Slashdot Mirror
A New Process Turns Sewage Into Crude Oil (newatlas.com)
Big Hairy Ian shares this report from New Atlas:
The U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to potentially produce 30 million barrels of biocrude oil per year from the 34 billion gallons of raw sewage that Americans create every day... [T]he raw sewage is placed in a reactor that's basically a tube pressurized to 3,000 pounds per square inch and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit, which mimics the same geological process that turned prehistoric organic matter into crude oil by breaking it down into simple compounds, only...it takes minutes instead of epochs... The end product is very similar to fossil crude oil with a bit of oxygen and water mixed in and can be refined like crude oil using conventional fractionating plants.
After six years of development, they've licensed the process for a $6 million pilot plant that's expected to launch in 2018.
After six years of development, they've licensed the process for a $6 million pilot plant that's expected to launch in 2018.
The USA burned through 7000 million barrels of crude oil in 2015, so 32 million from sewage conversion is just a rounding error. Also, since the sewage comes out at many disparate locations across the country, building one of these plants at every sewer plant might not even be worth the hassle.
...in a good way
Table-ized A.I.
It sure sounds like it's not a cost effective way of making oil, but it might be very cost and space effective in sewage treatment.
It would be carbon neutral, very fast in comparison to traditional treatment, and sounds like there's no methane release (an issue in normal sewage treatment). If they can separate it on site, they can use the fuel generated to power the plant.
Sounds a lot like the German Bergius process to convert coal to oil (which largely kept Nazi Germany running in World War II). That ran at ~500 C and ~50 MegaPascals; although it ran on coal, what it really did was hydrogenate carbon into oil. I suspect that they have just adopted this for use on carbon-rich garbage. I also suspect it will be tough to make a profit on it, at least at the present price of fuel oil and gasoline.
Yeah, but the sewage is gone... Isn't that a good thing? Besides we can also extract the water. Kill two birds with one turd.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Yeah cuz we really need more oil OK??
Oil and internal combustion engines are not the problems. The problem is a fuel that is made from sequestered carbon, carbon not part of the current atmosphere. If the fuel is made from carbon already in the atmosphere it does not necessarily contribute to climate change. Only introducing additional carbon contributes to climate change.
The preceding is more apparent when the carbon is coming out of the atmosphere directly, for example when bacteria/algae/etc create the fuel. Of course when the carbon is coming out of a "solid" there could very well be a problem, it was "sequestered" and not part of the atmosphere. However that is only looking at one "step". It seems there are two paths for that "solid". (1) Atmosphere -> Plant -> Human and (2) Atmosphere -> Plant -> Animal -> Human. So perhaps there is no net carbon gain?
If the summary is correct, to make a single barrel of oil you must process 34B*365/30M=413,666 gallons of sewage? Hard to imagine this being remotely cost effective.
32 million from sewage conversion is just a rounding error.
Or a drop in the bucket.
since the sewage comes out at many disparate locations across the country, building one of these plants at every sewer plant might not even be worth the hassle.
It depends entirely on the size and complexity of the plant. Plus fuel production may not be the only benefit. This new system also replaces whatever the current treatment and processing system is. There might be some sort of gain there.
You put the sewage into a bag, you tap the bag, you use a membrane to separate the methane, you compress it and it has many uses.
For a fancier bag, use AIWPS.
To replace gasoline, use Butanol.
To replace diesel fuel, use "green diesel" — not transesterified biodiesel, but you actually use a fractional distillation column to "crack" waste fats as you would petroleum. It has none of the usual problems of biodiesel, namely acidity or a high gel point.
HTH, HAND
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just sayin'. ;-)
Error: NSE - No Signature Error
There's been a pilot plant for the process since 2004 in Carthage Missouri. Last reports were that it was running at a loss, but it did successfully turn sewage and offal from meat processing plants into crude oil.
Link
I don't disagree, but keep in mind that the production of fertilizer is a major consumer of fossil hydrocarbons.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
True, which is what makes this process attractive.
Atmosphere -> Plant -> Fuel: More plants need to be grown using more fertilizer and possibly replacing food crops
Atmosphere -> Plant -> Human -> Sewage -> Fuel or
Atmosphere -> Plant -> Animal -> Human -> Sewage -> Fuel: means there is no point in growing more plants because humans are only going to eat so much of it to produce the sewage waste needed for the process.
That is the benefit of this, over other processes that claim to leverage current waste as the feed-stock. It isn't practical to generate more sewage to feed the beast ... unless you envision a Matrix like poo farm ;-) Put another way, the sum total of all human digestive systems can be counted on to produce sewage feed-stock without fail (it just needs to be collected) but it isn't subject to scaling it up beyond how much we all poop.
The counter example of course being Cellulosic fuel processes which can be fed by the current remnants of human activity BUT ALSO by intentionally growing more cellulosic fuel crops (like sugarcane, switchgrass, etc) using more fertilizer and possibly supplanting food crops. It would be silly to not leverage cellulosic waste, but there needs to be effective policy to make sure we don't do more harm than good as farmers start deciding what crops to plant.
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Normal disposal of placing the waste into a pond really encourages anaerobic bacteria, which produce methane, which is an important greenhouse gas.
Any handling method that prevents that is a nice plus. Even if it converts it to CO2 instead. If they capture the energy and use it to replace fossil fuels - hey, big plus.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
More accurately, as we increase our use of renewables, this will satisfy an increasing amount of our consumption. And as other posters have indicated, traditional methods of treating sewage release lots of greenhouse gases anyway. I do have to question how much energy comes out of this vs. all the energy that gets put in by both the conversion process and the refining process.
Maybe this will satisfy the needs for petroleum-based lubricants when most of our fuel needs are met by other methods.
We are the 198 proof..