# Turning garbage into oil? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 23, 2003, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615 "2003-04-23T16:07:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/21 "2003-04-24T00:58:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Anthracite \* > \*\*This has been discussed on my Board a little bit. Some of the claims made by the company on their website are disturbing, and some are just plain inaccurate, such as the ones dealing with coal and tires going through the process. > > \*\* What is your “Board” and can you provide a link? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/22 "2003-04-24T03:08:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rusalka \* > \*\*What is your “Board” and can you provide a link? Thanks! \*\* [http://unaboard.coalgoddess.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4868](http://unaboard.coalgoddess.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4868) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aeb1de/32.png) [@The\_Calculus\_of\_Logic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Calculus_of_Logic)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/23 "2003-04-24T03:15:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eirik \* > \*\*But from a waste handling position, it might work out for them. They no longer have to pay to have waste hauled away, and then can sell some of the product. In the end, there is (theoretically) no trash. > > As for the size of the plant, it’s probebly a matter of scale. Assuming that the process scales up without massive cost increases, I’d think that a single, factory sized facility would produce a lot less end product that one, say, that is designed to handle municiple waste. \*\* True. I hope they increase productivity somehow. The start up costs of $20 million don’t even seem that big in retrospect. If a barrel of oil costs $26, and TDP can make it for $10 then that is a savings of $8.1 million a year assuming 1400 barrels a day. However, they said they could make ‘type 2 fuel oil & diesel’, i am not too learned about energy fuels but i don’t know if those work as or can be converted to gasoline. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/24 "2003-04-24T04:15:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Calculus of Logic \* > \*\*However, they said they could make ‘type 2 fuel oil & diesel’, i am not too learned about energy fuels but i don’t know if those work as or can be converted to gasoline. \*\* You could, but it would add to the cost significantly. Not that you would, as there is plenty of market for both #2 and diesel. Una ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/25 "2003-04-24T06:03:14Z")
It’s encouraging to not see any hidden secret processes or alchemy going on. This leaves me very hopeful that this won’t be another cold fusion. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/26 "2003-04-24T06:07:53Z")
They must be leaving out the details explaining specifically how making hot pressurized “garbage soup” turns anything carbon-based into _oi_l. This seems to be done in the heating/pressurizing and then depressurizing phase, as everything after that is pretty much conventional technology for refining crude oil. The closest thing I could think of to what they’re doing now is waste treatment with supercritical fluids… for water I think they use ~220 atm and 650K… and that doesn’t turn anything into oil - so either I must be missing something or they’ve neglected to mention something about the process. Also we already have the technology to turn other things into oil… like coal to oil - the Germans were doing it 50 years ago. You’d think that process and fuel source would be a more logical one to use rather than municipal waste which would have a huge range of qualities and characteristics. Turning coal to oil would be simpler since it’s already a fossil fuel, and since there’s still a lot of it left. However the process is somewhat innefficient, and it’s still cheaper to pump oil that’s already oil rather than making it from coal. So turning something that’s even further from being oil (like turkey guts) should logically be even more inefficient. I don’t think that you’d reduce air pollution all that much, since you’re still burning fossil fuels in millions of individual engines. At least with the hydrogen fuel cells, you can centralize the fossil fuel burning facilities and burn them efficiently and reduce emmisions relativley easily compared to trying to do it on every car in the world. As was pointed out, some other things in the artical are just plain wrong. Near the beginning it’s stated that the three by-products of the process (oil, gas, and purified minerals) are environmentally benign - nope. Ask anyone who lives near a contmainiated gas station or orphaned oil well how benign gasoline or even crude oil (when spilled or leaked into the ground water) is. And gas, I’m thinking methane, is most certainly not benign. It’s substantially worse than CO2 if it gets into the atmosphere, which is one thing that keeps it from being the best fuel source - despite it’s clean-burning it is it’s self a greenhouse gas and will always be leaking from somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/27 "2003-04-24T11:28:09Z")
I started a thread on this last week… [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=178511](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=178511) ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/28 "2003-04-24T14:17:49Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t think that you’d reduce air pollution all that much, since you’re still burning fossil fuels in millions of individual engines. At least with the hydrogen fuel cells, you can centralize the fossil fuel burning facilities and burn them efficiently and reduce emmisions relativley easily compared to trying to do it on every car in the world. True, but you wouldn’t add any new carbon to the system–it would all be stuff that’s already aboveground, and got its carbon from the atmosphere (i.e., plants take in CO2, turkeys eat plants, turkeys get turned into oil, oil gets burned, releasing CO2, plants take in CO2 …). It wouldn’t make things BETTER than they are now, but it would keep them from getting worse. > [@](#): > > As was pointed out, some other things in the artical are just plain wrong. Near the beginning it’s stated that the three by-products of the process (oil, gas, and purified minerals) are environmentally benign - nope. Ask anyone who lives near a contmainiated gas station or orphaned oil well how benign gasoline or even crude oil (when spilled or leaked into the ground water) is. And gas, I’m thinking methane, is most certainly not benign. It’s substantially worse than CO2 if it gets into the atmosphere, which is one thing that keeps it from being the best fuel source - despite it’s clean-burning it is it’s self a greenhouse gas and will always be leaking from somewhere. True, they’re not totally benign, but they’re not poisonous if collected properly. But more importantly, all of the hazardous products are commercially necessary. So while you can argue that methane and oil are not benign, they’re in high demand commercially. (It’s like arguing that uranium mining is bad just because it produces uranium, which is hazardous … the main product, while hazardous, is the point of the whole operation.) The upshot is that there are no unusable waste products that are toxic (save the solid heavy metals, I’m sure). No nasty sulfurs gases or dioxins leaking out, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Eirik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b19c9b/32.png) [@Eirik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eirik)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/29 "2003-04-24T15:35:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by toadspittle \* > The upshot is that there are no unusable waste products that are toxic (save the solid heavy metals, I’m sure). No nasty sulfurs gases or dioxins leaking out, etc. \*\* Even some of the normally toxic heavy metals that this process might be able to refine out are commercially salable. Sulfer, mercury, lead, etc are all toxic in some way, but are used by industry. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615/30 "2003-04-24T22:36:56Z")
Yes, these things are true; the jist of my post was to try and point out that the technology may not have as many upsides as it first seems… such as not releasing toxic substances or pollutants that can’t be collected and used - conventional refining does release things like sulpher and other nasties, but they _can_ be mostly removed and used in other processes (like the huge sulpher piles you see next to oil refineries - we can even take the stuff out of low-grade coal; it’s just too expensive overall). I don’t quite see how this technology doesn’t emit almost the same pollutants (though perhaps slightly less) than current processing, and the fact that they can be collected and re-sold also applies to what we’re already doing… not much difference there. The big thing with toxic pollutants and emmisions not being scrubbed and re-used lies more in legislation and profit rather than in technology… we already have solutions to most of the current pollution problems, we just lack the incentive to use them to their full advantage. In short the pollution problem lies in what we _choose_ to do rather than in what we _can_ do. The main benefit of this technology seems to be in not releasing “new” carbon to the environment… though I haven’t thought it through properly, I’ll concede this may be a significant upshot; we’ll just have to see if the whole process is cost-effective. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/turning-garbage-into-oil/170615.md?page=1)