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."

Comments

They need a 'reformer'

[zymano]

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.

Thinking Creativly About Energy

[WiiVault]

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.

Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy

[umghhh]

I suppose there is no one single way of dealing with shortage of fossil fuels so we will need many methods if one of them deals with big part of our garbage that is only good.
Plants that process manure are maybe not a common thing but their use is getting more and more popular. The advantage is there also that the processed thing can be used as fertilizer and it does not stink as terrible as the original thing. Why the method is not more popular I do not know. Seems to be no brainer.

Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy

[sumdumass]

I don't know about Burning them for power but we used to take dried cow chips and pack them with us on camping trips. You could light them with fatwood (sawdust and wood splinters mixed with wax or oil and presses into sticks with wicks on one end for lighting like a match) and they would stay lit long enough to dry out wet wood. It doesn't smell like crap at this stage and if you can't find wood, several pieces of this would give you a fire big enough to cook on. Also, it was relatively light so it made packing firewood to remote places rather easy.

I wonder if they are using dried cow chips or if they are doing something with wet ones? The dried ones, we just picked them up out of the field. I don't think they dry when cleaned from a barn, but then again, they are soaked with piss too so I'm not sure it would be odor neutral.

The solution is a distributed architecture

[Max Romantschuk]

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.

Carbon Monoxide?

[cbhacking]

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).

nothing wrong with landfill.

[thermian]

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.

What about other elements contained in the wastes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will they become toxic byproducts?

Actually... Smell-O-Vision exists already

[Talkischeap]

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.