"Liquid Wood" a Contender To Replace Plastic

Ostracus recommends a Christian Science Monitor piece on the 40-year quest to find a replacement for non-biodegradable plastic. One candidate, written off 20 years back but now developed to the point of practicality, is a formulation based on the lignin found in wood. And it turns out there is another strong environmental reason to put lignin to use in this way: burning it, which is its common fate today, releases the carbon dioxide that trees had sequestered. "Almost 40 years ago, American scientists took their first steps in a quest to break the world's dependence on plastics. But in those four decades, plastic products have become so cheap and durable that not even the forces of nature seem able to stop them. A soupy expanse of plastic waste — too tough for bacteria to break down — now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean. ...[R]esearchers started hunting for a substitute for plastic's main ingredient, petroleum. They wanted something renewable, biodegradable, and abundant enough to be inexpensive."

Comments

Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is like calling ethanol "liquid grain." There's a big difference between being derived from a given substance and having the properties of that substance.

Not that this isn't nice and all, but picking science fiction-ish titles for things keeps you from being taken seriously.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[ptx0]

Also, they have pills to fix this now.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[lastchance_000]

And it turns out there is another strong environmental reason to put lignin to use in this way: burning it, which is its common fate today, releases the carbon dioxide that trees had sequestered.

Pardon my ignorance, but aren't we trying to REDUCE the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? Maybe it's better than burning plastic, but this seems backwards to me.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[lastchance_000]

Ok, I read TFA. I did misunderstand. The effect is to use the lignin so we don't burn it and release the CO2. Mea Culpa. Carry on.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Jeremi]

Pardon my ignorance, but aren't we trying to REDUCE the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? Maybe it's better than burning plastic, but this seems backwards to me.

What they meant (but phrased poorly) was that by extracting the lignin from the wood, the CO2 is kept sequestered inside the lignin, rather than being allowed to escape back into the atmosphere (which is what would happen if the wood were burned or allowed to biodegrade)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[nedlohs]

Try reading for comprehension.

The common fate today is burning, they want to do something else with it, so it won't just be burnt.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[X0563511]

The CO2 that comes from plastic, was pulled from the ground. Without us, it would have stayed there, for possibly an extremely long time.

The CO2 that comes from trees, was already in the air, and only was temporarily pulled out into the tree. On the tree's death, the CO2 would have released (as it rotted, or burned, depending).

So, while looking at the small picture, it's no better. But, zooming out to the big picture, it's a world better.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Rog-Mahal]

I think the point was that instead of burning the lignin as a waste product, it can be put to use as a plastic substitute. A better question might be what happens to this new plastic when it wears out/is discarded.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Dragonslicer]

Is like calling ethanol "liquid grain." There's a big difference between being derived from a given substance and having the properties of that substance.

Not that this isn't nice and all, but picking science fiction-ish titles for things keeps you from being taken seriously.

Don't read the news much anymore, huh?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[slarabee]

My reading of this vaguely written sentence is that lignin is currently being burned. If instead used as a petroleum replacement in plastic-like materials it would not be burned -- at least not until it hits the post consumer trash incinerator.

Is lignin extracted from wood in any other industries besides paper production? Would the paper industry be able to supply enough lignin to replace even a fraction of the plastic currently being produced? Even if it did, sounds like that would simply shift the burning from lignin in the wood fiber to petroleum products.

At the paper mill where I recently worked, the lignin was not burned just for the pleasure of it. The quicky skipping a couple dozen steps process is as follows... The lignin is extracted from the wood pulp by a cocktaail of sodium family chemicals casually referred to as liquor. When loaded with nice potential energy filled lignin, the liquor is referred to as black liquor. The black liquor is piped to the recovery boilers where the lignin burns out leaving nice clean white liquor and a lot of high pressure steam. The white liquor is in closed loop system and goes back to pick up more lignin. The high pressure steam is used on the actual paper machines and drives turbines to provide nearly one hundred percent of the electrical power needed by the entire mill.

Remove the lignin by another process so that it can be used to make 'liquid wood'. Now where will the mill get its high pressure steam? Burning petroleum products just like it does now when there is an upset condition in the supply of black liquor. Lots of natural gas. Lots.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Chabil Ha']

Not only that, but the biodegradability of such a substance is over-played as well. Take a drive down to the local landfill, dig down quite a bit and you will find that many biodegradable substances that have been there for 20+ years have not really biodegraded at all. This is caused by the fact that the biodegradability of a substance is often dependent on the oxygen available to organisms to breakdown the substance. Thus, if you pack the trash too tightly, you create an anaerobic environment where organisms are less efficient at breaking things down.

What we really need is a better method of disposal, not necessarily creating new kinds of substances.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[fava]

So by using the lignin as a "plastic" we are in fact sequestering the carbon and preventing it from entering the atmosphere. Sounds good.

One slight problem.

The lignin is burned to provide fuel for the pulp making process, if we no longer can burn the lignin for energy we now have to add a new source of energy to the process. Like fossil fuel.

So the net effect is the same as before, from a carbon cycle point of view.

Before:
      Oil -> Plastic No net carbon increase
      CO2 -> lignin -> Burn lignin -> CO2 No net carbon increase

After:
      CO2 -> lignin -> "Plastic" Net carbon decrease
      Oil -> Burn to fuel plant -> CO2 Net carbon increase

Depending on the efficiencies of the process there may be a slight increase or decrease in net CO2.

The supposed environmental benefits are NOT a valid justification of the process.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[WalksOnDirt]

...dig down quite a bit and you will find that many biodegradable substances that have been there for 20+ years have not really biodegraded at all

If these substances contain much carbon, that sounds like a good thing from a global warming perspective. Maybe we should change our goals and embrace this.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, Nuclear power. There is a new nuclear heat reactor expected on the market in some 5 years. You bury it in the ground, and it reacts in so much as you take heat out. If you stop taking heat, it stops reacting. Anyway, that could replace your energy needs.

http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[andrikos]

So this must be woot!

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[ThePeices]

I think the idea is to build facilities that produce nothing but "liquid wood", so it is a non issue for paper mills. If it can be worked out, and produce proper "consumer friendly" replacements to currently used plastics, then its nothing but a win-win situation. No extra CO2 is being released into the atmosphere, compared to plastic, whatever its eventual fate.

On a side note, people here comment that trees rotting releases CO2 into the atmosphere..while true on a small level, most of it ends locked up into biomass...and at geological timescales, into oil...

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[timmarhy]

huh, we are against biodegradable products now?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

    Yes but then, using slapped together made-up words like "science fiction-ish" also detracts from your overall beingtakenseriouslyability factor.

Consider "with titles reminiscent of science fiction"

-Anonymous coward

(with better things to do than register every time he wants to post a reply at some random website)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[narcberry]

I thought that is what the pills were called.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Paua Fritter]

So by using the lignin as a "plastic" we are in fact sequestering the carbon and preventing it from entering the atmosphere. Sounds good.

One slight problem.

The lignin is burned to provide fuel for the pulp making process, if we no longer can burn the lignin for energy we now have to add a new source of energy to the process. Like fossil fuel.

Or like solar, or like wind, or nuclear, or some other non-carbon based energy source.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[tompaulco]

Thus, if you pack the trash too tightly, you create an anaerobic environment where organisms are less efficient at breaking things down.

What we really need is a better method of disposal
Ironically, a better method of disposal environmentally would be to toss it out the window. But that is frowned upon for other reasons.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

That's one of the arguments against recycling paper. In most areas for effective recycling you spend so much energy transporting and treating it that it's much cheaper and better for the environment to put it in a landfill.

Or even burn it to do something useful to heat somewhere or run a power plant.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[TadGhostal66]

This isn't anything that every science journal hasn't always done. Look at New Scientist, Scientific America, etc. - they all use science fiction-ish headlines to grab readers' attention. Read the article and forget the title, I say. Otherwise, your cynicism might keep you from some good information. And if a catchy, sensationalized title makes more people read an article like this, should we be complaining?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

To be perfectly honest, I'm against biodegradable products in areas that demand environmental resistance. I'd hate to have a biodegradable roof, for example. ;)

Still, my shampoo being biodegradable is for the best.

To get to the parent's point, biodegradation is essentially rotting, a slow form of combustion. Life forms, just like humans, eat whatever, break down the hydrocarbons and exhaust it as H2O and CO2.

So if the idea is to prevent the release of CO2, the prevention of rotting is a good thing. One CO2 sequestration method often talked about up here is a couple of different plowing methods that tends to keep CO2 in the ground. They're talking about being able to sell them as carbon credits. Some already are. Thing is, those very methods are also good for soil fertilization and preservation, so they're just good business practices depending on the soil; many were already doing it.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[DreamsAreOkToo]

Or calling glue "liquid nails."

Hey! That gives me an idea! Lets build a liquid house!

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[budgenator]

I thought the paper industry grow low ligin trees for paper production, if they used higher ligin trees they should be able to supply both demands. The ligin industry might even develop using high ligin trees and consider the paper pulp a valuable by-product.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[jamesh]

I think the idea is to build facilities that produce nothing but "liquid wood", so it is a non issue for paper mills.

That sounds likely. I think that while paper mills are reasonably fussy about their source of wood, a 'liquid wood mill' would be far more liberal in what it could take as an input.

On a side note, people here comment that trees rotting releases CO2 into the atmosphere..while true on a small level, most of it ends locked up into biomass...and at geological timescales, into oil...

Don't rotting trees release other gasses too (methane?) that actually have a far higher greenhouse effect than CO2?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it would not have stayed there. Oil is being pumped for a myriad of uses. If it weren't going to be used in plastic production, the competing uses (fuel, chemicals, etc.) would eagerly utilize it.

Claiming that it wouldn't be pumped because we now have an alternative to petroleum-based plastic is an empty argument. It would have *no* impact on the amount of oil being pumped; it would simply alter the distribution of oil to other uses.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[gnick]

You bring up an interesting issue that's often misunderstood or intentionally ignored by people arguing for a cause using CO2 emissions as their only back-up. If your only goal is to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, you need to:
1) Support our managed timberlands
2) Argue that the trees should be felled as soon as they stop producing ounce-for-ounce as much lumber as could be produced on the same footprint by fresh-planted trees
3) Demand that the trees are treated and used as lumber (rather than paper) and land-filled after use. Or, preferably, preserved and land-filled immediately rather than being trucked around for construction.

The carbon is trapped in the wood, sealed to prevent short-term release, and imprisoned in a landfill. Hey, we can put a park on top =).

