I recently came upon this article, which describes thermal depolymerization, a process that sounds like a relatively simple way to extract oil from all sorts of waste items including turkey offal, old ground-up computer equipment, and the contents of landfills (among many other sources). The article makes it sound like this is a viable process without any serious downsides–the process doesn’t even produce pollution.
So my question is, what’s the catch? There’s got to be one, or else I can’t see why this idea isn’t lighting up the world rather than buried in a Discover article. Is anyone out there familiar with this process, and if so, can you address why companies aren’t scrambling to build these facilities (or at least to pump $$$ into research)?
The simple answers are cost and infrastructure. Right now, oil is still as cheap as chips, and there’s a massive infrastructure that supports the supply and processing of oil. So there’s really no pressing need (for which read no pressing commercial need) to invest in all the new equipment etc to convert to the Turkey Guts Economy[sup]TM[/sup].
Short-sighted? Yup. But hey, that’s capitalism.
Incidentally, anyone else find this caption funny, coming as it does just below a paragraph about using the process to convert human excrement into fuel?
Heh.
'Scuse me. I gotta go lay some infrastructure.
Do a search. We’ve hashed this out sometime in the last month, in at least 2 different forums. The conclusion: wait and see; it may not scale as impressively as the creators hope. Why isn’t every company lined up to implement this? Because they’re just now getting proof of concept results. It took them forever to get funding, etc., together. (Can you imagine the pitch? “I’m gonna turn all of your garbage into oil.” “Sure you are. Security!”)
*(Wanders off and searches on ‘thermal depolymerization’ instead of ‘turkey guts’ and ‘oil’ this time…) * D’oh! That’ll teach me to get my search terms straight before I start a topic.
Sorry 'bout that…maybe a nice mod will come by, take pity on me and close this thread…
Use hydrocarbon waste material, process it with heat, pressure, and catalytic conversion, and you end up with medium weight species fuel (kerosene, diesel, home heating oil).
Pretty much how a petroleum refinery works…only difference is, the refinery is specifically tuned to process crude oil.
If this technology is indeed sound, and can be scaled down to the size of, say, a tractor/trailer, one can set up a unit at any site which produces waste. Also any site whichhas materials which do not lend themselves easily to recycling, like old tires.