Anything into Oil

[Draconias]

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Article Quote:
(http://www.usatoday...4-01-22-kantor_x.ht
m)
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[A new process called thermal depolymerization] turns just about anything into oil and fertilizer. And when I say "anything," I mean that: animal waste, medical waste, human waste. Used diapers, used computers, used tires. Anything that's not radioactive can be tossed into the hopper.

Those things go in one end of the process and come out the other as diesel oil and fertilizer using a process that mimics the Earth's. But instead of taking millions of years to turn plants, dinosaurs, and what-have-you into Venezuelan crude, TDP takes hours to do the same to just about anything you can throw in it. No wonder the energy industry is funding pilot projects and research facilities.
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This process is real, and it pulls a profit. The first industrial-sized biorefinery that relies on this process is up and running in Missouri, making 500 barrels of Oil per day and $4 per barrel. And that's in the worst-case situation, paying $30 per ton of turkey waste that they receive to process.

Biorefinery Rough Specs:
+ Can process virtually anything, focuses on hydrocarbons (organics)
+ Must be fine tuned for each type of input material for best results
Input:
+ Can process virtually anything, but currently focuses on hydrocarbons (organics)
+ Must be fine tuned for each type of input for best results
+ Processes 250 tons of input per day
Output:
+ Generator-quality (lighter) oil
+ Variable quantities of heavier oils
+ High-quality fertilizer
+ Seperated materials*
+ Water
+ No emissions!
+ No pathogens/proteins

* Depending on the input, the seperated material is different. It can be anything, ranging from calcium powder from bones to hydrochloric acid from toxins in plastics. In some cases, the seperated material may be a gas, like methane, but it is always removed in a pure form in a controlled container.

This thing has no emissions! While the current input the biorefinery is working with (waste from a turkey butchery) smells really, really bad, the plant itself has no emissions of any sort. No ash, no smoke, nothing.

It breaks down deadly toxins and chemicals. It kills 100% of pathogens, like viruses or bacteria. It even completely destroys dangerous proteins, such as the prion which causes Mad Cow Disease.

The process can expand to fit just about any waste. The only thing, the one exception, is radioactive waste. Anything else can be broken down into pure parts in safe forms. From junk cars, to landfill trash, to sewage, to agricultural waste, this process can break it down into something useful.

Each year the US butcheries produce 12+ billion tons of agricultural waste. If all of that was reprocessed using new biorefineries, we would have more than 4 billion barrels of oil. Every year, the US only uses 3.3 billion barrels of oil. And that's just waste from butcheries. Biorefineries could also process cars from junkyards, urban trash, raw sewage, old tires, old landfills, and just about every single other type of waste you can find.

We're on the verge of a world-changing development here. A new industry is born, one that promises amazing things. The first industrial plant took awhile to work out the kinks, but the company which owns the first plant is already making plans to build a car recycling plant in Michigan, a cow-butchery plant in Ireland, and others in Wales, England, and Germany.

The Irish Food Processors, the biggest beef operation in the UK, promised to pay WCT $50 per ton to take waste from them. That's an $160 profit increase per barrel as compared to the current biorefinery in Missouri.

This is big. This technology promises to change everything. It easily offers us the opportunity to completely eliminate our connection foreign oil. It could even completely remove our need for oil drilling and promise an unlimited supply of oil. It promises to completely change how our society deals with everything we throw away, and it promises a huge influx of useful materials that were otherwise unrecoverable.

When this new industry expands, it may destroy countries or make new super powers. Biorefineries will play a vital role in our future. How do you think we should deal with this? How important do you believe it will be? What will this mean for countries in the Middle East? How will this affect our relationship with the environment?

Discuss, answer, gaze into the future.

[JudgeDredd]

At 3/20/06 12:30 AM, Draconias wrote: Turn used computers, used tires, anything into diesel oil and fertilizer.
This thing has no emissions! No ash, no smoke, nothing.
It ain't cold fusion. It's real, out-of-the-lab stuff.

