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World's First Large-Scale Waste-to-Biofuels Facility Opens In Canada
Zothecula (1870348) writes Thanks to its extensive composting and recycling facilities, the city of Edmonton, Canada is already diverting approximately 60 percent of its municipal waste from the landfill. That figure is expected to rise to 90 percent, however, once the city's new Waste-to-Biofuels and Chemicals Facility starts converting garbage (that can't be composted or recycled) into methanol and ethanol. It's the world's first such plant to operate on an industrial scale, and Gizmag recently got a guided tour of the place.
Oddly enough, you are talking about a part of Canada that known for its petrochemical industries and right wing ideologues ...
There's no smoke here, nor is there burning.
You're not burning the stuff, you're gassifying it, which is an entirely different thing. The latter uses a low-oxygen environment and no combustion.
From that gasification, you get hydrogen and carbon monoxide ("synthesis gas"), which you feed into a Fisher-Tropsch process, with the end result being diesel fuel you can pour into the city buses or sell or whatever.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
> The diesel fuel / alcohol / gasahol is then burnt, so you are still burning garbage, but indirectly.
No, not at all. You're burning gas. Garbage combustion has a lot of nasty byproducts that this doesn't have.
> This will add to greenhouse gasses . . .
No, it's carbon neutral because the gasses would escape into the atmosphere anyway in the landfill, this is just a controlled process to actually retrieve the gas. Besides, *not* burning it would increase the greenhouse effect more because all of these gases are very potent greenhouse gases. You want to burn them to release less potent carbon dioxide.
> Perhaps more stringent controls on packaging, plastics, etc might be better for reducing trash in the first place, but that takes political will, and real social change. Everything that we make should be recyclable. This is the only way that it will work in the long run.
We need all of the above solutions, including this. There's no silver bullet.
I live in Ontario and work in an associated field.
I do not know the actual specifics of this case, but it usually is NIMBY that causes the problems. Ontario has several large groups of "green" activists and pour money into lobbying and lawyers, when in reality they are mostly home/cottage owners associations fronting as environmental groups. Shutting down wind power due to OMG bird strikes, and the like when really they are just looking after what the value of their properties are worth in the area. A garbage processing plant? Yeah you can bet it got shut down by land owners protecting their self interest and investments.
We had a big gas plant scandal a few years ago where some were supposed to be built, NIMBY and the resulting political pressure had the government shut the project down, costing taxpayers like 2 billion dollars. These things have to go someplace. Isn't the ONE job of the state to look after the interests of the many at possibly the expense of the few? Looking after the few at the expense of the many seem a bit corrupt.