This is, of course, a stupid plan, but friendly in terms of CO2 emissions. There is a balance there that's often overlooked by tree-huggers and owl-slashers alike.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Brian Gordon]

I don't think rotting is in any sense combustion. Maybe they have some of the same end products, but decomposition is caused by bacteria, fungi, and insects, not energetic chemical reactions.. although individual cells destroy themselves with their own enzymes, that doesn't break down cells like combustion. Maybe you're thinking of rust, which is very slow oxidation (burning)?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[X0563511]

That's a non-argument.

So you are saying I should stop turning off my A/C and lights, since someone else would use that electricity anyways?

Should I run my taps 24/7 as well, since someone else would be using that fresh water anyways?

No.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

rust though, specifies iron.

And do you really think that just because it's done in a organism/cell that the reaction is any less energetic? Improperly stored grain/hay can get so hot that it ends up combusting from the heat of rotting.

At least according to Wikipedia, cellular respiration is a form of slow combustion.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Thinboy00]

melt it down and recycle it. (OR, since the average person is incredibly lazy, throw it in a landfill so you don't have to look at it </sarcasm>)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[wisty]

The point is, we are not trying to save the environment here. Once oil gets scarce again, it's brown-trousers time for plastics. That the replacement is biodegradable and carbon neutral is just a perk.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Toonol]

But in the same breath, they say that it will make an ideal replacement for plastics because it decomposes... releasing the carbon dioxide. It seems fuzzy-headed.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Toonol]

I think if that was true, all Carbon would long ago been sucked out of the air. Instead, there is a balance reached, and the carbon being pulled from the atmosphere is (of course) equal to the carbon being emitted into the atmosphere. It's not all from rotting biomass, directly, but that's one step of the cycle that it passes through on the way back into the air.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[c6gunner]

To be perfectly honest, I'm against biodegradable products in areas that demand environmental resistance. I'd hate to have a biodegradable roof, for example.

Not to bee too pedantic here, but your roof IS biodegradable. The roofs of most modern houses are made of wood. It's the nice non-biodegradable shingles which keep you dry.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[c6gunner]

I think if that was true, all Carbon would long ago been sucked out of the air. Instead, there is a balance reached, and the carbon being pulled from the atmosphere is (of course) equal to the carbon being emitted into the atmosphere.

And if THAT were true, we could burn all the oil in existence without seriously shifting the CO2 content of the atmosphere.

As far as we know, the CO2 content of the atmosphere was much higher in the early stages of life. Emergent life filtered the CO2 out of the atmosphere, sequestering it inside their bodies and eventually buried it under ground in the form of oil, coal, etc. The result is less atmospheric CO2 today. On a longer time scale this would result in even less CO2 in the air. Your assumption that such a process would have led to zero CO2 content today is baseless - you can't make such an assumption without knowing the original atmospheric content and the rate of sequestration over time.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Brian Gordon]

Just because it's an exothermic reaction doesn't make it combustion and the actual combustion in that case is incidental.

And cells aren't respiring when they're dead.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be too pedantic here, but those non-biodegradable shingles, are in fact biodegradable. It just takes a really long time. :D

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[giorgist]

Biodegradable is a scam. You will still find meat on the bone of a chicken 50 years if you pack it in an anaerobic environment.

As for plastics there are thousands of different types. I doubt your liquid wood can cater for them in any reasonable percentage.

Finally basic energy savings come from minimising handling.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Spaseboy]

What happened to the machine that could "microwave" plastic to break it down into its components?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Genda]

Actually he's absolutely correct, thinking of a metabolic process as a slow motion combustion is perfectly appropriate, and if you haven't heard biologist and physiologists talk about "Burning" calories for years, you've lead too sheltered an existence. They mean precisely that, you take a carbohydrate, you introduce it to oxygen, it reduces to water and CO2, and energy is liberated. The magic in the mitochodria is that the process is controlled so you don't become hard boiled.

Though there have been a number of cases of athletes who've exercised either without proper hydration, or in climates where the humidity prevents evaporative cooling, who've raised their body core temperatures to that magic 110 degrees, cooking the proteins in their bodies (just like hard boiling an egg) and stopping any chance of future metabolism.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[interkin3tic]

Life forms, just like humans, eat whatever, break down the hydrocarbons and exhaust it as H2O and CO2.

So if the idea is to prevent the release of CO2, the prevention of rotting is a good thing.

About how much CO2 is released by, er, rotting as opposed to power plant emmissions and cars? Obviously not possible to answer precisely, but I would guess the amount of CO2 released by rot would be negligible compared to burning fossil fuels. Not that I know anything about either subject, but it seems like we might be worrying about wiping our feet before going to put out the fire that is destroying our house.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Brian Gordon]

Actually

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[EsbenMoseHansen]

To be perfectly honest, I'm against biodegradable products in areas that demand environmental resistance. I'd hate to have a biodegradable roof, for example.

Not to bee too pedantic here, but your roof IS biodegradable. The roofs of most modern houses are made of wood. It's the nice non-biodegradable shingles which keep you dry.

Around here, we use mostly ceramic, slate or concrete roofs. My roof is a mix of ceramic and asbestos... damn good roof, but unfortunately not legal to lay on anymore. In any case, not exactly bio-degradable (but except for the asbestos, it doesn't really cause any harm, either)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Rennt]

Really? In my experience - which includes 2 years of roof maintenance and and 30-odd years of going in-and-out of houses - only very rare heritage-listed buildings have a shingle roof. Traditional building methods use clay or concrete tiles, and modern housing uses Colorbond (20-something layer acrylic coated steel) sheet. Shingles are so expensive in terms of raw materials, initial labor and ongoing maintenance that I have never once been in a house with a shingle roof. I am truly surprised that the economics of building could be so different anywhere else.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

You would guess extremely wrong. Man made CO2 accounts for about 5% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Plunky]

What happened to the machine that could "microwave" plastic to break it down into its components?

it was made of plastic :(

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[zoney_ie]

Your viewpoint is restricted to one geographic region. Here in Ireland, for ordinary houses slate is traditionally used (although nowadays it isn't "real" slate but rather some composite material) or else terracotta.

Wood shingles are not common - probably due to the fact things rot extra-fast here in Ireland. Even if modern treated wood would be fine - it's probably not highly regarded due to ingrained traditional building sentiments.

Going further back, thatch was used, but this was often replaced by corrogated iron (still visible in many places where the old cottages are still used or standing and haven't had extensive work).

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Patch86]

Your viewpoint is restricted to one geographic region. Here in Ireland, for ordinary houses slate is traditionally used (although nowadays it isn't "real" slate but rather some composite material) or else terracotta.

I think you misread GP- thats what he was saying.

The "roof" he was talking about was presumably the actual structure that forms the top of your house- almost always wooden beams and paneling.

The shingles are the bits of terracotta, slate or whatever that cover the roof, making it waterproof.

Its all pedantics though. Figuring out which bit of a roof is the "true" roof seems like debate I don't want to be a part of.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[rve]

Take a drive down to the local landfill, dig down quite a bit and you will find that many biodegradable substances that have been there for 20+ years have not really biodegraded at all. This is caused by the fact that the biodegradability of a substance is often dependent on the oxygen available to organisms to breakdown the substance.

Why are you in such a hurry? 20 years is almost nothing on a geological scale. What does it matter if something stays in the ground 20 years, 100 years or 1000, as long as it doesn't cause problems while it's in there. If it doesn't release harmful chemicals, cause a fire or a choking hazard, just let it sit.

If you consider landfills an eyesore, incinerate the garbage instead. Where I live, there is not enough room for landfills, so all garbage is incinerated. The heat from the incinerators is used to generate power and heat homes.

The advantage of these bio degradable materials is that the carbon released into the atmosphere as it decomposes or burns was taken out of the atmosphere as the plant material it was made of was growing, so the net emission would be close to zero. (Not quite zero if fossil fuel was used in the production and transport of the material)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Genda]

You bring up an interesting issue that's often misunderstood or intentionally ignored by people arguing for a cause using CO2 emissions as their only back-up. If your only goal is to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, you need to:
1) Support our managed timberlands
2) Argue that the trees should be felled as soon as they stop producing ounce-for-ounce as much lumber as could be produced on the same footprint by fresh-planted trees
3) Demand that the trees are treated and used as lumber (rather than paper) and land-filled after use. Or, preferably, preserved and land-filled immediately rather than being trucked around for construction.

The carbon is trapped in the wood, sealed to prevent short-term release, and imprisoned in a landfill. Hey, we can put a park on top =).

This is, of course, a stupid plan, but friendly in terms of CO2 emissions. There is a balance there that's often overlooked by tree-huggers and owl-slashers alike.

Anybody who suggests managing global atmospheric carbon starts with managing "Timber" has got a really messed up idea about how the environment works. That is like saying to cure you of cancer we have to kill the tumors, so we're going to give you a pound of arsenic... you will certainly be cured of the cancer.

Let's look at the gaping holes in this thinking;

1. Managed forests are simply timber farms. All semblance to a working ecosystem have been eliminated and they are more sterile than desserts. Worse, because thet grow at most one or two species of "Timber products" which are monoclonal, they are subject to catostrophic failure to pests and diseases. They require heavy use of pesticides, further damaging biodiversity on land and in streams and rivers, and are a flat out environmental disaster.
2. These managed forests are often clearcut and come with extensive roads and heavy machinery, leading to further serious environmental damage due to rivers and stream from silting and soil erosion, and poor land management.
3. Finally the idea of burying wood products in landfills is poorly thought out. We are already running out of landfill space, trying to hide billions of board feet of lumber in them is just not possible. Even if it were, the heat and pressure of landfills would cause the wood to breakdown and begin emitting methane, and greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2. This is simply a very bad plan

So I must totally agree with you on your evaluation of this being a stupid plan. I do however take exception with your portrayal of "Tree Huggers". Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that there are emotional, crunchy granola, earth firsters who would be happy to see homo sapiens disappear tomorrow. I consider these folks an aberation. A religious cult with a seriously warped view of reality. On the other hand. There are scientists, scholars, and a whole raft of thoughtful, intelligent and informed people who are seriously interested in a future with people in it. We have used our world as a toilet for a very long time (look at the margins of any American highway to get the picture I'm painting.) There's an old saying, you don't SH*T where you eat. Sadly, as a species we're learning first hand why that bit of simple logic is so vital. A significant number of young men in this latest generation are now suffering from the effects of psuedo-estrogens in the food and water we consume because there's virtually no control of the tens of thousands of chemicals we've introduced into our environment without so much as a question to the impact those chemicals might have on us and the other life forms on the planet. Atmospheric carbon it a critically important issue, but it points to a much larger problem. Human beings are threaten by their own poor judgement, and lack of ability to accurately guage what is a real threat and what's not. People are worried about sharks at the beach when more people die of lightening strikes every year. However, they have no problem moving into mobile homes built directly

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, yes. This is accurate, as long as more than 50% of our population is not using these conservation techniques, then the resources get used anyway.

