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A Waste Gasification Plant In a Truck
waderoush writes "There are plenty of waste-to-energy plants around the US, but most of them simply burn the waste, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Gasification technology, by contrast, converts nearly all of the waste into gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used to run generators and furnaces. The problem is that most gasification facilities are factory-sized. Now a startup outside Boston has built a combination shredder-dryer-pelletizer-gasifier that fits into 30-by-8-by-8-foot shipping container. The so-called 'Green Energy Machine' can be backed up to a loading dock by truck, processing 3 tons of solid waste per day and putting out enough synthetic gas to run a 120-kilowatt generator or a 240-kilowatt-equivalent furnace. The makers say the machine can eliminate 540 tons of carbon emissions per year, in large part by reducing the amount of waste that goes to methane-generating landfills."
IGasify. Portable usb gasification plant.
Power your IPod with your own excrements! As only pop stars can do right now.
Simply put vacuum devices under the tables at Taco Bell and Del Taco. You'll get all the burnable gas you'll ever need!
You obviously never went on a high school trip with teenagers in a van eating pumpkin seeds. That was the highest efficiency matter to gas conversion I've ever seen.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
A reformer that removes all the carbon before it's burned would have made the tech a homerun.
Just =5 on a 10 point scale.
reformers are being researched for fuel cells because they can convert gasoline to hydrogen and remove that carbon.
When I lived in Iowa briefly I was amazed at some of the cool ideas people have come up with to use waste to create energy. As I'm sure many of you know, Iowa is big farm country, lots of cattle. So somebody devised a way to burn cow feces and use it to create power. Some small towns are using this as a means to cut back on buying energy, while at the same time finding a use for stuff that would otherwise just help contaminate the drinking water. Our energy problems are big, but the key to getting stuff done is creativity.
This is a nice idea. In fact I think all solutions which work by localizing energy distribution is the way to go. Minimizing needless transportation of energy and waste is a huge improvement over the current situation.
I don't think there will ever be a single "silver bullet" tech to solve our energy and environment issues. The solution is lots and lots of small local (even house-level) improvements.
.: Max Romantschuk
Not sure about the emission standards of Massachusetts, but I know that California was a stickler for oxides of nitrogen emissions.
It sounds like the temperatures involved here are high enough to form oxides of nitrogen (the cylinder of an automobile can be) and these are precisely the gases that are responsible for "Acid Rain".
Trading one problem for another?
CO to me usually means toxic and dangerous, not fuel source. I'm willing to believe it could be used to produce power, but I'd want to be quite sure it was well contained. It doesn't take much concentration of that stuff to kill a person, and the toxicity means you often lose consciousness before you know you're suffocating (and end up on the floor, where the air quality will be worst).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The pellets are dropped into the aforementioned downdraft gasifier, which breaks them down under high heat into a mix of methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Finally, this "syngas" is sucked into a generator or microturbine to make electricity, or piped to a furnace to make heat.
The summary has the idea that carbon monoxide is NOT an green house gas. While, this might be true the gas is then burned which should result in carbon dioxide. Tim S
... siphon out and cart off all the, ummm, residue that's left after the gasification. Can you say "shitty job"?
Whatever this system does to the waste, it won't reduce carbon emmission. The gas it produces still contains all the C-atoms of the original waste, and when burned, will release them as CO2. Apparently it will generate much more energy from the same amount of waste, which is obviously a Good Thing, but it only reduces the carbon emmissions per kWh generated, not the carbon emmissions per ton of waste.
Can this be 10% of the US energy grid by converting every land fill to this?
Have you any idea how many billions of dollers there are to be made exploiting old landfill sites? Either by mining or collecting that methane for sale.
Most people who don't like them seem to think they are just holes in the ground that get filled up with crap and left to pollute. I live less than five miles from one, have done for many years, and not once has there been any smell or environmental damage. That area has some of the best hedgerows in the county, and as they cover over finished portions, the local wildlife is left alone to repopulate.
In contrast, constant development closer to me has destroyed a marsh, displacing a population of kingfishers (among other species, but they were the most prominant to my mind) and disrupting local river systes. They even redirected one river entirely, and now it floods every few years.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
But can it power a flux capacitor?
