Waste to fuel...economic efficiency?

Factual Questions
1

Lets keep this discussion centered on diesel fuel, as it is the primary fuel of the engines that power the economy (ships, locomotives, 18-wheelers).

Diesel is now at least $3.25 a gallon…and the price will only go up.

Practical alternatives to petroleum are now not only desirable, but critical.
Catalytic pyrolysis can make diesel from plastic.
http://www.polymerenergy.com/

Thermal Conversion makes diesel from biomass…like turkey guts.

Fischer-Tropsch process makes fuel from carbon monoxide and hydrogen

Biodiesel is made from processing vegetable oils and/or animal fats with an alcohol and an alkali

These four alternatives will be viable supplements to Petroleum derived diesel.

Question is…how viable?

What are the hard numbers regarding the amount of raw feed stock, the return of energy investment, how much these processes can bring down the price of fuel?

I already know that Biodiesel returns about 3.24 time the energy invested in its manufacture.

2

BTW, since sulfur has been taken out of diesel fuel for emissions, some substitute fuel lubricant must be used…and biodiesel is the best there is.

Cheap, lubricating, and clean burning.

With no sulfur, there is no production of toxic sulfuric acid vapor. Exhaust can be passed through a catalytic converter without problem.

3

Wiki is not always my favorite source, but this story seems to be unbiased. It more or less matches what I’ve heard occasionally mentioned on local news. Now, whether this Carthage turkey-waste plant is efficient enough to run without external fuel input for its hauling vehicles, utilities and the like…dunno. They sent me a recruiting (yeah, turkey waste=me, bring on the jokes) brochure a couple years ago, which came off as a little more optimistic than I thought totally plausible. With petroleum prices as high as they’ve been, and improved methods…

4

Isn’t diesel at least $4.25?

5

Here is where I check for cheap Diesel: http://www.flyingj.com/fuel/diesel_CF.cfm?state=ALL

6

At a local gas station around where I live, diesel was $3.23 a gallon.

Remember…waste plastic, waste biomass, waste deep-fryer grease…are resources that people WILL PAY YOU to take off their hands.

I can imagine a few years from now, landfills being mined like a natural resource.

7

The “hard numbers” are rarely that when it comes to waste to fuel. There are a number of issues that make it difficult to make any blanket statements about waste-derived fuels.

First, as you’ve pointed out, there are several approaches to converting the waste to useful fuel. Each of those will have its own ratio of total energy input to energy output in the fuel. One process that isn’t widely discussed is the conversion of bio-oils to a form that can be used in a conventional refinery to create conventional diesel fuel. Given that much of the production and distribution infrastructure is already in place, this approach has a lot of promise IMHO.

The second factor, and one that is often overlooked, is that waste material has (relative to crude petroleum) a very low energy per unit collection area density. That is, waste materials must be collected from a broad geographical area to provide enough feedstock to make any significant fuel production facility economically viable. The collection process usually involves driving around and collecting the waste (or alternatively, having the waste drive by the waste generator to you, which is the same thing from an energy perspective).

Third, the feedstocks are often closely linked to the price of oil because of the inherent oil content of the waste. Plastics are petroleum based, vegetable and animal oils are derived from agriculture which is highly dependent upon petroleum, and so on. So the price of the feedstock can fluctuate in the same way as oil, which reduces the overall price advantage of waste as a feedstock. See also point 2 above relative to the collection process.

Finally, it’s critical to have a steady long-term supply of the waste, which is not easy to come by if you’re relying on something like restaurant grease (restaurants go out of business). If you’re sinking millions of dollars into a conversion plant, it’s not good if you suddenly can’t get enough feedstock to generate your product, even if others are paying you to take it away. And that practice won’t last long if waste becomes a commodity. Pretty soon people will see that they can charge to have people use it, and the economics will change substantially.

Utilization of waste for fuel production is generally a good idea. But it’s not a panacea by any means. There are currently situations in which it makes sense and where it will be profitable and largely sustainable. But it’s not likely to be something that is always better all the time.

8

I believe outside New York City is a massive landfill which holds literally cubic miles of trash.

Catalytic pyrolysis and Thermal Decomposition plants operating on site could provide a steady flow of diesel for decades.

9

So could hemp if it was processed into biodiesel, I don’t exactly see that happening in the States any time soon, ya know?

There’s been threads on this process before and IIRC, the local experts have weighed in with the “it works in lab settings, but I’m not convinced it’s quite ready for prime time yet.”