The trick is to make then techniques effect the plebeians on a level they respect, like saving money.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Registered Coward v2]

Not only that, but the biodegradability of such a substance is over-played as well. Take a drive down to the local landfill, dig down quite a bit and you will find that many biodegradable substances that have been there for 20+ years have not really biodegraded at all. This is caused by the fact that the biodegradability of a substance is often dependent on the oxygen available to organisms to breakdown the substance. Thus, if you pack the trash too tightly, you create an anaerobic environment where organisms are less efficient at breaking things down.

What we really need is a better method of disposal, not necessarily creating new kinds of substances.

Think of the future archeologists. If we find a better way to hasten biodegradation, how will they discover we existed on a diet of Twinkies and Coke while reading People magazine?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[AvitarX]

It probably had the dis-advantage of requiring people to do the right thing to get plastic to the machine.

The great advantage that bio-degradable "plastic" would have is the ability to break down when people did the wrong thing.

I can look out my window and see first hand how much plastic people don't put in proper places (we had pretty high wind Thursday and Friday, and for some reason all the trash in the area blows onto my lawn and stays there.)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Chabil Ha']

The irony of your comment comes from the fact that I learned about this topic when reading a National Geographic several years ago. They could tell where they were in the 'landfill record' by trashed newspapers and reading the expiration labels on discarded wrappers.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just missing the point.

If we avoid taking the oil out of the ground, we're not releasing any NEW carbon into the environment. The carbon in the wood is already in the active cycle and us using it in the middle doesn't change the carbon footprint.

Using any oil, because we had to remove it from the ground where the past great races sequestered the oil (just like we want to do with nuclear waste) adds carbon to the environment that was not previously there.

(long ago the great races had the same problem we now face with carbon. they solved it by converting the excess carbon into oil and burying it deep into the ground where it was safe. unfortunately their solution was too late and they still died off, but they saved the world for future generations....which then dug the oil back out of the ground. sad really)

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[ultranova]

Biodegradable is a scam. You will still find meat on the bone of a chicken 50 years if you pack it in an anaerobic environment.

And if you toss it to the roadside, it'll be gone in a few days.

The point of biodegradable materials isn't that they'll rot in a landfill. The point of biodegradable materials is that when some cretin litters, the garbage won't accumulate to the point of turning the forest/roadside/ocean into another landfill.

I mean, really: you can just burn the current crop of plastics. They're basically solid forms of oil. And it's just a matter of time before some bacteria appear which can eat them. There are plants which can eat solid granite, plastics aren't that much harder.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[DarkOx]

Let me say all of this with the caveate that I remain highly skeptical of global warming and our understanding of the carbon cycle. Still its good to know all sides of the argument.

The principle response to what you suggest is that it take decades for that tree to gather up that carbon out of the system as it growns. We then release all that carbon back into the atomosphere in moments as we burn the thing. You would have to plant a metric assloade of tress to suck up the carbon at a rate released by burning just one.

I for one am still inclined to think there are other larger drivers of the carbon cycle than us buring things as ice corse show very clearly CO2 levels have been this high before but the above is the common argument.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[mdarksbane]

I think it really, really depends on what part of the country (or the world) you're in.

There are almost no roofs in the midwest that are not asphalt shingles. I believe this is fairly different in the southwest. I'm not sure the exact reasons (my guess would be something to do with snow, but it could be relative availability of materials).

But yes, shingle roofs are still hugely common in certain areas of the country. In two years doing residential buildings in Minnesota I never did a roof that wasn't shingles.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[DarkOx]

Again, I am not one of those oil is evil types but consider your argument from their prespective.

As long as we are making things we need from oil or powing stuff we will be needed to extract and consume oil. If you want to stop useing oil(sill IMHO) then you need to find substitutes for all or almost all its applications. This is one of those substitutes possibly.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[DarkOx]

No extra CO2 is being released into the atmosphere

Not to nitpick but this is a common problem with lots of "green think" its not system think. You might be right but we don't know enough to say that. Is this extraction process exothermic or indothermic? If it requires input energy where does come from, and does that source produce carbon emmissions?

I have done a good bit of reading on the subject of enviornmental economics. I even took a few classes as electives years ago while at university. I am not pretending to be an expert on this stuff by any standard. I do know a little more then the averge guy walking down the street though. Its been my experince in studing this subject that most "solutions" in use today really just shift the problem some place else.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Dipster]

I think you misunderstood what the parent was trying to say. The poster is suggesting we replicate one of nature's lesser carbon sequestration methods, which is the burying of plant and animal matter that will eventually be transformed into oil. The parent is suggesting that as soon as a tree matures and slows down its growth, we remove it, bury it, and replace it with a young tree that will pull carbon out of the atmosphere faster.

1) You are correct that such a method is a timber farm and that a normal ecosystem will not exist. But since the goal of the forest is not to provide usable tree products, the need for pesticides in not present. If a disease runs through and wipes out a large number of the trees, we simply bury those trees earlier than we wanted and start growing new ones.

2) If you think that managed forests in developed countries are still often clear-cut, you know very little about the timber industry as they have been selectively cutting trees since the eighties.

3) This plan would not put a pressure on landfills because it would require a specialized location anyway. To get around the methane problem, this area would have to be far deeper than an above ground landfill. In fact, it may be easier to turn the trees into woodchips and fill up abandoned mines with them. Or perhaps produce a wood-pulp slurry and inject it back into former oil-fields.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[SatanicPuppy]

The problem is fire. If a tree falls and is allowed to remain in situ it just increases the fuel load of the area. Then, when the inevitable fire breaks out, it quickly becomes unmanageable...There is just way too much to burn.

The only way to prevent this is with regular prescribed burns to keep the fuel loads of the forests low.

Carting it all off, pressure treating it, and building things with it isn't much of an answer either. Not only do you screw the forests over, but pressure treated wood has all kinds of nasty crap in it...You don't worry about the C02 being released when you burn it, you worry about the PCBs.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Registered Coward v2]

The irony of your comment comes from the fact that I learned about this topic when reading a National Geographic several years ago. They could tell where they were in the 'landfill record' by trashed newspapers and reading the expiration labels on discarded wrappers.

Yup. I was only sort of joking. Not only will landfills provide future generations with a rather robust way to study us; but at some point may be "mined" for resources as well; like China currently does with electronic waste.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[SatanicPuppy]

There are a lot more efficient ways of doing that than some kind of "grow and bury" timber operation. For the time and cost involved, you'd be better off just slurping the C02 from the air directly.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Xabraxas]

Where do you live? I live in the Northeastern United States and nearly every house has a shingle roof.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[ardle]

It probably had the dis-advantage of requiring people to do the right thing to get plastic to the machine.

I think we need to somehow bring the machine to people; I mean, somehow make it almost impossible for people not to do the right thing. I have no idea how: of course, it's best for people not to have unnecessary plastics in the first place.An extreme example:

net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is vitally important to get a receipt

- Douglas Adams

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[AstroWeenie]

This plan would not put a pressure on landfills because it would require a specialized location anyway. To get around the methane problem, this area would have to be far deeper than an above ground landfill. In fact, it may be easier to turn the trees into woodchips and fill up abandoned mines with them. Or perhaps produce a wood-pulp slurry and inject it back into former oil-fields.

I think you underestimate the volume that would be required to store all this wood. According to Wikipedia, the world's annual CO2 emission is 2.7e10 metric tons, which corresponds to 7.4e9 metric tons of carbon. If you store this at a density of 1 g/cm**3, it would take a cube about 2 km on a side per year. Putting that in an abandoned mine with a shaft cross-section of (say) 10x10 meters would require using about 400 km of mine shaft each year. Since wood is not 100% carbon by weight, the required volume of wood chips would be considerably larger.

I don't know what the total volume of abandoned mineshafts is, but I doubt they would last long if filled up at this rate.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[toddestan]

Perhaps he's refering to commercial construction? Shingles aren't commonly found on commercial buildings (though not unheard of), and likewise Colorbond is rarely found on residential buildings, presumably because people don't like the noise when it rains.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only in America where you don't listen what piglets have to say.
You go outside to ride your horse and shoot your guns. Until a tornado comes and your wooden house is blown away.
Then you move to another region an build a new wooden house.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor problem with wood in landfill - the aerobic degradation will be replaced by anaerobic degradation. The latter produces methane, which is worse for climate change.

So - bury and then *capture the methane* and use it for electrical generation. That will mean that the portion of the wood that does break down will be released as CO2 (after combustion of the methane) instead of as methane. The remaining wood will be sequestered.

Electricity from methane capture in landfill is used. There's such a generating station near where I live.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[interkin3tic]

That's not really proving my wild guess wrong unless you're not telling me something about the other 95%. If rotting material only contributes to something like 0.5% of the CO2 in the atmosphere, then our activities still outweigh the effect of rotting, and we'd again be worrying about a non-issue. On the other hand, if you're telling me that that whole 95% comes from respiration, or even 10%, then that makes more sense.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Chabil Ha']

OK, after doing some more research (OMG!) and torrent downloads (because hey!, you can only back as far as 2005 to get online National Geographic archives), I was able to pin it down to the right issue. The May 1991 issue contains a cool article entitled "Once and Future Landfills".

I happen to find a direct download here.

It's interesting to note that when I had read this article for the first time I had not yet reached puberty, yet I was able to recall the details for my original post. One can only hope the good memory will continue...

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[gibson_81]

So you are saying I should stop turning off my A/C and lights, since someone else would use that electricity anyways?

No they wouldn't. Aside from extracting electric energy from a reaction, one of the main differences between f. ex. a nuclear powerplant and a nuclear bomb is that we can control the speed of the reaction. This includes the option to produce less electricity when demand is lower (or when profits need to go up, but we can skip that for now).

Should I run my taps 24/7 as well, since someone else would be using that fresh water anyways?

No to this one as well, for pretty much the same reason. Water that doesn't get "used" stays in the pipes, so if you reduce your consumption then overall consumption drops as well.

What the parent means is that CO2 that is bound in trees will get released back into the atmosphere fairly soon after the tree dies even without human intervention, while the CO2 released
by burning oil/coal/gas would have remained bound for a long time if we hadn't extracted it.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use HEMP? We've been able to make plastic-type materials from hemp products for centuries. The only reason I can see for not going with hemp is that little people like me can contribute to the supply side as well as the demand side. The point there being that it isn't any fun for monopolists if people other than them can participate in the "making money from a supplying" part of the markets they dominate. There simply isn't any fun in a market for them unless .0001% of the planet is making money from products sold to 99.999 of us. Well I for one am tired, and the planet has gone broke from this type of market-model.