So what exactly happens to the carbon monoxide "used to run generators and furnaces"? Oh, it's burned and so "dump[s] carbon dioxide into the atmosphere".
Where's the contrast again?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Will they become toxic byproducts?
For reference, 1 kw = 3/4 hp, so this thing could almost power your car. . .
the big factories are more efficent for a start, but the big joke is that they will need to burn oil to move the truck around. oh noes the evil CO2's will get us.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Actually, Smell-O-Vision exists already, and made its only appearance in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery. The process injected 30 different smells into a movie theater's seats when triggered by the film's soundtrack.
And director John Waters released a movie in 1981 called Polyester, with "Odorama", whereby viewers could smell what they saw on screen through scratch and sniff cards.
I saw/smelled it, and it was GROSS!
Be very glad that technology is still quite immature.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
So sorry, my html is really rusty and I munged up the links.
Smell-O-Vision
Polyester
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
Why does everyone always point out that they "don't produce CO2" nowadays, when all they do is shove the CO2 production over the horizon, into someone else's yard?
So instead of burning it (producing CO2) and generating energy locally, they produce carbon monoxyde that can be burned (producing just as much CO2) somewhere else, and suddenly they're "clean".
There is a benefit to using waste: if you just let it rot you get CO2 as well, so it's not a bad idea to gain some energy in the process. But gasification isn't any cleaner than other methods for getting energy out of waste.
There is a benefit to gasification, just in that you can use the gas somewhere else, closer to where the energy is needed. But mentioning CO2 as if it magically disappears is hypocritic.
A different topic maybe, but electric cars are just the same: no, they don't produce CO2. The CO2 is produced in the electricity plant that generates the current to charge your batteries instead. Or in a nuclear plant, creating its own kind of problems. And a small but growing part in clean alternative plants.
The net effect of a "clean" electric car is that the energy has to come from somewhere else, shifting the responsibility for doing it in a clean way to someone else. Electric cars aren't clean, they're hypocritic.
It's not just car manufacturers and waste gasifiers, many are making themselves "clean" today by saddling someone else up with the problems.
You do realize that reformers turn the carbon into CO2 right?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Which then burn the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide and dump it into the atmosphere. Not much won.
Americas Waste-to-Energy http://www.aw2e.com/index.jsp generates electricity, distills potable water and gasifies trash, all the while reclaiming landfills. Is this a perfect solution? Probably not, but I would suggest it is a damn sight better than what we have now. Add to that the need to move toward a distributed generation policy, a concept that can cut down on ling line transmission losses (of up to 80% of the generated electricity we produce) and this really might be the technology of the future. http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/
The system burns methane that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere. Methane has a much higher greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, because it absorbs more infrared radiation, therefore converting methane to CO2 has a positive effect in reducing global warming, even if the total carbon amount released is the same.
did this back in the '40s. you don't want to be like hitler, do you? burn fossil fuels like every other red-blooded american, dammit!
The fact that it's truck size doesn't mean you cannot permanently install it somewhere...like the end of your street.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
of the batmobile and the weinermobile, fartmobile promises far fewer smiles on the faces of children and far less dynamic action. instead, kids can marvel at its ability to generate heat in the winter, electricity in the summer, and a putrid stench all year round no matter where its parked.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The only difference is the impact each one has on sun light trapping, carbon dioxide being one that affects it the least on the list of gases we would rather weren't on the atmosphere. Methane for example is 20 time worse than CO2, and has a much longer cycle if I'm not mistaking, some gases can be even 200 times worse than CO2.
So each gas impacts global warming, each affects it in different exponential factors, and each has its own cycle(2 years, 5 years, 20 years). I just can't see how we would be better off not burning syngas, and if it can be made lucrative, all its issues could be theoretically easily solved. I for one welcome our acid rain overlords, if we can avert melted ice caps and global crop failure, and spike in cooling/heating consumption(order independent).
