This article in discovery magazine has me a bit amazed. The process can break down nearly everything that has carbon in it, Tires, plastic bottles, shit, dead stuff, and turn it into water, fuel oil grade oil, and carbon solids. It also creates a gas byproduct that can allow the whole thing to run itself. Just add poop.
Gee, the wonderous side of me thinks, what a wonderful discovery. We could get rid of reliance on oil, and clean up the environment at the same time. Eden is near.
BS, my skeptical side kicks in. If this was so easy, Buffet would be building them at every treatment plant in the US.
I have a suspicion that the oil produced may well contain real nasties if the system is fed plastics and general household waste (as they imply is possible), rather than agricultural leftovers.
I’ve also got my doubts re the amount of energy that the system requires to run it, however, if it only just breaks even but aleviates the need for some landfill, maybe that is enough.
The crude we get out of the ground now contains some nasties anyway…the refining process is not exactly the cleanest of endeavours in terms of nasty chemicals all round…
This sounds so far like a great thing. It would be a shame to see it
"officially"debunked or stalled like the whole ethanol movement.
The Model T was designed to run on Ethanol, but and the oil barons put a stop to the distribution channels.
Probably happen again if they feel threatened in any big way.
I think this process has great potential. The pitch is certainly well made and if Howard Buffet of ConAgra is sold, there must be some scientific basis for the process.
The process seems almost simplistic. Carbon based products are grinded up to manageble bits. Water is added and the whole thing is heated up to about 500 degrees and pressurized ,which would break down the slurry to more basic components and short polymers. Then this superhot wet stuff is quickly passed thru depressurization. The water will steam out (distilled water being one of the by-products) and heavier stuff will go thru a secondary process that is basically a refinery. Light flammable gas is produced which is used to heat the first stage which would lower the energy needed to keep the system running. The end products are basic chemicals and an oil equivalent in grade to heating oil.
Different input feeds require different processing in either the first or second stage. If this could be done efficiently, think about using these processing plants to treat raw sewage, recycled garbage, plastics, those huge mountains of used tires and disposable diapers. (eeww) Wish I could invest in this.
I remember hearing about systems like this 10 years ago. The problem with the old systems was not that they couldn’t do what the newest system does, but that there was a high energy requirement. The “new” thing about this system is the low energy requirement. Hopefully that improvement will prove not to be a fluke of the system size.
cj finn. Apparently the old process was so energy intensive because they heated the hell out the “ingredients” to drive out the water. In the new process, they add water using very high pressurization, then let it boil off (taking the water that was already there with it) afterwards by crashing the pressure down.
It would be very cool indeed if this could work, and be economical.
You are correct. I was wondering if the depressurization step would work on a larger scale. While in theory it would, what kind of equipment might it take to implement this in a scale large enough to handle the sewage of a medium sized city? Either one big tank is needed, lots of little ones. I’m hoping that the construction costs don’t eat up the cost benefits, even if the process, once operating, is very cost effective.
Even in “smaller” scale, this technology would be a boon to the recycling industry. Sure, maybe one plant might not handle a metropolitan quantity of sewage but a dozen small and independently owned operation is still good.
We could set up “mom and pop” recycling facilities next to dumps, sewers, meat processing plants. Industrial areas that have high pollution outputs can process their waste products thru these plants first.
Hey, I just thought of this! You can run manufacturing plant’s smoke emmissions thru a water scrubber instead of letting them out into the air. The resulting wet stuff is passed thru a TDP (Thermal Depolymerization Process). The water byproduct is recycled to go thru the water scrubbers, and the gas by-product is recycled to heat the TDP. Think of all the air pollution that eliminates.
One troubling issue with scaling these up is that they repotedly use mostly off-the-shelf refinery technology. So that $20 mil. pricetag may not come down by much.
Of course, someone else also pointed out that the poultry processor, for example, will no longer have to pay to cart off their waste … so the overall costs may be lessened.
The Renewable Fuels Associacion seems to agree on the original design of the Model T having been for an alcohol-based fuel. Didn’t see anything on thier site about why it was switched to oil-based fuels.
ok…so at, say $32/barrel of oil, and 1400 barrels a day, the plant would pay for itself in 446 days ( about 14 months). Sounds better than a lot of other endeavors…
OH OH OH!! I know this one! I saw it in history channel!
During the early 1900s, refining crude oil was not as exact and each “refinery” produced a differing grade of oil. Most refineries were to make heating oil and kerosene, and gasoline (get this) was a waste by-product. Yep they threw this stuff away by the barrels. It was horrible to use on early cars because of its inconsistency of grade. It produced knocks and pings that made the car practically useless. This is until someone (i forget who) developed a process to refine gasoline to a consistent grade based on the Octane rating.
You can imagine why they switched from alcohol based fuels to this cheap waste product that runs the engines just fine.
Hmm. Would the economists like to write out how many plants would it take before the price of oil started dropping?
Also, could you shovel the contents of landfills into one of these? I remember reading somewhere that most of what was in a landfill was non-decomposing food and paper, both of which are hydrocarbonic?
The article said the only thing this process wouldnt handle are nuclear waste products. If it has carbons in it, it will turn it into oil. The feedproduct from a landfill probably could use a bit of processing before the first stage (i imagine) but TDP is said to be good at mixed feedproducts. It just takes just a bit more time either in the first stage or second stage for different kinds of stuff put in it.
Why is it a shame when things that turn out to be bad ideas are exposed for what they are?
As I understand it, the problem with Ethanol is that when you consider the full-cycle energy costs, it’s more expensive in energy to make ethanol than the energy you get back out. If that’s the case, then the sooner we find out about it, the better. Otherwise, we’re just pouring money down a rathole.