Hemp has been around for many thousands of years. It has amongst the highest Co2/O2 turnover ratio of any plant or tree of equivalent side. Coincidently, at one time it was suggested that one simply surround LA county with a 1/4 mile thick band of hemp to clean the air.

Hemp grows quickly, allowing for multiple yeilds per year. It has the highest cellulose index of any plant, which makes it an ideal candidate for use in making cellulosic biodeisel and ethanol. But no, I don't need to be a team of degreed scientists, or a CEO of some multi-billion dollar chemical company to make it, so it can not possibly save us!

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

Actually, the part I was talking about was the bit that keeps rain off my head - in the case of my house, asphalt shingles and tar paper.

Below that is indeed wood, but wood specifically treated with nasty chemicals(especially considering it's age) to keep it from biodegrading even if it does get wet occasionally. Treat wood the right way and it becomes very much less biodegradable - 50 year old wooden piers, for example.

On the whole, though, I'm a bit amazed at how the offhand comment part of my post attracted so much in the way of replies.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

It's more along the lines of 'every little bit helps'.

In my area, more CO2 emissions can be prevented by NOT recycling paper, throwing it in the land fill, than could be saved by doing it.

We're just too far from the paper recycling and producing factories. Figure in the shipping costs, the lower number of trees grown, etc... It's more cost efficient to throw the stuff away.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Firethorn]

I'll admit I should have double checked the dictionary.com source. It had a handy 'cite this source' link next to the part of the definition I wanted, so I grabbed it.

Read the definition of combustion; the processes of life certainly meet the requirements, combining a fuel and oxygen to produce heat.

Sure, dead cells don't respirate. However, the live ones EATING the dead ones certainly do. That's what biodegradable means, after all, that life processes will break it down, normally by eating it.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[randyleepublic]

Test comment

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Rich0]

They mean precisely that, you take a carbohydrate, you introduce it to oxygen, it reduces to water and CO2, and energy is liberated.

Well, if you want to be technical, the carbohydrate is OXIDIZED to water and CO2. The oxygen is what is reduced to water and CO2. :)

And for the mods still not through high school - pay attention when you get to chemistry class and you'll understand...

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[mdarksbane]

This is entirely reasonable.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[nedlohs]

As long as they make more new stuff than the amount that decomposes - which seems likely given human history.

But you always throw in as many maybes as possible, doesn't matter if they contradict each other, more chance of one of them being interesting to someone with money.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[xouumalperxe]

The whole point the OP was making is that such a plan is stupid. It puts the "omg carbon footprint" buzzword compliance first and foremost, and completely disregards a more holistic view of the problem. For example, dumping hydrochloric acid wastage in a river generates no carbon footprint whatsoever, so it can't possibly be nearly as bad as running your machines on electricity that comes from pollution-producing oil plants, right?

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but the biodegradability of such a substance is over-played as well.

. . . . .

This is caused by the fact that the biodegradability of a substance is often dependent on the oxygen available to organisms to breakdown the substance. Thus, if you pack the trash too tightly, you create an anaerobic environment where organisms are less efficient at breaking things down.

Not only not only that, but with the amount of toxic materials thrown into the landfill you are basically guaranteeing that you kill off much of the 'good' bacteria that would do the job for you.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[againjj]

There are almost no roofs in the midwest that are not asphalt shingles. I believe this is fairly different in the southwest. I'm not sure the exact reasons (my guess would be something to do with snow, but it could be relative availability of materials).

In places at high-risk for fires, wood shingles have a tendency to be avoided. Even treated, they still burn. California is a very high risk area, and so wood shingles are not used here anymore for new roofs, and old ones are being converted.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[mdarksbane]

I think we may just be talking difference in terms?

I'm not talking wood shingles. I'm talking asphalt shingles http://www.bobvila.com/HowTo_Library/Asphalt_Shingles-Asphalt_Shingles-A1464.html

Wood shingles are indeed fairly rare around here. But so are clay tiles and metal roofs.

Re:Calling this "liquid wood"

[againjj]

I was responding to the question of why wood vs. asphalt. Except now I go back and reread and see that it was really a question of shingle vs. non-shingle. Whoops.

More than one type of plastic

[name*censored*]

Will this liquid wood be able to replace the vast number of different sorts of plastic we have today? There are some plastics with some fascinating properties out there, I'd like to imagine that we won't lose those properties forever when oil runs out..

Re:More than one type of plastic

[Tenebrousedge]

The effect of oil running out won't be a loss of those interesting, special-purpose plastics. Where plastics are truly indispensable or irreplaceable, they will continue to be used, although they may be somewhat more expensive.

Where plastics are used unnecessarily, they will be discarded in favor of something else.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

We *can* create oil, even out of plain CO2 if necessary. We do have the chemical knowledge for that you know.

Making any plastic will be still as easy as it is today : you buy some type of oil-derivative at the store, and polymerisize it. Easy enough.

It will however, be a very costly thing to do indeed : it requires loads of energy. Right now that energy has simply been put in oil long ago, and making most plastics is in fact an exotherm process.

We will still make plastics. Producing them, however, will stop producing energy and start massively costing energy.

So that leaves multiple scenarios open. If we do get fusion operational somehow, for example, plastics will likely be as abundant as they are today, at least for a while. Even if we don't nuclear power is probably cheap enough to provide all those "specialty plastics", maybe even at comparable prices. The mass-market plastic will be the only thing disappearing.

My guess is, we'd replace it by another extremely useful and versatile substance we so massively used before the oil started to get so widespread : Iron. It's only marginally more expensive than plastics (mostly due to the mines' labour cost, there is more than enough iron in the ground to coat the entire earth with it several times). Instead of buying your salami in cheap plastic packaging you'll simply buy it in a can.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[flyingfsck]

Firstly, oil won't run out any time soon and secondly, there are vast quantities of coal.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[value_added]

there is more than enough iron in the ground to coat the entire earth with it several times). Instead of buying your salami in cheap plastic packaging you'll simply buy it in a can.

Interesting comment. I'd wager that a huge portion of the plastic we make could (and perhaps, should) be replaced with something else. Mind you, we'd have to figure in the hidden costs of health problems and environmental degradation associated with the manufacture, use and disposal of plastics for the price to even out.

As a side note (for those who aren't Italian or otherwise salami afficionados), real salami (not the stuff sold in grocery chains under the same moniker) doesn't require plastic or any other form of packaging. The surface mold protects it just fine while it's hanging in open air while curing, and will protect just fine on the way home from the market.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[roguetrick]

No poing in replacing plastics right now, as the above poster alluded to. A barrel of crude isn't used for just one product. You can't use one barrel for only fuel and one barrel for only plastics.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[az-saguaro]

Your points are somewhat flawed.

1 >> "Making any plastic will be still as easy as it is today : you buy some type of oil-derivative at the store, and polymerize it. Easy enough."

True, it should be easy, once you figure out an economical, industrializable chemistry to do your polymerization. But wrong, you don't just buy some type of oil-derivative. Current polymers based on petroleum refinement are based on hydrocarbons. Plastics such as poly-styrene, -propylene, -ethylene, -ester, and nylon generally have long carbon backbones. The plus side of it: cheap source of monomer, cheap and easy chemistry, great resulting products. The down side of it: biology generally doesn't have long carbon backbones, so life-on-earth has not generally evolved the metabolic machinery to handle hydrocarbons and derivatives. Petroleum forms from biochemistry subjected to pyrolytic conditions where life itself cannot survive. Thus, while petroleum and biochemistry share carbon, they share little else. That is why there is interest in finding biochemistry-based polymers that can be plasticized, because they will be subject to natural biological degradation.

If you look at the structure of lignin, it is already polymerized, based on a backbone of carbohydrates and quinones - and that is something that many self respecting microbes can sink their teeth into. A lignin based plastic would just further polymerize the compound into something with the desired characteristics (mw, density, viscosity, melting point, modulus, plasticity, etc).

2 >> "It will however, be a very costly thing to do indeed : it requires loads of energy. Right now that energy has simply been put in oil long ago . . .We will still make plastics. Producing them, however, will stop producing energy and start massively costing energy."

Lignin has already stored a lot of that energy - it is already a large and highly structured compound. Further polymerization shouldn't be any more expensive than any other plastization chemistry.

I don't think that anybody in industry or the consumer side, or even the ecology side, objects to the energy of producing plastics. Plastics are wonderful materials - cheap, easy, abundant, safe for humans - pretty much all good, except that they persist in the ecosystem, ultimately bad. Most of the petroleum we use is spent on energy. If alternative energy would be used for cars, homes, and industry, there will be more than enough petroleum to fulfill our plastics needs forever. All of the issues that apply here have to do with the environmental impact of non-biodegradable plastics, NOT with energy misuse, industrial efficiency, greenhouse gases and effects, petroleum reserves, nor global oil politics. The plastics industry is pretty sound - and would be nearly perfect if we could make a bio-plastic. Until now, that has been a challenging task, or someone would have done it already. I don't think that there is a nefarious polystyrene lobby that has squashed development; everybody recognizes it is important. And once you do discover an applicable chemistry and then tool-up the manufacturing infrastructure, it then becomes cheap, moneywise and energywise - just another plastic.

3 >> "So that leaves multiple scenarios open. If we do get fusion operational somehow, for example, plastics will likely be as abundant as they are today, at least for a while. Even if we don't nuclear power is probably cheap enough to provide all those "specialty plastics", maybe even at comparable prices. The mass-market plastic will be the only thing disappearing."

Huh? We make plenty of plastic now without fusion. You make it sound like production of a lignin-based plastic will be some sort of energy-sucking black hole. It's just another plastic - but with a whole lot of impediments to having just a simple chemistry. If you read the original article, this is making news because it does sound promising - these guys might have cracked that nut of finding a process that can

Re:More than one type of plastic

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd become a vegetarian before I'd eat salami from a can.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[lxs]

Instead of buying your salami in cheap plastic packaging you'll simply buy it in a can.

