Anyone Worried about An Oil shortage should read this.

I recalled reading about Thermal depolymerization in Scientific American and it seems to be a very promising process. Appearantly it can turn most solid wastes like chick, turkey, etc. refuse into a useable form of oil. The reason the article stuck out in my mind so much was that the pilot plant just happens to be in Missouri my home state.

en.wikipedia.org...




Thermal depolymerization (TDP) is a process for the reduction of complex organic materials (usually waste products of various sorts, often known as biomass) into light crude oil. It mimics the natural geological processes thought to be involved in the production of fossil fuels. Under pressure and heat, long chain polymers of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons with a maximum length of around 18 carbons.

www.mindfully.org...

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really.

"This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming."

RECYCLING WASTE INTO OIL


What can turn animal waste, offal, old tyres, junked computers and any old waste into oil. What can turn 100lb of sewage into 26lb of oil, 9lb of gas, 8lb of minerals and carbon and 57lb of water. The thermal depolymerisation process (TDP) can. That's what!

www.sovereignty.org.uk...

IS THIS THE ULTIMATE RECYCLER?
An experimental recycling plant in Philadelphia is turning waste from a nearby turkey factory into gas and oil. It could, in theory, convert any old kind of rubbish into fuel. Jerome Burne reports.
The Guardian
Thursday May 22, 2003
Original here

How about this for a ridiculous modern myth. There is a machine somewhere in America that can take virtually any sort of waste - offal from an abattoir, old tyres, junked computers - and turn it into high quality oil, plus pure minerals and clean water, all in a few hours. It is an invention that could change the world. Not only might it end the west's, and in particular America's, dependence on imported oil, but it has also the potential simultaneously to solve the increasingly pressing problem of waste disposal.

www.acfnewsource.org...

Waste from turkey processing plants is being turned into fuel.

The Butterball turkey processing plant in Carthage, MO produces a staggering amount of waste – annually averaging more than 200 tons a day from the slaughter of 30,000 turkeys. Now, a New York company is turning this offal into oil. Changing World Technologies (CWT) of West Hempstead, New York, collaborated with food giant ConAgra to open its first "waste-to-energy" plant in Carthage, Missouri


google "Thermal Depolymerization" for more information.




[edit on 9-4-2005 by overzealous]

Unfortunately I think this may be the most probable solution. We already have the transport systems / storage / and vehicles made for oil, changing all of that (ie, natural gas, electric) would cost too much for anyone to be motivated enough to go through with it.

BUT I don't think that it is impossible to defeat greed in itself. And if we could do that then we 'd take out the root of multiple problems that humans face.

eventually only the rich will be afforded a real burial / cremation. All others will be shipped off to the plant to become our fuel.

Yeah but on the bright side It could be viewed as our final way of giving back to the community.
I personally wouldn't mind if I was "processed" after death just to supply some resources.

Very Cool.

I dont know how much petrol you could produce from a semi-truckload of chicken gizzards, but I worry that the cost of shipping them to the facility would equal or outweigh the benefits.

there are naysayers to this procedure but i see it as a way to maintain a commodities market after the oil starts drying up.
the means are there to provide alternative energy vehicles, i just read a pamphlet from bc hydro stating a new hydro installation has been istalled in bc here that will provide power to 6000 homes. build a coulple more and i'm sure you could provide power for a good chunk of the vehicles on the road. then depolymerization plants would be able to provide oil for tires and wiring for said cars.
people worry about this providing fuels. biodeisel, hydrogen, electric or even air power to drive your car & polymerization to make everything else....

Originally posted by overzealous
Yeah but on the bright side It could be viewed as our final way of giving back to the community.
I personally wouldn't mind if I was "processed" after death just to supply some resources.

hmmmm...sounds vaugley familiar in a Charelton Heston kinda way......................................."SOILENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! SOILENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!"..............I saw that show a few times.

Originally posted by makeitso
Very Cool.

I dont know how much petrol you could produce from a semi-truckload of chicken gizzards, but I worry that the cost of shipping them to the facility would equal or outweigh the benefits.

I believe that the depolymerization facilities should be built in close proximity to the major processing plants therefore reducing shipping costs and could be piped to the facility. Also it has been proven that it works well even at a smaller scale.

or... you could, get a pick-up truck you really want, and a cheap old pick-up, put a large tank in the bed, put a pump on it, get some hoses, drive to McDonalds, ask them if you can taketheir used oil away for free (since they have to pay to get rid of it) drive home, filter the oil, and get a special diesel engine that can run on that kinda oil, you get free gas, and the McDonalds gets rid of their useless oil

I certainly don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, since I’ve always thought depolymerization made a lot of sense, but there are a few things we need to think about.

First, the initial projections, like so many initial projections, seem a bit optimistic: in the 2003 article, Appel says:

”This is our first-out plant, and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years, we'll drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and production company. And it will get cheaper from there."

Yet in the latest article (Feb 2005, as seen in en.wikipedia.org... ), present costs are $80/ barrel.

This is to be expected; there are a lot of engineering wrinkles to iron out, and the more the operators tweak the process based on a particular feedstock, the more the cost will go down. But as it stands now, its cost are higher by a factor of four than light sweet Arabian crude at the wellhead.

Second, the amortized costs of building the extraction plants need to be factored into the oil’s price, and we don’t seem to have any valid numbers yet. I’d be extremely surprised if the costs from the depolymerization plant weren’t a whole lot cheaper than the present oil refineries and extraction methods, but you gotta remember that those traditional facilities are already in place and probably have been amortized already.

Third, While the depolymerization approach, once it gets cost-effective, will do good things by providing oil while getting rid of garbage, there is only a finite amount of garbage around, especially when you take out all the water that’s in it. Remember, water is Bad Juju for depolymerization, since it takes a lot of energy the heat up the water (although some of it is re-cycled, of course, and sent upstream for reheat).

And basic economics says that, once a commodity becomes valuable as a raw material (like turkey gutz for oil) then the price of that commodity will go up, which will add to the cost of the finished product.

Fourth, while the neo-oil could lower our reliance on pumped oil and Mid East oil-thugs, it will still do one thing that present-day oil will do, and that is to pollute the environment.

Again, I’m not bad-mouthing the concept, but I am saying it’s not the panacea we’d like it to be.

Fourth, while the neo-oil could lower our reliance on pumped oil and Mid East oil-thugs, it will still do one thing that present-day oil will do, and that is to pollute the environment.

But is it a net increase in emmisions from Crude? That's key in my mind as oil isn't going to stay below 80 $/barrel forever...

I found this thread while searching the site for solution based threads. One of these days I hope to build my own TDP plant. It would be a great way to produce energy around the farm, I think, eliminating household waste products in the process. Just because it hasn't been adopted for wide scale industrial use doesn't mean that it couldn't be put to work on a smaller scaled level.