Discuss, answer, gaze into the future.

where's my crystal ball??

Me: "when can i turn PC's and Tires into fuel without emissions?"
Ball: "HAHAHA.."

"thermal depolymerization" ..don't be intimidated by the name. It's just a nine-syllable way of saying "using heat to break down complex material into simple material."

...called... WARM TOXIC SLUDGE!

checks; http://www.changingworldtech.com/

**rushes out and buys city sized landfill for X-billion dollars by selling changingworldtech.com shares**

not!

[fahrenheit]

I am sure if the oil companies have anything to say it wont even be put into the process of being made.

[Imperator]

It sounds very nice, but that's the problem, it sounds simply TOO nice.......

It almost sounds this this is the panacaea for the world, not only does it reduce the need for oil, but it cleans the enviorment thoroughly, provides a whole new world market (think of 20 of these bio plants in every country worldwide, creating 1000s of jobs instantaneously), and all this while overall improving our health and mode of life.....

I'm skeptical just because it DOES sound that good, I'm surprised it hasn't claimed to fix the ozone layer at the same time yet......

But then again, who knows, computers certainly revolutionized the world, maybe this tech will prove just as groundbreaking.......

Problem is that there initially seem to be no drawbacks, but there MUST be a tradeoff somewhere. Perhaps as (slightly) suggested, a major shift in political and economic power due to this will cause massive social problems and lead to the "Landfill Wars" of the 21st century?

It does make me a bit proud to know that its Americans who are pioneering this, just goes to show ya the classic American innovative process at hand (possibly due to the large necessity to get off our fat asses...... :-) ). Brings up that age old question; What has Rome (America) ever done for us?

[HighlyIllogical]

Is there nonpartisan research that supports the "anything into oil" technology as being scientifically, environmentally and economically viable?

[TheShrike]

I noticed the article lacked any mention of how much energy the process requires. And I'd imagine it needs a hefty bit of energy to work.

If the process could be powered by itself, and still produce enough product to be profitable, I'd be impressed. Outside of that, it's a pipe dream.

[Draconias]

At 3/20/06 07:38 AM, Gunnery_Sergeant wrote: Is there nonpartisan research that supports the "anything into oil" technology as being scientifically, environmentally and economically viable?

Nonpartisan implies that politicians have any say in the thing whatsoever. Well, screw them. This is purely private industry.

I believe the research in the subject is pretty convincing: they have a full-scale biorefinery operating in Missouri that has been making a profit for several months. They have had no emissions or environmental issues, and the process has worked perfectly once they fine tuned their processing variables. The plant has been pulling a profit since December.

That's enough proof for me. However, it is worth noting that the biorefinery was shut down for a month and still may be shut down permanently because the turkey waste smells bad and people nearby have been complaining about the smell.

Building the first refinery 15 minutes from the downtown city area was probably a bad idea, but who the hell can tell it was the biorefinery over the meat packing and butcheries all around it?

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At 3/20/06 01:44 AM, Velocitom wrote: I am sure if the oil companies have anything to say it wont even be put into the process of being made.

They already have a running biorefinery. The oil companies don't have a say about it.

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At 3/20/06 09:20 AM, TheShrike wrote: If the process could be powered by itself, and still produce enough product to be profitable, I'd be impressed. Outside of that, it's a pipe dream.

The article I cited didn't mention that information, but the Discover magazine article where I first heard about this did include that information.

The plant consumes 15% of its own output oil each day to fully power itself. It is generator-quality oil after all. The consumed oil was not included in the 500 barrels per day figure.

The Missouri plant is making a $4 per barrel profit ($2000 per day), not counting any additional profit from selling the fertilizer or calcium powder. It's economically feasible.

However, the CEO of the biorefinery did note that only 3 states in the US have taxation laws which would allow the company to make a profit. The company is planning to expand primarily into Europe because every location in Europe promises a major profit.