Interesting that you automatically assume that salami needs any packaging at all, considering that it has been successfuly sold unpackaged for hundreds of years.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[drinkypoo]

I don't know about that, but I can tell you that can already make a number of plastics plastic from hemp, corn, and soy, including biodegradable ones, and farming trees for plastic is going to be grossly inefficient compared to farming hemp. This is just one more misguided, idiot way to destroy the biosphere.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[drinkypoo]

Mining has atrocious impact. We need to use less metal, not more. What we need is more recycling and as you point out, a lot of the time you don't need anything except point-of-use production. If you buy locally, then things don't need to be packaged for long shipment. That means changing your eating habits, especially seasonally. Oh noes!! The good news is that if you eat produce not made out of oil then you're consuming less energy, getting more nutrition (the soil that's been repeatedly washed with petro-fertilizers and pesticides is mostly dead and growing food in it with petro-fertilizers is really just hydroponics with a soil medium, and not done well at that) and so on. And anyway we can already make a bag out of corn or soy plastic with a 2 angstrom thick layer of aluminum for light protection that will last months on a store shelf yet degrade in a month outside when exposed to UV or in six months in your compost pile, so if you really need some sort of advanced packaging, it's here now and it doesn't depend on oil and uses very little metal.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[drinkypoo]

Your points are somewhat flawed.

Right back at you.

Current polymers based on petroleum refinement are based on hydrocarbons. [...] biology generally doesn't have long carbon backbones, so life-on-earth has not generally evolved the metabolic machinery to handle hydrocarbons and derivatives.

Uh, all kinds of living things make fats which are mostly CH bonds, and we have already made all kinds of plastics out of vegetable oils. Henry Ford made a car made almost entirely out of soybean oil (the body was famously made with hemp fibers and resin.)

Getting hydrocarbons from bio sources is not a problem. They're not pure hydrocarbons, but they do have hydrocarbon chains. You do have to add energy (forgive my simplification) to reorganize into long-chain hydrocarbons. But energy is available, we can get a lot from wind and sun that we're not bothering with now.

If you look at the structure of lignin, it is already polymerized

It's also in a tree. Tree harvesting has traditionally been abused and is difficult to do right and still make money.

There is a reason that soda bottles aren't steel, tin, aluminum, or glass anymore. There is a reason that plastic bags have replaced paper at the grocery store, why butchered meats come wrapped in plastic, why toys are made of plastic, why picnic ware is made of plastic

Well, yes, yes there is. The reason is that the people with the timber paper and plastics industries are all wrapped up in the same system. Hearst demonized hemp using his newspaper industry, in order to protect his timber paper industry. Hemp plastic was likewise a threat to DuPont. We should be using hemp paper for all of this stuff. Instead we're using a system where people go out to the desert to die to secure the rights to pump oil out of the ground and spend a lot of energy and cause a lot of pollution so that your grocer can get a bag cheaper than if it were made out of timber-based paper, a product whose demand is kept artificially high by utilizing the government to make the competition illegal.

Don't let historical fact get in the way, though.

There will always be a need for the myriad of petroleum based plastics and devices that we use for specific products and purposes.

Not really. Given what we can do with chemistry today I sincerely doubt that there is any petroleum-based plastic which could not be satisfactorily made from a more renewable source, or for which a more renewable substitute cannot be found.

But we use TONS of "non-primary" support products, like grocery bags, food wraps and packaging, shipping and packing materials, retail packaging, disposable bottles and containers (soda and water bottles, laundry soap, cat litter, engine oil, household cleaners, etc), picnic and table ware, disposable medical items, and so on - i.e. the disposable junk that we consume and discard everyday. If a biodegradable plastic can be made for those products, it will be the proverbial win-win-win.

It would be an even bigger win if we didn't use plastic and if we didn't use plastic for more of those items. Grocery bags? Reuse. Food wraps and packaging, shipping and packing materials? Hemp paper (and other eco-friendly items, like those food starch packing peanuts.) Disposable bottles and containers? Most of them should really go back to glass, especially for consumables. Those which need to be plastic or metal because their contents are hazardous would often be better packed into metal containers. A lot of those products ought to be changed, too. For example you can make motor oil out of vegetable oil.) They still use refillable glass bottles in many countries, and when they wear out they are easy to recycle, if not cost-effective. You could just crush them up and throw them in the ocean and add to the world's supply of beach glass for all I care, if they would just stop putting

Re:More than one type of plastic

[DarkOx]

Yes, isn't funny how we always like to sit and think people of the past were standing around a cave beating their chests all day. Its not like peoples of the past had no technology. They had was of preserving and storing food. Lots of them. They knew for instance how to make salami that basically did not rot (at least not before you could consume it).

We might do well to rediscover some of these useful little tid bits from our past.

Re:More than one type of plastic

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

The problem with those techniques is the accidents they generated by not working with sterile materials.

Little incidents ... and the plague. Let's reintroduce that ! It's going to be really popular.

Quote from TFA

[Tenebrousedge]

"The lignin itself was misunderstood completely by [leaders in the field] and the majority of people," says Simo Sarkanen, an environmental science professor at the University of Minnesota.

Does that sound like a mad scientist to anyone else? "My research has been completely misunderstood, but I will change the world! And then they'll see! They'll pay for their ignorance! MUAHAHAHAHA!"

Re:Quote from TFA

[linzeal]

You obviously have not hung around a lot of scientists or engineers in academia lately with the economic downturn. This guy sounds sane compared to some of the people I run into every day. There are more and more desperate people out there trying to show that they deserve their jobs.

Re:Quote from TFA

[pjt33]

He's plainly mad anyway. Any sane person who wanted a way to make plastic without using oil would simply ask McDonald's for their cheese recipe.

Great, now they have to refilm The Graduate

[Quarters]

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Lignin. Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in lignin. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Can't come soon enough

[rolfwind]

With peak oil projected to come within a decade, and with prices accompanying the decline to make last year seem cheap, this can't come soon enough. Hopefully, they'll allow the growth of hemp to supply this.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[Anonymous Coward]

With peak oil projected to come last november, and with prices accompanying the decline to make last year seem cheap, this can't come soon enough. Hopefully, they'll allow the growth of hemp to supply this./blockquote

fixed that for you.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[Quarters]

"Peak Oil" has been projected to come within a decade for the past three decades.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[/dev/trash]

wait. when did peak oil move its date again? this is liek the third time.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[Quarters]

Last fall's price hikes were caused by trading speculators, the oil industry seeing what the market would reasonably bare in terms of prices, and artificially reduced production. The quantity of raw crude in the ground had nothing to do with it. If price was supposedly some magic quantity predictor for oil we should've run out some time in the 80's. The late 70s/early 80's price hikes at the gas pumps were, when adjusted for inflation, far worse than what we went through the past 12-18 months.
If, as by your assertion, 'peak oil' was reached last November then how do you explain the price drops since then? If we have really passed 'peak oil' then the price should continually rise as the supply diminishes.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[c6gunner]

Peak oil is, for all intents and purposes, a myth. It relies on the idea that no new oil reserves will be found, and no new technologies developed. That is a massively erroneous assumption. For instance, the recent price-hike encouraged us Canadians to start mining our reserves of oil-sands. The world oil-sands reserves are massive (more than the oil sources we use now), and they're simply not taken into account when computing "peak oil" projections. Oil-shales are another source which has barely been tapped, and world reserves are estimated to be even higher than oil-sands. US oil shale deposits alone exceed all the remaining conventional oil deposits in the entire world. Likewise, oil-shales aren't included in the computation.

Realistically, while oil prices will undoubtedly rise over time, we're not likely to hit any "peak" for a long, LONG time. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking at ways to minimize our oil consumption - I'm all for developing alternate-fuel vehicles, and building more nuclear reactors - but it does mean that we aren't facing a looming crisis just over the horizon.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[hamburger lady]

that's not right at all. the idea of peak oil does in fact factor in new discoveries, it just asserts that new found reserves of light sweet crude will be of dwindling size and not meet the ever-increasing need for petroleum. same is true of new technologies.

the tar sands are a great example - there's tons of oil in them, but it costs a shit ton to extract. whereas light sweet crude is easy as pie and cheap as hell to extract.

'peak oil' was never about 'oil running out'. oil will never technically run out. but cheap oil, that's another thing.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[c6gunner]

that's not right at all. the idea of peak oil does in fact factor in new discoveries, it just asserts that new found reserves of light sweet crude will be of dwindling size and not meet the ever-increasing need for petroleum. same is true of new technologies.

I'm a bit skeptical of that claim - the original "peak oil" predictions were for, what, 1980? Either they didn't account for new reserves/technologies at all, or they made a serious miscalculation in their estimates. I see no reason to believe that current predictions are any more accurate, especially when:

the tar sands are a great example - there's tons of oil in them, but it costs a shit ton to extract

That statement depends entirely on the idea that no new technologies will emerge to make the extraction process more cost-effective. There is no basis for making such a prediction. It could possibly be true, but it's still baseless, and is more probably wrong.

'peak oil' was never about 'oil running out'. oil will never technically run out. but cheap oil, that's another thing.

"cheap" is a relative term. That latest price hike was enough to make Canadian oil sands competitive with traditional oil sources. The US now gets the majority of it's oil from us. The biggest holdup in the development of the Canadian oil sands projects has been a labour shortage - the resources are there, the willingness is there, and the financial incentive is there, we just simply didn't have the manpower to do everything that needed doing. And yet even the prices we were paying last summer were fairly cheap; they just happened to be higher than what we're used to.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[jon_cooper]

Realistically, while oil prices will undoubtedly rise over time, we're not likely to hit any "peak" for a long, LONG time.

You're mistaken in what the "peak" in peak oil means. The peak refers to the AMOUNT of oil produced, not the price of oil. If the price of oil peaked, there wouldn't be a problem, would there?

The concept is that oil will continue to rise in price (as you said) and that eventually it will become so expensive that demand for it will drop. Despite the drop in demand, because the stuff will become so expensive to extract, it will still continue to rise in price and drop in demand.

That's the theory anyway - I personally don't think there will be a clearly defined peak in extraction, but more a rollercoaster.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[c6gunner]

I understand the concept, I just chose my words badly :) A better way to phrase it would have been something like:

Realistically, while oil prices will undoubtedly continue to rise over time, we're not likely to see any major spike due to "peak oil" for a long, LONG time.

Thanks for the correction though.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[hamburger lady]

first off, the original peak oil predictions were for US oil production, which did in fact peak back then.

as to technologies, again, 'peak oil' does not assert that no new technologies will emerge, rather that new technologies will not be enough to make oil as cheap as it is to stick a straw in the ground and suck up crude. i mean, saudi aramco could make a profit if oil sells for less than 10 bucks a gallon. what magical technology is going to let oil sands compete with that?

as to cheap, our whole country is structured around cheap oil, cheap as in as cheap as it used to be. canadian oil sands are only profitable at a per-barrel oil cost which would, if permanent, really hurt this country.

Re:Can't come soon enough

[c6gunner]

first off, the original peak oil predictions were for US oil production, which did in fact peak back then.