Carbon Monoxide results from and incomplete burn/oxidation. A clean burn results in H20 and CO2. Given the choice, I choose H20+CO2 The alternative is a gas that is a silent lethal killer, guaranteed to cause irreversible brain damage. Choose mild winters and warm summers with CO2 or guaranteed damage to you blood, brain and possible death with Carbon-Monoxide, CO.
Does it generate enough energy to power itself and yield a surplus? Because if it's using power from the site where it operates, then it's still increasing its 'carbon footprint'.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
There are plenty of waste-to-energy plants around the US, but most of them simply burn the waste, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Gasification technology, by contrast, converts nearly all of the waste into gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used to run generators and furnaces.
The summary got this wrong of course. Gasification technology produces gas, which is then burned to either produce heat or electricity. And this burning produces... drum rolls... CO2!
So as far as CO2 is concerned there's no difference with regular waste-to-energy plants. The only difference is that this produces gases as an intermediate step, which makes it possible to do the burning outside the plant. In a vehicle's engine for instance.
How do the jewish feel about this truck? Sounds like an eco friendly gas chamber.
And the truck itself? Runs on trash, right?
the smell-o-scope.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What is the carbon footprint for the manufacture of this item? How long does it have to be run before the amount of carbon that went into its manufacture is balanced by the amount of carbon not being released into the atmosphere?
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
A concrete subterranean bunker would be an awesome house! I've been dreaming about one of them for years. They have several advantages over traditional wood-frame-and-siding-with -lots-of-windows houses:
-Better insulation, so less energy leakage and lower electric bills
-Better disaster resistance (though flooding might be a concern). Your house won't get blown away in a hurricane or tornado, and you don't have to worry about the roof collapsing under heavy snow.
-Impervious to termites
-More resistant to burglars and vandals, and easier to defend against home invasions
-Possibly more fire survivability (structurally, at least). Assuming you get out, you might lose some possessions, but the structure will not contribute to the fire and will still be there after it's over. Done right, you could even seal it and let the fire suffocate itself, assuming that doesn't pose a problem to evacuation.
Unfortunately, my wife wants a traditional house. Something about appearance being more important than functionality...
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
as Mr. Fusion has already received a patent. In conjunction with a flux capacitor, when seen a clear demonstration that it is capable of producing gigawatts of electricity from our trash--in particular, simply banana peels and several cc's of light beer. But I'm sure Apple will take credit as having invented it.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Once the gassifier is operating, it's operation makes perfect sense. But, I haven't come across information about how they start the reaction.
Here's my guess, the gassifier material is lit on fire, stoked by a fan to reach a certain temperature, and then the chamber is sealed to reduce oxygen causing incomplete combustion (CO and H).
I assume the reaction keeps going as long as the temperature is kept up, and a certain amount of O2 is allowed in?
Air would have to be pumped in under pressure, and that inlet would have to be built well to prevent leaking CO.
Did I miss anything?
The ALL Power Labs guys built the Honda Accord in the TreeHugger video, and they have a DIY Lego-style gasifier you can build yourself. It's open source, no less.
The makers say the machine can eliminate 540 tons of carbon emissions per year, in large part by reducing the amount of waste that goes to methane-generating landfills.
So instead of burying carbon, it's being shifted into a fuel that will be burned (releasing it into the air)?
Waste re-processors have a lot of advantages. I remember reading about one project awhile ago that basically produced biofuel from sewage. Assuming that it also helped produce cleaner water once the fuel was removed for consumption, it seems like you've got two advantages there.
For something that could use more common forms of waste, you're saving space and money on gas, landfills, transportation of waste, and a huge array of other expenses.
Perhaps one day in the hopeful future, large apartment complexes or city blocks will have mini-plants which have a septic and solid waste processor, and perhaps even something to separate metals or plastics for re-use.
...right? In its configuration as a power generation plant, it's a portable incinerator. What's the big deal?
I couldn't help but think of Landfills being an excellent customer base. The problem of Landfills filling up is serious around large metropolitan areas. I don't know how much tonnage of gases are generated at a Landfill, but if one of these contraptions generates 90% of energy as excess, then its time to start figuring out how to wire them up to the power grid.
As a side note, I looked at their web site. Company is still private, no stock ticker symbol. And their running a LAMP on Ubuntu, cool.