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.
During early winter our yard has an almost 6-inch layer of leaves. If a service would scoop them up and take them away for free, they could use them for fuel. It would benefit 3 parties: us (leaf removal), the leaf processing company, and The Planet.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Yes but it will probably clog the gas line filter.
From TFA:
So the government of my state caused major problems for GPI, and the federal government had to overrule the state. That's just great.
According to TFA, GPI's plant operates using "a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP)" yet the state Department of Ecology (DoE) insisted on regulating the plant as if it were an incinerator plant, which it clearly isn't.
We have a liberal Democrat for a governor, the Democrats have a complete lock on the state legislature, and plenty of liberal voters. Our governor claims to be in favor of the environment, in favor of business that helps the state, in favor of jobs, etc. Where was she when the state DoE was causing these problems?
I really wonder at the politics behind this. If this is random bureaucrats just being pointlessly bureaucratic, why didn't any other part of government get involved and help resolve this? Where were the state senators and representatives from the Pasco area? Did the governor just never hear of this, and if so, how is that possible?
If I were governor and something like this happened, I would very publicly intervene. There's no political downside! The governor has more power than bureaucrats at the DoE, and the voters would love to hear that a green energy project was helped out. So why didn't that happen?
P.S. This of course reminds me of the other thermal depolymerization plant, the plant in Carthage, Missouri that processed turkey offal into energy and fuel. That plant was shut down several times, over allegations of a bad smell; the bad smell was reported at least once on a day that the plant wasn't operating. Eventually they installed upgraded scrubbers on their exhaust stacks and resumed operation. The company, Changing World Technologies went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I guess the TDP plant was shut down. That seems crazy to me; the price of crude oil is high, so they should be able to run their plant at a profit. I guess they are just in too much trouble financially to even run the plant right now?
I hope this "CDP" plant in Pasco works out better than the Changing Worlds one did.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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"?