I stand corrected. Of course, if the US starts processing oil sands/shales, your "peak" will become more of a plateau :)

i mean, saudi aramco could make a profit if oil sells for less than 10 bucks a gallon. what magical technology is going to let oil sands compete with that?

I'm going to assume you mean 10 bucks a barrel?

You're right, they can afford to do it due to low labor costs, low-to-no exploratory costs, and the existing infrastructure. But oil isn't selling for that price now, and is never going to drop that low. The Arabs aren't stupid; they know that their oil will run out eventually, so they're unlikely to start selling at break-even prices. They need the money in order to finance projects to ensure future profitability for their nations, such as all those crazy resorts they've been building in the UAE. Even if they did start dropping prices, they don't have the supply to drop global prices to that extent. Their oil would sell faster, but more expensive oils would still sell. That's essentially always been the situation - even conventional oil extraction in the US has always been more expensive than in the middle east.

as to cheap, our whole country is structured around cheap oil, cheap as in as cheap as it used to be. canadian oil sands are only profitable at a per-barrel oil cost which would, if permanent, really hurt this country.

Canadian oil sands are still profitable at $50 a barrel (up to 27% profit according to wikipedia). If that's going to "really hurt" your country, then you guys are in worse shape than I thought :)

Next step

[jmknsd]

transparent aluminum.

Re:Next step

[kohaku]

Definitely, and we won't need to put any money into R&D either! Who cares if we lose a couple whales?

Re:Next step

[flyingfsck]

We already have transparent aluminium. It is commonly known as saphire and your wrist watch 'glass' is made from it.

Re:Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean sapphire? But do go on. What is this thing you call a "wrist watch"?

Re:Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have transparent aluminium. It is commonly known as saphire and your wrist watch 'glass' is made from it.

Nope... mine's plastic.

Re:Next step

[fast turtle]

already done - they're now working on cost reductions

Re:Next step

[maxume]

Several gemstones are composed of mostly aluminum oxide (The names come from the impurities/color). The general name for them is corundum:

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

Re:Next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Sapphire is still pretty uncommon as a watch crystal, though with the relatively low cost of synthetic sapphire today, it's becoming more common. No longer exclusive to $$$$ watches like the Rado.

The big problem with your claim is that it's aluminum - sapphire and ruby are aluminium oxide (Al2O3) - not quite the same thing.

EPIC FAILURE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is Lenny you fuckers!?

Re:EPIC FAILURE!

[X0563511]

This weekend was a tentative release date, jackass.

Transparent aluminum ?

[stevedmc]

I guess transparent wood comes before transparent aluminum.

Lignin used to be the same way

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time, when woody plants first evolved, there was nothing that could break them down. As a result, dead trees piled up hundreds of feet deep all over the world until bacteria evolved that could finally eat the stuff. This went on for long enough to leave the huge amount of coal that is still buried today.

I would hope that some form of bacteria will develop the ability to eat various forms of plastic, as that's the only way that trash island is ever going away...

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[MrNaz]

Yea, these alarmists just like scaring people. The biosphere will evolve to deal with any problems we create today. This means that there's hope for our great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grand children after all.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[Rhapsody Scarlet]

Yea, these alarmists just like scaring people. The biosphere will evolve to deal with any problems we create today.

Not sure whether this comment was meant seriously or not, but it is pretty much a given that the biosphere will evolve to take care of the mess we've made someday (it's been through worse already). The only question is whether we'll be around to see that happen, or if we'll have all died off before that time.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[X0563511]

I'm kind of hoping that we will have removed ourselves from the area before that happens. I like to hope, you know.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that broken down plant matter is what trees mainly grown on, I ask you which came first? The bacteria or the tree?

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There are already bacteria that can attack certain plastics(using an enzyme appropriately called "nylonase". Fairly quick work for a chemical that didn't exist until 1935. Shockingly enough, team creationism doesn't approve).

The trouble, though, is those situations where plastics are destroying some part of the ecosystem far faster than organisms can evolve to clean them up. In the Great Pacific Garbage patch, for instance, the plastic is entering the food chain at an impressive clip and annhilating seabird populations. I'm sure the bacteria will have something figured out within a couple of centuries; but they might not have all that much company when they do.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[Anonymous Coward]

What, the large numbers of "great" in that post didn't tip you off that I was being ironic?

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[flyingfsck]

Coal wasn't made from trees. Coal was made from the seed pods of ferns - unimaginable quantities of ferns and seed pods, over millions of years. The really interesting thing though is taht coal occurs in multiple seams with millions of years of intervening time. So the tropical rain forest climate that was needed for the ferns to grow, happened multiple times and therefore can happen again.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[Anonymous Coward]

team creationism doesn't approve

Well duh. Of course God created things that can eat plastic, after all, He created plastic too!

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[Siridar]

Reminds me of a George Carlin skit:

"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked."

http://gospelofreason.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/george-carlin-the-planet-is-fine/

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[BiggerIsBetter]

So the tropical rain forest climate that was needed for the ferns to grow, happened multiple times and therefore can happen again.

Not if the Cylons have their way!

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[lxs]

I don't know about you, but given the choice, I'm not too thrilled at the prospect of sitting around in the dark for twenty million years waiting for the coal to replenish itself.

As other commenters have said countless of times: The planet will be fine.
The problem is trying to halt the current wave of mass extinctions before it's our turn to go the way of the dodo.

Re:Lignin used to be the same way

[shipbrick]

And I'm sure people are trying to bioengineer better microbes to degrade the plastic. This kid won the science fair on that basic principle. http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2008/05/teenagers-science-fair-project-may-deliver-us-plastic

Repurposing excess plastic...

[Bagels]

Plastic is a petroleum product. Can the conversion process be reversed? At what point does that million square miles of plastic gook start to look like a mine-able resource and not simply pollution? Certainly it could be recycled into new products, too.

Re:Repurposing excess plastic...

[jipn4]

The stuff that's floating around there is much, much harder to extract and use (it's tiny particles suspended in water) than the stuff we are still dumping every day. If we can't even be bothered to recycle all plastics and organics when they are in big trucks, what makes you think it's economical to do it halfway around the world, filtering millions of gallons of water to get at it?

Re:Repurposing excess plastic...

[value_added]

Certainly it could be recycled into new products, too.

That elicits the image of a dog chasing it's tail.

Sure, you can take steps to mitigate problems, but it seems, at least to me, more reasonable to address the root of the problem. Which is too much fucking plastic.

The OPEC cycle

[Vandil X]

I find it amusing that any time someone proposes using an alternative to petroleum-based products, that proposal always gets turned down and slammed for being more expensive, etc. than using petroleum...

...then we get back to petroleum products causing issues (environmental and economic)... and the cycle renews itself.

Curse you OPEC and the lobbyists you have in our elected government.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

[j1m 5n0w]

For the benefit of the curious reader, here's some more information on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that you (and the summary) mention.

okayyy... soooo......

[Ancient_Hacker]

Okay, so we're going to grow trees to make "lignin plastic" and then the stuff is going into landfills where it will biodegrade and will release CO2. How is this better?

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[X0563511]

Because the CO2 was pulled out of the air to grow the trees. We aren't creating MORE CO2 in the atmosphere, we're just moving whats already there.

Using petroleum (that's drilled for, not created from carbon... which we CAN do, it's just expensive) pulls CO2 out of the ground, and leaves it out. This raises the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere relatively permanently.

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the same reason we want to replace ALL petroleum based products with plant based products. The CO2 from petroleum based products has been trapped for millions of years. This CO2 being trapped is part of what created the biosphere we currently enjoy (and are well adapted for). If all of this CO2 is released we see climate change (as we are) which will result in a different biosphere. Most likely one for which we are much less suited.

With plant based products on the other hand, they are using CO2 from the atmosphere. So when these products breakdown and the CO2 is re-released, there is a zero net addition of CO2 to the environment.

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[Upaut]

Okay, so we're going to grow trees to make "lignin plastic" and then the stuff is going into landfills where it will biodegrade and will release CO2. How is this better?

This is better because in this case the product is "Carbon Neutral", as in it is releasing CO2 that the plants had used to grow. When we use petroleum products, the CO2 released is from carbon that was taken out of the cycle and buried deep underground... Now eventually it would even out in a few millennia... The Earth had handled this carbon before... But the Earth would not be the climate that we as humans are used to... The ecosystem using that much carbon had far more plant growth... As such much, much more Oxygen in the air. Which in turn can support much larger animals. Especially insects.... A warmer, oxygen-rich, swampy environment.

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean carbon from the ground, not CO2?

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[X0563511]

Pendantics... yes. The O2 comes from the oxidation while it burns.

That said, the plants take the actual CO2 from the air, use the O2 in their metabolism, and use the C for structure. They also use the H from the H2O, but that gets rebonded with the O2 and released, they don't keep it.

Re:okayyy... soooo......

[Toonol]

"we?"

You. Petroleum -> plastic is carbon neutral, by the way.

Re:Slashdot reader's anthem:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a dog,
You insensitive clod!

In my opinion

[Hao Wu]

Plastic == sequestered carbon Wood == biodegradable == CO2, water, methane == greenhouse gases kdawson == moron

Highly proprietary formula...

[polishengineering]

Great. The German's have successfully hidden their highly secretive and potentially Earth saving formula away from the masses and academia where it could be improved for over a decade. I'm for making a buck the same as the next guy, but when you come across something as important and the potential for widespread impact such as this you would think that your better half would take over and get the word out. Imagine if this little alternative plastic company joined forces with the largest paper producer in the US which provided it with an almost limitless supply of this ligin. That would drive the cost down and provide the volume necessary to make a legitimate impact on the market.

hemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use hemp plastics? Seems like a damn good idea to me.

here's your answer

[jipn4]

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Ocean-Plastic-Landfill-Algalita1nov02.htm

I am often asked why we can't vacuum up the particles. In fact, it would be more difficult than vacuuming up every square inch of the entire United States, it's larger and the fragments are mixed below the surface down to at least 30 meters. Also, untold numbers of organisms would be destroyed in the process. Besides, there is no economic resource that would be directly benefited by this process. We have not yet learned how to factor the health of the environment into our economic paradigm. We need to get to work on this calculus quickly, for a stock market crash will pale by comparison to an ecological crash on an oceanic scale.

Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

It already exists

hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't we already have 'liquid wood'? Some people have been wearing rayon since the 70's....

Hemp as a source of lignin...

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be going out on limb, here, but I would not be surprised to discover that hemp is pretty good renewable source of lignin...

Didn't we have this over a century ago?

[kimvette]

Didn't we have this (plastic made from wood) over a century ago?

It's called cellophane.

Re:Didn't we have this over a century ago?

