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.

Comments

Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[ShooterNeo]

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.

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[guruevi]

It's almost half a percentage and it takes care of the sewage problem. It seems the process is simple enough that having one near a large city might be both useful and cheap, perhaps even farms could find it useful. Hopefully we can eventually get off crude for all our energy needs and all sorts of biodiesels might make up where oils are still necessary.

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[Cederic]

the end of oil as we know it is less than 20 years away

That was true when I was at school in 1980 and learned the word conservation.

Fucking bullshit back then too.

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[HiThere]

Actually, I suspect that heavy metals would be easy to extract from "your biocrude". At least after it had been cracked into volatiles. This would mean that the residue would be rich in heavy metals, quite possibly rich enough to compete with ores. The problem with heavy metals in sludge is that the grade of the ore is too poor, but if you take, say, 75% of the non-heavy metals away you've improved the ore remarkably. (And even if the ore is still unprofitably poor, at least you've decreased the volume you need to deal with by a LOT.)

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[Gavagai80]

In 20 years, if not taxed, oil will probably be cheaper than it is today thanks it becoming much easier to access in the arctic.

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[ShanghaiBill]

The USA burned through 7000 million barrels of crude oil in 2015, so 32 million from sewage conversion is just a rounding error.

If you need to walk a kilometer, each step is only 0.1% of that distance, so there is obviously no point in taking a step. Thus, walking a kilometer is impossible.

Re:Neat that it's possible, but insignificant

[Charcharodon]

That is the same argument people use to not pick up a penny. Until you do the math.

To stoop down and pick up a penny takes 1 sec. $.01 for 1 sec is equivalent to $36 per hour pay for 1 second.

I here the same argument for nickels ($180 per hour), dimes ($360 per hour), quarters ($900 per hour), dollar bills ($3,600 dollars per hour), 5 dollar bills ($18,000 per hour). People couldn't be bothered unless we were talking about $20 laying on the ground. ($72,000 per hour).

So let's see 32 million barrels of oil of sewage from 34 billion gallons of sewage. So typical smaller city for a year. (New York produces for perspective 474B gallons per year) 32 million times $44 dollar on the barrel. $1.34 BILLION dollars. (New York would net $18.6B per year vs their $78B budget. Doubt they would be interested.) Yeah I can't think of too many cities that would like those kinds of numbers added to their tax base, considering most cities OWN all the sewage by way of public utility and just already happen to be collecting it and oh yeah already fork out truck loads of money to get rid of it.

Not worth doing you say? Dumb idea you say?

Article full of shit

[Tablizer]

...in a good way

Bergius process?

[mbone]

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.

Oil and internal combustion are not the problems

[perpenso]

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?

Ridiculously inefficient

[Teppy]

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.

New?? How about Thermal Depolymerization..

[Daemonik]

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

Re:Oil and internal combustion are not the problem

[Jumperalex]

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.