Catalytic depolymerization - Waste to diesel fuel

ikendu

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I came across a small article in Trailer Life about catalytic depolymerization. This summer, a company called Green Power Inc (GPI) demonstrated landfill waste conversion to diesel fuel. Their web site is:

http://www.cleanenergyprojects.com/greenpowertechnical/technical.html

If they get the feedstock for free (trash), they claim to be able to produce diesel fuel for 58 cents/gallon. The first plant is supposed to open next year in Tacoma, Washington. This definitely "sounds too good to be true", but likely bears watching.

Here is a web site that was put up by a guy who says he has a mechanical engineering degree and witnessed the demonstration:

http://www.catalyticdepolymerization.org/index.php?contentId=4

Here is an article from "Diesel Forecast" about the demonstation:

http://www.dieselforecast.com/WireReportDetails.php?wireID=149
 

turbodog

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That is dated.

Yes the process works, but the problem is that the supplier(s) of the waste now are charging good money for the trash.

It's likely the company will do well overseas where trash is taxed heavily. Do some googling; there are more articles out there.
 

ikendu

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turbodog said:
That is dated.

Yes the process works, but the problem is that the supplier(s) of the waste now are charging good money for the trash.

It's likely the company will do well overseas where trash is taxed heavily. Do some googling; there are more articles out there.

You may have this confused with Thermal De-Polymerization at the ButterBall Turkey plant where the turkey guts were once free but Conagra is now charging for them. This is a different company and slightly different technology.
 

David_Campen

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I worked for a company in the 70s that was doing this to all sorts of waste materials on an experimental basis. Yes, depending on feedstock, you could get a sort of wax or oil that could conceivably be considered "diesel fuel" but mostly it was very thick, nasty and corrosive stuff. It would take a lot of additional processing (=cost) to get something that I would put in any diesel engine that was my personal property.

the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed is that there are just too many people in the world and we are stripping it of resources like a horde of locust.
 

James S

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the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed is that there are just too many people in the world and we are stripping it of resources like a horde of locust

That is an overly broad and general statement that just isn't true.

It is demonstrated over and over again that while we do consume, things are not nearly as bad as those who have something political to gain from it would like us to believe.

Anything that reduces our use of oil from the ground would be good, I"ll support this company and hope they can get the garbage people to give them what they need and not start to charge for it.

One example I've come across just the other day as to how things aren't as horrible as we're constantly told they are is the fact that the world as a whole is gaining forest, not loosing it! Great little article HERE
The US and China have gained back more forest than any other countries in the world, there is now more forest in the US than there was 200 years ago. Brazil and Indonesia continue to loose forest, but they discovered that deforestation is a poverty problem, EVERY country with a per capita GDP over $4500 is involved in re-forestation.

Thats sort of off topic, but so is calling all humans destructive locusts. It just isn't born out or nobody would bother.
 

turbodog

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Hmmm, my bad.

I speculate that in time the free waste supplied will end up being charged for.

But I do support the technology. I know that they will succeed overseas. I hope that they will do the same domestically.


ikendu said:
You may have this confused with Thermal De-Polymerization at the ButterBall Turkey plant where the turkey guts were once free but Conagra is now charging for them. This is a different company and slightly different technology.
 

Trashman

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Following what James S was saying, there was a short page near the back of either Popular Mechanics or Men's Health (I subscribe to both, but can't remember in which I saw the article) that said the same thing. That were are running out of natural resources was false, that we were stripping the world of it's forests was false, that we're running out of landfill space was false, and that the world was becoming over populated was also false. Sorry guys, I can't remember all the fact found retorts to the false statements, but I do remember the one about over population...it said, that the population of the entire planet could all be fit inside the state of Texas and that it would have the population density of Manhattan.

I see that it says on the trash trucks in my area that they run off of reclaimed natural gas, which I assume comes from the methane that is produced in the landfills. So, in one way, we are already getting fuel from trash. I also remember seeing an article in Popular Mechanics a few years ago that there was a plant somewhere in the U.S. that was actually, economically, producing fuel from tires and that the fuel was being sold to electrical plants to run the generators.
 

ikendu

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James S wrote:

One example I've come across just the other day as to how things aren't as horrible as we're constantly told they are is the fact that the world as a whole is gaining forest, not loosing it! Great little article HERE
The US and China have gained back more forest than any other countries in the world, there is now more forest in the US than there was 200 years ago. Brazil and Indonesia continue to loose forest, but they discovered that deforestation is a poverty problem, EVERY country with a per capita GDP over $4500 is involved in re-forestation.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I located the original study here:

http://www.helsinki.fi/press/worldforests/pnas_article.pdf

It indicates that one factor for increasing forests is that we are using fossil fuels for energy instead of wood. That would track with the notion that poorer countries are still using wood instead of petroleum or coal.

I read a book called "Coal: A Human History". It also mentions that the switch to coal was prompted by deforestation. There simply wasn't enough wood to go around as the population expanded.

So... as our population expands and we use more and more fossil fuel for our energy, the forests get a break and regrow to some extent. That seems like a good thing except for the contribution of CO2 to our atmosphere from the fossil fuels (up 30% in the last 200 years, now 26% higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years).

In the end, fossil fuels will be gone (not withstanding the one scientist that thinks petroleum is manufactured at the Earth's core). Even nuclear fuel is not inexhaustable (measured in a few hundred years by some counts). We will, at some point, be forced to balance the amount of renewable energy available with the amount of energy our society demands. It is inevitable (unless we invent some sort of "zero point" energy that "comes out of nowhere"). The extra bad part of fossil fuels being gone is that the CO2 will still be hanging around warming our planet.
 

ikendu

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Trashman said:
I see that it says on the trash trucks in my area that they run off of reclaimed natural gas, which I assume comes from the methane that is produced in the landfills. So, in one way, we are already getting fuel from trash.

Yup. Reusing landfill gas is a good thing.

There is an ethanol plant in Nebraska that sends the "Distillers Grains" that is left over after corn ethanol to an integrated dairy operation for feed. They systematically collect the manure from the dairy herd and biodigest it to create methane. They use the methane to run the ethanol process. Pretty slick (no pun intended).

You can read about it at E3 Biofuels:

http://www.e3biofuels.com/index2.html
 
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