[flyingfsck]

Yup, we also had plastic made from milk, called casein, a long time before the first Bakelite was made.

Re:Didn't we have this over a century ago?

[macraig]

Are all proteins officially considered plastics, then? Are all proteins polymers? Is "plastic" and "polymer" fully interchangeable?

Re:Didn't we have this over a century ago?

[Aviation Pete]

Cellophane is only one of many cellulose-derived plastics. Celluloid was the first, but the most important are esters of cellulose and organic acids. Cellulose acetate was first produced in 1865, and others are cellulose butyrate and cellulose propionate. Unfortunately, although produced on an industrial scale for a long time, they are much more expensive than most plastics.

Quite...

[denzacar]

He even has a name to match. Well... at least the second part.
Dr. Sarkanen sounds much better than Dr. Simo.

He does look like he fuckin hates us all for all those wood jokes all these years, though.

Re:Quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

That man is plainly a murder spree waiting to happen. Arrest him immediately.

I write as a qualified physiognomist.

Liquid Wood sounds good...

[malkir]

It doesn't change the fact that they are over-felling in the first place... hardwood is extremely energy inefficient and requires toxins to process into paper. While it's good that they are actually recycling one of timbers by-products, but they are still ignoring other easier and more efficient (read: harder to monopolize)hardwood substitutes.

Hardwood is 20-40% cellulose while Hemp is over 70% cellulose.

If this isn't enough, consider the lifespan of hardwood vs. hemp. Hardwood takes tens of years to mature, while the turnaround for hemp is every few months. One acre of hemp produces as much usable material as SEVEN acres of timber.

In addition to paper, hemp can also be used to make biodegradable plastic and has been done for over 50 years. Why is the government so restrictive of a plant with so many clear benefits?

Re:Liquid Wood sounds good...

[Toonol]

"A common reporting error regarding hemp is the claim of excellent fiber properties, particularly the use of the hurd for papermaking. These claims probably stem from a 1938 Popular Mechanics article, which incorrectly stated that the woody core of hemp was 77% cellulose. Scientific and technical literature indicates that the cellulose content of hemp's core ranges from 30-40%.(12) The difference in cellulose content is substantial when one is evaluating pulping efficiency. This incorrect claim has been repeated and reprinted widely.(13)"

http://www.visionpaper.com/speeches_papers/Rymkenafhemp.html

Yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

"A soupy expanse of plastic waste ... now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean"

And exactly where is this million square miles? I've never seen it in any satellite photo. What are the Google Earth coordinates? And why would all of the plastic in the oceans flow to just one square area (and why not circular)? All sounds made up scaremongering to me!

Re:Yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

UHHHH....using Wikipedia HARDLY represents a substantiation of truth. It was on Slashdot just recetly how a Wiki post (which was later changed) was used a reference material for a "legitimate" newspaper article, which was then cited as the proof for the Wiki article...

Uhh...YOU can update Wiki with any b.s. you imagine or intentional lie you want to perpetrate upon unsuspecting high schoolers that don't know any better than to question the internet source...

There is nothing in that Wiki article that provides PROOF to the theory...it's utter nonsense to suggest that represents truth.

Re:Yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it is true, the only bad effect seems to be on jellyfish and birds. If this lowers my chances of getting stung or having my car shit on I'm all for it.

Ping Pong Balls

[flyingfsck]

Ping Pong Balls are made of celluloid. Plastic made from wood. What is old will be new again...

math problem

[Anonymous Coward]

1 million sq miles is 1000 miles by 1000 miles.
seems exaggerated.

just shut up about units. that's 1600 x 1600 km.

nothing is ever as simple as in TFA

[Tristfardd]

You are right when you say lots of natural gas would be burned. Other misconceptions abound. What follows is very abbreviated. The cheap way to make paper is to cook it using the Kraft process. The wood gets chopped into small chunks and cooked in a liquor stew which separates the lignin from the nice fibers used for paper. The lignin holds the cells together and make the wood hard so the tree grows tall. Coming out of the stew the glop gets washed off the fibers. The chemicals used to cook the wood are expensive so the glop containing the lignin (which is bound to some of the chemicals) gets burned. The burning gets rid of the lignin carbohydrates and a stream of chemicals (called smelt) which runs out the bottom of the furnace, goes into a tank of water, comes out in a stream called green liquor, and eventually ends up going back into the cooking cycle. The heat from burning the lignin goes, as slarabee describes, into turbines to make electricity and steam for various purposes. Now, if you don't burn the lignin, you have to use some other source of energy to make that steam and electricity. Second, and the point the article misses completely, how are you going to separate the lignin from the chemicals? Those boilers in paper mills are called recovery boilers because they recover the chemicals. It's the cheapest way to do it. How is going to a more expensive method for chemical recovery and going to a more expensive fuel a good solution for anything? Lignin in a liquid wood would be better than plastic. The value of the liquid wood using lignin, though, would have to be high enough to overcome the above costs.

Use the Plastic Microwave

[nido]

Plastic is a petroleum product. Can the conversion process be reversed?

This is what Global Resource Corporation's microwave does. Right now they are fine-tuning their prototype on used tires. One 20-pound tire yields 1 gallon of diesel oil, 50 cubic feet of propane/butane, some carbon black and some steel.

The device uses a vacuum chamber to reclaim the hydrocarbons after they've been released from the solid.

Lignin is actually a "plastic"!

[macraig]

Lignin is actually a natural "plastic" - polymer - as I learned last year. It's a polymer with a ridiculously long molecular chain; I've wondered if that is what gives it its rigidity. If we can manage to re-purpose lignin as a replacement for synthetic hard plastics, that might ease the crash that is inevitably coming as petroleum becomes increasingly scarce.

Re: Seed pods of ferns?

[macraig]

Ummm... no. Ferns don't have seed pods. Ferns produce spores, which are far smaller than most seeds (orchid seeds perhaps being an exception).

I rather doubt your statement is true, that petroleum is comprised of nothing but decomposed fern spore. Could you please cite a reasonably authoritative source?

Overpopulation?

[Msdose]

Any article that doesn't mention overpopulation should not be allowed to present itself as any sort of solution to environmental problems.

We already did that last century - Bakelite...

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Global warming is a scam to keep people poor

[leereyno]

Global warming is a leftist scam to prevent the development of liberal democracies and free markets in the 3rd world by retarding their economic and industrial growth.

The 3rd world and all of its problems represent the last possible hope for the left to remake the world into a communist dsytopia. If 3rd world countries are transformed into wealthy nations with political and economic freedom, there will be no one left to sell communism to other than wet-behind-the-ears college students, most of whom outgrow it.

The swindle of global warming is a scam to keep people in impoverished countries poor.

It's all about making the world safe for communism.

Re:Global warming is a scam to keep people poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Comrades, he's on to us! Some of these imperialist swine can be quite clever in their narrow and limited way!

Re:Global warming is a scam to keep people poor

[g8oz]

Who the hell modded this wild-eyed rant insightful?

Looking at any situation only through the lens of their ideology's beliefs and fears is what has made the right so irrelevant today.

Re:Global warming is a scam to keep people poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming is a leftist scam to prevent the development of liberal democracies and free markets in the 3rd world by retarding their economic and industrial growth.

The only things being intentionally retarded are the parent poster and the people who modded this "informative".

Bakelite...

[Nocturrne]

WTH? Why can't people come up with something we haven't tried already? pffft...

bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

It would take all the trees in the world to replace plastic. but thanks for thinking of the environment. Asshole

The crucial thing is the lignin content

[Aviation Pete]

As the article carefully states, even Arboform uses only 50% lignin (yes, I *did* RTFA). The rest is made up of rather expensive "additives" - one crucial ingredient being Ecoflex, a synthetic (= oil-based) polymer which is needed to reduce the extreme brittleness of genuine lignin.

Two hopes spelled out in the articles will never materialize:
- it will never be as cheap as oil-based plastics are today, and
- it will never be able to replace most of the current oil-based plastics due to it's poor mechanical properties (unless we reduce the lignin content even further).

Hasty, hasty...

[Anonymous Coward]

A soupy expanse of plastic waste â" too tough for bacteria to break down

Eh! Give them time. Some bacterium will evolve in time and will be able to eat the thing, and you'll really know the meaning of population explosion. Or, just as likely, God knew beforehand that plastics were in our future and surely preordained some strains of bacteria to be able to eat them. They are just too well-mannered to start eating before the rest do, or something.

The original plastics were plant based

[tigerbody1]

In the early days - 7 plants were named and shown to be excellent oil sources.
And these oil sources can be combined with a hardener to become a "plastic"
Soy oil was one of the first.

George Overley was the chemist working for Henry Ford to create many plant based components for Ford cars and trucks. Around 30 different components were plant based until Henry Ford was kicked out of the company he started.
The most famous is the Soy plastic bumpers that are mostly mistaken as Hemp Plastic by Jack Herrer in
"The Emperor Wears No Cloths"

Re:The original plastics were plant based

[drinkypoo]

Most of the car was made of Soy, the body panels were made of hemp fiber and resin. Jack would probably appreciate if you spelled his last name ("Herer") correctly, as well as the title of his book ("...Clothes".) I don't suppose you would like to enumerate the 7 plants, or is this just part of some kind of old testament rant?

My lady has a "fur" hat entirely (except for snaps) made from hemp and hemp plastics. The fake fur (really quite good as such things go), the silk lining, the fabrics are all made from hemp. You can't tell at all, unless someone tells you.

Personally I think the research ought to be going into plastics from algae, and I'll tell you why: Algae makes most of our oxygen. That means that it also must be fixing most of our CO2. Rainforests try to fix a lot of CO2, but they decompose so fast that they produce almost as much as they fix. They do, however, provide cooling and filtering functions and shelter an immense amount of biodiversity. Anyway, the point is that when you make plastic from oil you take CO2 that has been buried in the ground for however many years and release it into the atmosphere, but when you make plastic from algae you take CO2 from the atmosphere and fix it into tonka trucks and drain pipes. When you make plants from the soil you deplete the soil, but when you make plants from the water you don't deplete anything. Algae can be grown in dirty and/or brackish or even salt water and no culturing of strains is necessary; best production comes from whatever algaes descend from the air and colonize your water. Meanwhile you're producing oxygen! Algae is probably the only rational answer for where all this plastic should come from. If we somehow find we have too little CO2 in the atmosphere, then we can start looking at other sources again.

