I saw this Discover article posted on another message board, and I thought it would be of interest to some on this board.
Basically, they built a plant that converts pretty much any carbon based matter into gas, oil, and minerals. I think it’s pretty cool!
Didn’t you know there is a contingency plan for when the worlds oil reserves run dry?
Sweet stuff. I like how they said what your average human turned into to. I can just see, in twenty years when these things are all over the place, a climatic scene in a movie ending with the villian falling into the intake. A few minutes later, the hero fills up his car with “dead-guy” gasoline.
Thanks for the link Monster. That was a very interesting read.
I read an article about that in (I think it was) the Scientific American. The only problem I saw with it was that it needed to use different proceses (ratios of time in each stage) for each type of waste that it is processing. This means that if we did use this process as a major waste disposal method we would have to sort our refuse into different trash containers (rubber, paper, plastics, bio, etc…).
We have a hard enough time getting people to place the aluminum can they drank soda out of at lunch into the recycling can RIGHT NEXT TO the trash.