Slashdot Mirror
Trash-To-Gas Power Plant Gets Greenlight
An anonymous reader writes "Beginning in a little more than a week, Green Power, Inc. of Pasco, Washington will be commencing the building of municipal-solid-waste-to-fuel plants for clients around the world, with $2 billion in contracts; now that an EPA ruling has exonerated GPI from an unnecessary shut-down order by the Washington Ecology Department last year. This fuel would be of higher quality and cheaper than fuel derived from crude oil — and it comes from local feedstock, while turning waste into energy. Now your laptop can turn into a quart of diesel fuel to power your trip to the dump. And the ocean gyres of trash the size of Texas can power Texas. This is an update on a Slashdot story from nine months ago.
Those gyres are not what you think they are.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Actually, I think they are referring primarily to plastics that get thrown in the trash. "Feedstock" is just a generic term for the raw material that goes into any type of factory. Since your laptop's outer shell is probably made of plastic, it could theoretically be used in this process. Busted laptops are e-waste (i.e. hazardous material), hence the special regulations that govern the disposal and recycling thereof. Considering this, I doubt that they could be used as raw feedstock for the fuel-creation process. However, after a bit of dismantling, the plastic bits could be separated from the rest and fed into this factory.
Nevertheless, I agree that randomly claiming that 1 laptop == 1 quart of diesel fuel is just plain silly...
Now your laptop can turn into a quart of diesel fuel to power your trip to the dump.
...and what makes this guy think my car runs on diesel anyway? ;-)
"The summary must be joking about the ocean gyres."
There are questions about the guy running this company, up here in Washington state.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_pasco_biomass.html
http://pesn.com/2009/08/07/9501560_CEO_appealing_GreenPowerInc_shut-down_order/
Some have voiced serious concerns that this is all snake-oil, primarily because the man hides behind "trade secrets" protection and doesn't really have to discuss how all this works(precisely the reason state regulators shut him down--they cannot really know if he is in compliance if they don't know what he is doing, and so far he hasn't told them). He has also failed to pay some of his employees yet claims he will be hiring up to 500 more employees even though the technical data suggests he only needs 5 people per shift, had the company's demonstration truck burn down, and according to the Seattle PI article, been evicted from his plant location.
The one curious thing is that the military tested his technology and actually published some hard numbers that to me seem rather impressive. Makes me wonder what sort of "garbage" went through his test plant.
http://pesn.com/2010/02/19/959019_GPI_3rd-party_test_results_trash-to-fuel/
This is the best time-line I was able to find in regards to this company (not surprisingly, from the same website as the submitted article).
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Green_Power_Inc's_NanoDiesel:Catalytic_Pressureless_Depolymerization_(Oiling)
At least the writer of the submitted article is up front--"Note: I have a relationship with GPI, so this report is not truly independent." says the caption accompanying the photo in the article.
Can you say "media blitz"?