• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Anything into Oil?

Tony

Penultimate Amazing
Tony
Joined
Mar 5, 2003
Messages
15,410
http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html

The process [called thermal depolymerization process, or TDP] is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

"The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. "You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world."

"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director.
Click to expand...

Is this too good to be true?
 
In my opinion, yes, it is too good to be true, but just may be!

I think this is as good a way as any to help alleviate the garbage problem in the world (albeit at the expense of the air) while giving us cheap, good quality fuel.

Plus, for all those that want to be cremated when they die, it'll be an extra 10 bucks for the family! Kind of an incentive to bkae unloved ones in the family.

Everything I have seen shows that it does work. Now it is just a matter of keeping up with the EMMENSE demand.
 
Wow, that sure sounds too good to be true. What does that depolimerization process involve? I bet it's insanely expensive.

[Edit] Nevermind that, I read the article and it says it's 85% efficient. If that's true it's quite impressive.
 
Yes, but...

What if the stuff put in has no carbon, or hydrogen in it?

Also, how big is the entry to this machine? Could a human fit?

-INRM
 
Many indigenous peoples have been burning dried poop as fuel for millenia. And there are a ton of credible news stories and accounts on Google (enter "feces as fuel") of similar efforts including one by NASA on board the shuttle/space station to do this. What's so extraordinary about this?
 
SteveGrenard said:
Many indigenous peoples have been burning dried poop as fuel for millenia. And there are a ton of credible news stories and accounts on Google (enter "feces as fuel") of similar efforts including one by NASA on board the shuttle/space station to do this. What's so extraordinary about this?
Click to expand...
if you would actually read the ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ article you would find what's new.

1) they are doing their thermal depolymerization in an aqueous phase

2) They are claiming to be able to do it economically.
 
Its still turning poop and garbage into energy...methods may be different.

Extrinsic thermal energy in a semi-aqueous (water vapor) phase has been economically turned into a means of heating buildings in New York City for over 50 years. I am surprised it took them so long.

The miles of telephone and electrical wire under the city's streets release enormous quantities of heat which turns the air around them into steam ...which is collected by Consolidated Edison and
sold to office and residential buildings for heating people's homes and workplaces. Here in NY when we move into a new building, one of the questions is "Does it have city steam?" Such steam is far cheaper (zero was the charge at one point actually) than coal, oil or natural gas.

I agree if one can turn all types of solid waste into oil or reuseable energy it is the recycler's dream come true. It will also cause enormous socio-political shifts. Western societies and large cities that produce mountains of solid waste will become oil rich and the oil wealthy nations will become dirt poor again. Instead of a race for oil and wars like Gulf I and II, there would be a race to produce more garbage. Is there a futures market in trash?
There will be.

Excuse me. I have to out and start storing my garbage wealth in the backyard, garage and basement. Boy will the garbage pick up guys be happy.
 
There's this guy at my job, he's really worried about that invention. He thinks it would help assassinations (and even genocides) because it would break down anything, including human beings, to their base - valuable - elements. Imagine what Hitler would've done with such a device.
 
Tony said:

Is this too good to be true?
Click to expand...

Hopefully not! The general concept has been around for awhile, I remember first reading about it in the 80's, though back then they were focusing on using coal or old tires, not agricultural waste. The biggest problem at the time was efficency, it took too much energy to extract the oil to be practical.

If they really have efficency up to 85% and the system can be tooled to accept different types of organic waste this invention could easily prove to be the biggest technical and environmental breakthroughs of all time. We could simultaneously break our dependence on foreign oil and control our growing waste disposal problem.

The best part, in my mind, is that existing petroleum infrastructure can be used to refine and distribute the oil, so the oil companies are behind this as well.
 
Frostbite said:
There's this guy at my job, he's really worried about that invention. He thinks it would help assassinations (and even genocides) because it would break down anything, including human beings, to their base - valuable - elements. Imagine what Hitler would've done with such a device.
Click to expand...

Very good point. I was thinking the same thing.

-INRM
 
Frostbite said:
There's this guy at my job, he's really worried about that invention. He thinks it would help assassinations (and even genocides) because it would break down anything, including human beings, to their base - valuable - elements. Imagine what Hitler would've done with such a device.
Click to expand...
"Purity of Essence"?
 
Hate to sound like a conspiracy fag, so to speak, but maybe these things haven't happened yet, because the oil companies haven't let it happen. I don't think anyone can PROVE that the 5 trillion dollar oil industry stomps out all its competition, but I wonder sometimes...
 
arcticpenguin said:

"Purity of Essence"?
Click to expand...

Well having the choice between getting buried, incinerated or recycled, I'd choose the latter. :D

"This car is 80% made of recycled human beings." Creepy...
 
Actually

This IS true. As for the conspiracy thing...I don't think so. Hopefully not. Although they DID put back electric cars about 50 years...so you never know, actually. Greedy bastards.
 
Re: Actually

sorgoth said:
Although they DID put back electric cars about 50 years.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Maybe that electric cars aren't any more practical now than they were 50 years ago? That's probably about right.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom