to reduce techno-waste? My guess is that it can't; the main problem with techno-waste is heavy metals, and they'd wind up either in the ash or the smoke.
Problem is, all that super engineering is extremely costly, and any company smaller than say, General Electric (about the biggest employer in the US) or gov't units such the Department of Defense has to be able to recoup their research costs in a relatively short amount of time or go bust.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
"... why can't I have one of these things powering my house..."
Why, that would mean a reduction in various monopolies... mainly to the power companies.
I mean seriously... giving people a way to generate their own electricity AND reduce garbage? Who would make any money on that??
What bothers me is it's ALWAYS the bloody military that is on the receiving end of new technology first. Perhaps the company designing this device were paid by the military to R&D it etc... but it just goes to show that there is too much spending in military aims anyway. Take one year of standard US military spending and focus that on something that is to the benefit of all of us and see what we can come up with... maybe other things like this device perhaps?
Bah... stupid priorities.
Cheers,
IAMI
My first thought on reading all the military-style terminology, such as "tactical generator" was, "What century's wars are they fighting now?" Think of the theaters of wars today in which the US Army is involved, and a truck or large van wouldn't go undetected by the enemy anyway. The style of wars being fought by the US Army doesn't require the kind of footprint camoflaging that this could provide.
Then I figured that the army probably happened to be the first sponsor that the research group could find, so the research was described in terms that made it appear useful to them. Nothing wrong with that, a lot of useful research with non-military applications came with military funding, but as you said, it seemed that the process had better civilian application.
The quote specifically states that
Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed.The energy of the fuel must be considered when making comparisons as to the consumption of energy. In this case, the researcher are stating that the electricity produced as a result of burning the diesel and waste is greater than the energy the diesel and waste put into powering the generator that made the electricity. The statement is akin to saying that you turning a crank on a generator can produce more joules out than your arm puts in. Friction, if nothing else, makes the statement false.
So, if the author was attempting to refer to the fact that the energy source used to burn the fuel produced less energy than was gained at the end, then I do agree. However, I believe the argument here is over the word consumed, in which case the fuel cannot be neglected as negligible.
And I do apologize for the use of the mass-energy equation. I should have explained myself more thoroughly rather than dropping a clique.
I believe the confusion about efficiency is generated because TFA doesn't contain any useful technical specifications, like gallons of fuel consumed per watt of electricity generated.
Not that I would have understood this better...but *someone else* may have been able to explain it to my feeble mind.
Enjoy,
Randy
TRASH into electricity.
I dare you.
Thanks for your support,
Kilgore Trout
... Marty, we won't NEED roads!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
This product sounds like the best of all worlds: Start with waste biomatter, force decomposition using power from fuel oil, incinerate the rest, and eventually use the synthetic oil to power the generator. Would be extremely beneficial in a disaster area, such as after a huricaine, where you have plenty of building waste (wood) and an immediate need for local generation.
Thermal depolymerization that is. In essence from the other end you get the constituent parts and oil. Not a bad deal for a little bit of heat.
The thing is, to break our dependence on petroleum exports we're going to need to use every available technology, from TDP to fuel cells, hydrogen, etc. There is no one magic bullet.
AFAIK, Paris France is using incinerator to generate electricity. So is Mississauga
e ppard/20060317.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/realitycheck/sh
"But there is one prominent success story - just next door to Toronto in fact - in neighbouring Mississauga: It burns roughly 160,000 tonnes of garbage a year and contributes about six megawatts of electricity to the provincial grid, enough it is said to power 6,000 homes. Its leftover ash is so clean it is used to cover landfill."
Incinerators, if done properly, are cleaner in the long term than land fills. No land pollution. No methane pollution (mega-greenhouse gas). No water table pollution.
I live in Port Huron Mi and garbage is not the same as coal, garbage is what continuous stream of trucks bring in, mostly from Toronto a 4 hr. drive from here by car, and from New York and New Jersey! Garbage is what is in the back of the truck that almost runs me off the expressway or jack-knifes and closes the expreessway for 6 hours because the sleepy fucking canadian driver is trying to squeeze in an extra run each day and running with a bogus log book. I guess you can tell this is a hot-button issue arround here and how we react when some Canadian or a New York liberal rags on us because we didn't sign the Koyoto treaty that Nobody is going to meat anyways. At least coal would be usefull.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If the equation were 1:1.9 as you suggest, then the machine would net more energy out than in, which would break a fundamental law of physics (suggesting that E does not equal mc^2).
Lavoisier already stated "rien se perd, rien se cree" (nothing is lost, nothing is gained), which holds for chemical and (normal) physical reactions. The only process in which matter is converted to energy is in nuclear reactions, being fission and fusion. These happen in nuclear reactors and in the sun and such. The department "Mr Fusion" was poorly chosen, as this machine has nothing to do with nuclear reactions. Admittedly the line " it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed" also wasn't too clear...