Re:The original plastics were plant based

[tigerbody1]

" the body panels were made of hemp fiber and resin." Sorry - Jack got it wrong. I went to the Henry Ford Archives and looked at the files themselves.
George Overley actually talks about the mistake others made about Hemp plastic in that car. Dr Overley said that any of 7 oil pants COULD be used, but that they used Soy. It is in a Mechanical Engineering mag in 1952.
The plants I can remember on his list are: soy, corn, hemp, kenaf, castor, palm
I have the book somewhere....
sorry I can't remember the ones Dr Overley talked about.
Henry Ford the great had 24,000 acres of Soy all around his estate in Ypsilanti, Michigan. His airport was called "Willow Run." They invented the Soy margarine there, among all the other inventions.

Re:The original plastics were plant based

[drinkypoo]

My source isn't Jack Herer, but on the other hand, I can no longer find the itemized list of what the car was made from. It discussed which parts were made from what and was quite specific. Ford also had quite a bit of hemp planted around his estate. P.S. Margarine is horribly fucking bad for you.

if there's not enough paper byproduct to go around

[Anonymous Coward]

Synthetic Genomics aims to replace the petrochemical industry. Next goal: replace the plastic industry? Or at least "eat" our old plastic waste problem and turn it into something useful.

It's already here.

[moosesocks]

Although lingin-based plastics may be something new, bioplastics are by no means new.

By pure and honest coincidence, I have a disposable cup made out of a plant-based bioplastic sitting on my desk that I got from a restaurant along with some take-out earlier today.

It's virtually indistinguishable from a normal plastic cup, and actually looks a bit nicer than your typical disposable drinkware -- the crystal-clear bioplastic is sturdy and has a nice 'shine' to it. It's biodegradable, and contains no oil-based inputs, although you'd never guess it by looking at it or handling it.

The manufacturers of the biopolymer claim that it can be adapted to all sorts of other products, at what seem to be fairly reasonable prices (~$1/kg). What's not to love?

Re:It's already here.

[NickW1234]

Unfortunately, looking at these things separately, you don't really do much good.

To get CO2 out of the air, you need to tie up the carbon in heavier materials.

To stop from producing garbage, you need your heavier materials to break down into lighter materials. Bioplastics will give up their carbon in one form or another, and if it's an endothermic process, likely most of it is in the form of CO2 and methane (I'm not a biologist, maybe one can confirm?)

CO2 is an end product. You don't get energy out of it. The only way to convert it into anything else is to put energy in.

Putting energy into it by burning a fuel won't help you, because you're going to produce more CO2 through combustion than you'll store in the product of your endothermic reaction.

The only energy input to the system is the sun.

If we use more energy than the energy that hits the earth from the sun, we'll end up with more end product.

Pretty much, to best reduce the CO2 in the air, we need to let things turn back into petroleum and then leave it in the ground.

Just think about everything from an energy standpoint, and it makes a lot more sense.

Re:It's already here.

[NickW1234]

Oh, and what about celluloid?

Plastic made out of plants, back in the 1850s

;)

Here's a report

[mangu]

"A soupy expanse of plastic waste ... now covers an estimated 1 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean"
And exactly where is this million square miles? I've never seen it in any satellite photo

This is a report on that area, and what's exactly what they mean by this "garbage patch" thing. It's scary, and it makes sense.

Bacteria

[Anonymous Coward]

Just breed a bacteria capable of eating all the plastic, it probably won't backfire on us!

The disposal method's been around for centuries.

[Colin Smith]

Pyrolysis.

You pyrolyse the crap and bury the resulting char in your fields.

It's just cheaper to bury it. However the oil's running out so that'll all change.

 

The US dollar is backed by oil

[Colin Smith]

The rest of the world has to buy US dollars in order to buy oil. America is paid for every barrel of oil which is sold across the world. (Ask the Saudis exactly why that might be the case)

That is why the status quo isn't changing any time soon.

 

Re:The US dollar is backed by oil

[Eli Gottlieb]

So I guess we might sum up the state of things with, "The oil must flow."?

Re:The US dollar is backed by oil

[Anonymous Coward]

For the benefit of the USA, the oil must flow AND be sold mainly in USD.

Otherwise the scheme falls apart.

What about hemp seed oil?

[Xabraxas]

Isn't there already biodegradeable plastics made from hemp seed oil? Using hemp seed oil would be a drastic improvement over using wood considering yeild per acre.

Well, there are seed ferns

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Or at least were. During the Devonian period these plants spread rapidly across the land and created the first forests.

However I don't know of any source that claims that these seed pods are the primary constituent of coal.

First of all the largest bulk of ancient coal deposits were laid down during the Carboniferous period, which followed the Devonian. These periods are all 10's of millions of years long and certainly bacteria evolved to eat lignin on a shorter time scale than that. In fact it is actually fungus that do most of the eating of wood anyway.

It is also not true that coal was only formed in one or a few specific geological periods. There are coal deposits which formed in every period from the Devonian on through to relatively recent periods in the Cenozoic Era. LOTS of coal formed in the Carboniferous and a lot of it is now high quality coal.

And anyone that has seen what sorts of stuff is in coal deposits will know that the vast majority of it was all sorts of different plant materials. There are leaves, trunks, roots, branches, etc all in the coal and in some places there are whole FORESTS turned to coal where all this stuff is still quite plainly visible. So maybe fern seed pods are a decent part of that, I don't know, but it is a lot more complex than that and even a modern forest could turn to coal in the right conditions.

Re:Well, there are seed ferns

[macraig]

I know. I wasn't really in doubt myself, rather I was pinning him down for the count. I know with reasonable certainty that he can't produce anything credible to support such an outlandish claim.

Maybe what he really meant to say was that the FLOWERING trees that we know today didn't exist in the Devonian, Cretaceous or Jurassic periods, so that most of what we see as coal now developed from the decomposition of "ferns" - spore-bearing plants the size of trees. What he actually said didn't communicate that, though.

Re:Well, there are seed ferns

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yeah, the whole 'seed fern' thing was a bit outlandish ;).

Plus for environment

[billyweb]

It's safe for the environment. This deserves some advanced research just on that point alone.

Re:CO2 is *FOOD* to Trees - NOT POLLUTION You Idio

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't suppose you would mind me dousing the interior of your car with gasoline? It's fuel, right?

Idiot.

elastic lad

[Elastic Lad]

What's wrong with aluminum? I like aluminum.

Racing fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to say this out loud. Last I looked in an industrial chemistry book I have here, lignin looked like a long chain of toluene and xylene with a few side branches. My first thought was 108 octane fuel so I could run higher compression in my car and get better efficiency -- carbon neutral at that since the carbon in the lignin came out of the air in the first place. Split up that puppy and all sorts of handy semi-orgainic chemicals come out, plastic precursors just being a single one of them. The deal would be to find buyers for all of them so no waste accumulates at your plant, as is fairly common in the chemical business. Just that no one is doing this with lignin. Burning it as is is a nightmare, as this molecule as is doesn't burn clean at all.

A soup of plactic

[akayani]

I've seen this soup in Bali. It's millions of plastic bags used to hold tea that are then disposed of in the gutter, then flushed out of the drains in wet season. Fully disgusting. What better method of disposal will solve that problem... a bin? Don't assume this is plastic coming from the developed world where developed world solutions can be applied.

Don't we already have this?

[Anonymous Coward]

My orange juice comes in plastic-like bottles made of corn. Who needs this shite?

HEMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Hemp is a great source of lignin. Needs no pesticide, no fertilizer, and grows faster than almost any other plant.

No need to chop any further trees for paper or anything else besides wood beams.

Biodegradable plastics

[Anonymous Coward]

The Evolution of Biodegradable Plastic

Biodegradable plastic is plastic that biodegrades into humus when disposed of, due to the action of the micro-organisms that turn dead plant life into humus, the organic part of soil. The result is a rich and fertile soil.

There have been three generatons of biodegradable plastic. The first was starch based plastic, PLA, almost always made out of corn. The second generation was oxo-biodegradable conventional plastic, and the third, the current generation, is biodegradable conventional plastic.

PLA, or corn-based plastic

PLA, or corn-based plastic, was the first generation of biodegradable plastic. It is still made and promoted by corporate giants that have huge financial and political power, such as the Dow Chemical Company, Cargill, Inc., and Archer Daniel Midlands, but it has many drawbacks.

It is billed as 'sustainable,' as it is based on food sources, primarily corn. However, if all of the disposable plastic products in the world were made out of corn, 150,000,000 tons of corn would be used to make plastic. Prices for corn would rise dramatically, and third world hunger would increase even more dramatically. There are currently 850,000,000 hungry people in the third world. If we imagine that condition worsening greatly, the result could only be a humanitarian catastrophe of appalling proportions. That is the real ramification of 'sustainability' in today's world.

Furthermore, PLA isn't a very good plastic. It imparts an off taste to water when used for water bottles, it melts when used as soup spoons, it's weak, and therefore items made of it are heavy, it has a short shelf life, and it often starts to decay before use, while still on the shelf. What's more, almost no recyclers accept it for recycling. In fact, recyclers dislike PLA and are trying to ban it, because it gets confused with more conventional plastics, and ruins their recycled plastic batches.

The state of California is promoting this product by limiting the use of the term biodegradable, and all synonyms for biodegradablilty to PLA, which decays within 120 days in commercial (not home) composting facilities. Unfortunately PLA decays so fast in an oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment (typical of landfills,) that it generates methane in landfills before they are capped to tap the methane. Generating methane quickly in landfills is undesirable because it is a potent greenhouse gas. If it is generated before the landfill is capped, it outgasses into the atmosphere, promoting global warming. (Click to see video about using methane from landfills.)

Oxo-Biodegradable Plastic, the Second Generation of Biodegradable Plastic

The second generation plastic oxo-biodegradable plastic was very different than the the previous generation of biodegradable plastic called PLA, starch-based plastic, or 'spudware. Oxo-biodegradable plastic had many advantages over PLA-It was invulnerable to water, one might adjust it to the desired biodegradation rate, some products could contain recycled content, it could be recycled, it didn't diminish the grain supply, it was stronger, less expensive, and was made from an otherwise useless industrial byproduct, naphtha.

This second-generation biodegradable plastic is little known in the US, but is is well established and widely used in Europe. Tesco and Carrefours, the largest grocery chains in the world, and in France, respectively, package their customers' groceries in oxo-biodegradable 't-shirt' bags. In fact, the largest bakers in Mexico and South Africa package bread in oxo-biodegradable bags, and oxo-biodegradable plastic is becoming common in India and China. The US is so far behind the curve on this, that it is a little embarassing.

Oxo-biodegradable plastic doesn't biodegrade when deeply buried in landfills, because it requires an initial phase of degeneration which required certain environmental factors-oxygen and one of the following three circumstances-heat, UV light, or mechanical stress-and because the subsequent biode