[x-Toadenalin-x]

The USA consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day. Your process makes 500 barrels, from 250 tons of input. This means to cope with demand, you need to find 1,000,000 tons of junk each day. Not only that, but you say the process is "highly specialised", suggesting you need a million tons of chicken waste (or similar) each day.

A mature chicken weighs about two kilograms. There are 500 such chickens in a ton. In one million tons, there are 500 million chickens. This means the process relies on finding half a billion dead chickens a day, or the equivelant in other biomass. This is clearly unfeasable

Nice idea, I don't think much will come of it.

[TheShrike]

At 3/20/06 11:00 AM, Draconias wrote: The article I cited didn't mention that information, but the Discover magazine article where I first heard about this did include that information.

The plant consumes 15% of its own output oil each day to fully power itself. It is generator-quality oil after all. The consumed oil was not included in the 500 barrels per day figure.

The Missouri plant is making a $4 per barrel profit ($2000 per day), not counting any additional profit from selling the fertilizer or calcium powder. It's economically feasible.

Uh-huh. Link to this Discover Magazine article? If it was print-only, care to tell me what issue? My parents have a subscription, and keep the old magazines around.

[Elfer]

Yeah, see, the thing about saying "no emissions" is that it sounds great until you realise you're manufacturing oil for burning.

[Draconias]

At 3/20/06 12:21 PM, x_Toadenalin_x wrote: The USA consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day. Your process makes 500 barrels, from 250 tons of input. This means to cope with demand, you need to find 1,000,000 tons of junk each day.

10 million tons, actually. From 40,000 biorefineries if they are built to the same size, which they probably won't be.

Not only that, but you say the process is "highly specialised", suggesting you need a million tons of chicken waste (or similar) each day..

No. This process is completely the opposite. It generalizes to just about everything. However, for the best output, the biorefinery needs to fine tune the various temperatures and pressures.

This only needs to be done once, by anyone. After that, any biorefinery can simply use the same values and instantly switch processing types.

This is clearly unfeasable

10 million tons of chicken alone sounds unreasonable. However, that's not your only source. All we need is a combined flow of 10 million tons from: restauraunt waste and grease; butcheries for chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, deer, and others; non-water portions of sewage from cities; excess plant material from agricultural harvesting; rotten or diseased anything; all forms of unrecyclable urban waste; any sort of recyclables; most sorts of industrial waste; junkyard cars; old tires (huge source); anything we throw into landfills; anything we've already thrown into landfills; any biohazards we need to eliminate; construction waste (rotted beams, demolished buildings); et cetera.

Virtually anything we throw away can be reprocessed through a biorefinery, and I'm pretty damn sure that 314 million people produce more than 10 million tons of waste per day. That's only 63 pounds of waste per person. If many individuals don't reach that, industrial operations definately make up for it.

It's just as feasible as sending a man to the moon. It may be a major engineering challenege and take a long time to build infrastructure, but we can do it.

At 3/20/06 03:30 PM, TheShrike wrote: Uh-huh. Link to this Discover Magazine article? If it was print-only, care to tell me what issue? My parents have a subscription, and keep the old magazines around.

Page 46 of the current Discover issue is the "Anything into Oil" article. On the front cover is a human corpse ripped open and preserved as "art." Since it is the current issue, Discover doesn't have it up on their website yet, at least not for public viewing (you must subscribe).

By the way: with further processing, the biorefinery can also turn oils into methane or other non-oil products.

[Tantalus]

Hmmm. Sounds nice, but whose job is it to gather all these materials to be turned into oil?

[x-Toadenalin-x]

At 3/21/06 10:43 AM, Draconias wrote: This only needs to be done once, by anyone. After that, any biorefinery can simply use the same values and instantly switch processing types.

I'm terribly sorry, I did not realise that - you are correct, the process does indeed seem a good one. I withdraw my post.

Even so, the comedy value of half a billion chickens in one place might make up for the gross infeasability of my idea.