Article title: Steam valve causes campus power outage
r y_id=3910
Publication Date: 01/31/07
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&sto
As far as I can tell, this 1.9 number only addresses fossil fuel input compared to power output. It does not include energy invested in getting the waste material to the generator, which would be appropriate since the EROEI numbers you cite (I believe) include energy invested in production and transportation, etc.
Obviously, the goal here is an alternate source of power and waste disposal in a niche application, so that point is irrelevant to the applicability to that purpose, but if you're going to compare it to power or fuel use in general, it needs to be considered. The garbage truck driving around the neighborhood collecting burns fuel, too.
The 1.9 number confuses me, though. Are they saying that it still needs diesel to continue running with a mix of 10:9 diesel to reformed fuel (or accounting for the efficiency of the generator, perhaps 5:18 for 25%), or does it reform sufficient fuel to run entirely on waste? In that case, you can make that 1.9 number as big as you want just by running the engine longer and keeping a steady supply of trash in the reactors.
Is my question clear? Comments?
Doesn't exist. 90% more than it consumes? Gee Bob, my bacteria all died in the dry dessert...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
#1: Food, paper, and plastic only please. Other trash cannot be converted in this refinery. As a result, toxic chemicals do not come out because they weren't put in in the first place.
#2: As for greenhouse gas emissions - especially carbon dioxide - the article mentions that even though CO2 is produced, it was only removed from the atmosphere by plants recently. Unlike oil or coal, where the CO2 was removed from the atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago and not put back.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Put another way, 10% of the energy the plant generates is used to refine its fuel from a much lower grade fuel.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Small Correction:
Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in the United States and Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart
I'd guess that we're talking about 1 Joule of diesel + (trash with chemical energy of at least 5 Joules, probably much more) = 1.9 Joules of electricity. That would put you at around 30% efficiency (assuming ~5 J), which would still be pretty good.
Presumably, this reaction does not need diesel. I assume that with a bit of extra research they'll be able to feed the output energy back into input. Of course, in such a loop this would end up (with the same original assumptions) as 5 Joules trash energy in, 0.9 Joules electricity energy out, dropping it down to ~20% efficiency. But, hey, if you were just going to bury it anyway...
(And, no, this does not consider pollution effects, etc.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Obviously they're not violating Thermodynamics. What a waste of Slashdot's hard disk space these comments are.
All I can say is .. wow.. everyone who is annoyed at the tediousness of separating your garbage should read that article, and reconsider.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Go Boilers!!! ;D
.. and all the worlds problems will be solved.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If I may refer to my response yesterday to another reply (probably on the same level as this re:), I hadn't meant that the garbage is converted to energy, simply that it produces the majority of the energy input into the system when it is combusted and that it cannot be left out of the energy considerations.
Ah, the sheer pleasure of running a hose to where it matters bring tears of anticipation (VERY evil grin)
Insert
The two parallel processes are certainly not "hand waves", but are two heavily researched topics: Pyrolysis/Gasification and Anaerobic Digestion (biodigestion).
s /
Anaerobic digestion is very common, and happens naturally in compost heaps and landfills. The methane gas it generates is being harnessed to generate energy both in some current landfills and in the tactical biorefinery in the article. Unfortunately this technology has significant limitations in that it is only able to process the cellulose and other sugars, but no lignin (which makes up ~25% of plant mass) nor any plastics. Here is where advanced thermal technologies come in -
Pyrolysis is a form of gasification that uses high temperatures, frequently in the range of 800-1400C, to break down the molecular structure of any organic material (plastics included) into smaller (and more useful) molecules in the form of combustible gasses and liquids. The key to pyrolysis is that it is performed with very little or no oxygen present. Without oxygen, nothing can burn (combustion is simply an exothermic oxidation reaction), and nearly all of the pollutents association with incineration are broken down into useful fuel.
The company I work for is actually working on a very similar "tactical biorefinery" financed by another arm of the DOD - but we use only pyrolysis. The emissions are not a significant problem, you really do get waste mass reduction on the order of 95% into easily compressible char (which can be burned for additional fuel), and it is certainly a technology you should see around the block in the future.
On another note, these devices are not limited to the small scale "tactical" devices. There are currently over 50 operational waste to energy plants in Japan (who for obvious reasons can't afford to waste land space with trash!). One of the most impressive technologies for large scale pyrolysis uses high voltage electricity arcs to generate a plasma stream to superheat and gasify waste.
A particularly good reference for some of the cutting edge waste to energy technologies is the California Integraded Waste Management Board's website, especially their 2005 Conversion Technologies Report to the Legislature: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Organics/Conversion/Event
For further reading, this master's thesis by one of my boss's former students addresses all of these issues and more:
http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE1001171/Mudulodu_S.pdf
--
Go Gators!
Yes, but last I checked GE and the DOD are involved in energy research, and Walmart is not.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...