[asdfrasdfg]

This is, quite simply, incredible. I am honestly at a loss for words here. It can make it's own oil, and generate itself without needing anything from the powergrid, and yet still produce enough other materials to create a profit? I really cannot believe that they have finally managed a way to do something like this. Hell, in the distant future, if they can shrink this process down enough, we could have self-sustaining cars that run on anything you throw away. A Mr. Fusion, brought to reality.

Think about it...you plop in a days worth of garbage from around the house. It generates it into the oil you need to drive. Plop in a diesel engine, and you're burnin' gas that you made yourself. For fucks sake, this sounds better than ethonal.

The only problem I see in this is that it really does have emmissions, seeing as generators have to burn oil in order to run. That produces gasses, there's no getting around that, even if they do contain them somehow. Then you have a situation like nuclear waste...a bunch of containers that nobody knows what to do with. The same would happen with the forseable cars that could be made in the distant future...they still produce emissions that we don't want.

So, I guess, this is definately one way we could solve the energy crisis. The only problem is, it doesn't do much to solve the problem of producing gasses that really shouldn't be pumped into the atmosphere, other then the fact it produces so little that it can be stored in containers.

I likey this idea...

[JoS]

Someone has finally found a good use for Mac computers, breaking them down and using them for fuel.

[Imperator]

At 3/21/06 11:04 AM, lordofchaos42591 wrote: Hmmm. Sounds nice, but whose job is it to gather all these materials to be turned into oil?

Whoever wants to get paid to do it. Like I said before, this would open up a huge industry and really stimulate the economy. I don't know how many people you need to run plants like these, but 1000s of jobs would be needed for transportation. 100s more for storage, distribution, and buying the stuff, plus dozens of managerial positions to keep track of inventory, output, input ratios, etc etc. Ie, there might be some really good career opportunities in hauling old tires to these plants in the future.....

I'll be an "early-user" and create my own little transport company for these guys. Anyone want a job at "bull-shit 4 U"? (We'll be primarily transporting cow and bull dung......).

;-)

[Draconias]

At 3/21/06 03:21 PM, JoS wrote: Someone has finally found a good use for Mac computers, breaking them down and using them for fuel.

Sadly, Mac computers go under the "radioactive waste" category. When they attempted to run a ton of these through the pilot biorefinery, it caused an explosion that launched all the Mac parts back out of the biorefinery. WCT now refuses to process anything related to Macs.

Just kidding. That would be really funny, though.

[IllustriousPotentate]

At 3/21/06 02:46 PM, Sir_Snark wrote: This is, quite simply, incredible. I am honestly at a loss for words here. It can make it's own oil, and generate itself without needing anything from the powergrid, and yet still produce enough other materials to create a profit? I really cannot believe that they have finally managed a way to do something like this. Hell, in the distant future, if they can shrink this process down enough, we could have self-sustaining cars that run on anything you throw away. A Mr. Fusion, brought to reality.

Imagine the benefits! Coupled with more economical costs, that could eliminate landfills, dumping grounds, as well as litter? Why throw something on the side of the road when you can use it to fuel your car?

Of course, that's a long ways off. And while we still should be looking for alternative, more sustainable fuels, this technology could very well ease the transition off of oil, and still provide oil for plastics, etc.

[asdfrasdfg]

At 3/22/06 05:57 PM, IllustriousPotentate wrote:

Of course, that's a long ways off. And while we still should be looking for alternative, more sustainable fuels, this technology could very well ease the transition off of oil, and still provide oil for plastics, etc.

Indeed, but this is why I'm going for Mechanical Engineering degree, and hopefully later a physics degree. I basically decided a year ago or so that our current transportation methods are pretty much crap, and that there is no way we can continue to use these kinds of systems when the worlds supply of oil is due to drop off it's peak in 10 years or so.

So the point that this is not an actual replacement is a good one to make; while this could drastically help us improve costs for the people, and even solve the energy crisis to a degree, it will still be creating things that are rather not good for the rest of the planet.

Transportation and energy sciences are a very interesting area, and I can't wait to really get going in them :p