Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
I have a hard copy that I've read and it's not a joke as far as I can tell. But, quoting myself at EHS-Net, "All I wonder is if this is true, will GHGs still be a problem? Still hydrocarbons I believe; ergo, CO2."
Their website refers frequently to clean energy, and the National Geographic piece referred to their product as a "clean burning crude."
Whether reality tallies with the claim is another question.
I have the article from Discover printed out; rather long - hard to post. Could refer to it to answer some questions. _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
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(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
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Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 1938 Location: Richland Center, Wisconsin
Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 10:44 pm Post subject: Thank you kindly
Thank you kindly for that little piece of relief, Leanan. _________________ --------------------------------
| Whose reality is this anyway!? |
--------------------------------
(-------< Temet Nosce >-------)
____________________________
Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2004 3:12 pm Post subject: TDP Plant
It appears that the TDP plant has lately been operating at 100% design capacity, http://energybulletin.net/1666.html . So, now we just have to wait until they either brag that they are producing the intended 500 barrels per day (thereby effectively confirming the 85% claimed efficiency) or admit that they cannot quite get there (which would require a longer wait).
They have reached 100% efficiency, but they are having odor problems that have required frequent stops and starts in production to try and nail down where the problem is in their "zero emissions" plant.
Each time they've increased production, this odor problem has re-emerged, and so far they have licked it at each level.
From what I've read elsewhere about problems with some of their contractors, it seems that some of the seams made during construction were not as thoroughly sealed as they should've been. _________________ http://www.openspeech.org - please visit and post!
Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 11:35 am Post subject: TDP plant
The odor issue, while serious, is hardly going to derail the technology. Yes, it's ironic that this would be the problem with a "zero emissions" technology, but it could be an honest mistake. Looks like the designers forgot that when you put steam in a pipe, you need a blow-off to prevent the pipe from popping. And if the steam contains the cooked turkey parts, the blow-off would tend to be odorous.
So far, there is no reason to believe that things would not work out for CWT. As I have said before, we will keep watching.
Of course, there is a major difference between "100% capacity" and "100% efficiency".
First of all, there seems to be some confusion here regarding the energy efficiency of TDP. IF the figures given by CWT are correct, they will TDP will be a net source of energy. The following quote is pulled from Page 2 of the Life After The Oil Crash web page.
Quote:
3. According to the company itself, the TD process has an efficiency of 85 percent. You stick 100 units of energy into the process to get out 85. This means TD has a negative net-energy profile. Thus, it’s not an energy source, folks!
Simply physics dictates that TD will never have a positive or even break even net-energy profile. The process requires energy to turn garbage into oil. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus, the energy obtained from the TD process will be less than the energy used to create it.
The 85% figure comes from the net BTU gain of the process. For every 100btu's of energy produced by TDP, 15btu's get used to convert the next 100btu's woth of stock into oil or gas, and so on. In other words, the energy ouput of the products is divided by the energy input including the energy contained within the feedstock.Yes that is a bit confusing considering it is not the common way used to calculate energy efficiency. To put it another way, the energy efficiency is around 667%. Either way you crunch the numbers, TDP is an energy source, not a sink.(again, I'm going by the info released by CWT. )
The energy efficiency of the plant can be calculated in several ways depending upon what aspect of performance is of interest. The energy efficiency that is problably of most interest is the energy in the combustible products that leave the plant divided by the total energy input. The energy input includes the energy in the dry feed, the electric power used, and any purchased natural gas that must be fired.
In no way does this violate thermal dynamics. The energy of the system comes from the sun, converted by photosynthesis, and then fed to the turkeys, making the turkey offal that makes up the feedstock. So, for every 100btu's worth of turkey offal put into the TDP plant, you get a net yeild of 85btu's net energy in the form of oil and gas.
Here is a bit more info on the Colorado plant. Scroll down the page about 2/3rds of the way till you find "Draft Environmental Assessment for Changing World Technologies."
http://www.go.doe.gov/reading_room.html
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2004 12:00 pm Post subject: TDP efficiency
Excellent summary, SmokeStack!
TDP is a new source of energy for the simple reason that most trash today goes to landfills where it simply rots away. Some bugs get the benefit of the energy, but not humankind. These landfills have many negative impacts on the environment such as seepage of polluted liquids, release of biogas (carbon dioxide and methane), release of odorous and sometimes toxic gases. While TDP would not eliminate all these negative impacts, it would significantly reduce all of them.
What sets TDP apart from other renewable energy technology is its ability to utilize a widely available fuel, which is currently mostly unused. No need to take agricultural land from food production to fuel production. No need to build acre upon acre of solar panels. No need to build windmills in hard to reach mountain areas. Just an oil refinery to replace the landfill.
This is great stuff-as one facet of a sustainable distributed system. But as a panacea for a broken centralized industrial society, or even peak-oil delay, it feels to be another Titanic deck chair mambo.
1. Turkey (chicken for that matter) entrails are food. (to paraphrase Soylent Green). They become feed for other turkeys and other barnyards animals. So this gasoline feed stock is no longer available as human feed stock.
2. Turkey offal does not pump nor flow easily. Poultry production is dispersed all over this country while we now rely on centralized oil refineries. Will people drive up to the turkey farm for a fill up?
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 3:18 pm Post subject: Talking Turkey
No and no.
Turkey offal may be animal feed, but it should not be - not while there are diseases like Mad Cow around. Incidentally, TDP is a good way to destroy the prions that cause Mad Cow and CJD. I don't know what percentage of animal feed is from animal waste but overall, it should be low (<10%). I believe the practice of feeding animal waste to animals has been abolished in Europe, without bringing agriculture to a screeching halt.
No need to pump turkey. The first TDP plant happens to be located next to a turkey processing plant. Eventually TDP plants would probably be located at landfill sites, to process wastes already transported there. Thus, there is no need to transport the wastes any further than is currently the case.
This is great stuff-as one facet of a sustainable distributed system. But as a panacea for a broken centralized industrial society, or even peak-oil delay, it feels to be another Titanic deck chair mambo.
1. Turkey (chicken for that matter) entrails are food. (to paraphrase Soylent Green). They become feed for other turkeys and other barnyards animals. So this gasoline feed stock is no longer available as human feed stock.
2. Turkey offal does not pump nor flow easily. Poultry production is dispersed all over this country while we now rely on centralized oil refineries. Will people drive up to the turkey farm for a fill up?
Peter
Turkey offal is only one source of feedstock for TDP. Sewage, most garbage, just about anything carbon based is said to work. I'm not too worried about the logistics of potential feedstocks at this point. The first commercial plant is still cutting its teeth with turkey offal, and other commercial plants using different feedstocks have yet to come on line. The technology has a lot of maturing to do at this point.
Joined: Jul 17, 2004 Posts: 490 Location: Amerika (most of the time)
Posted: Tue May 31, 2005 12:45 pm Post subject:
Here is a pretty good rebuttal of the TDP process that brought up a number of questions that I hadn't thought of. It's in the form of a rant by a chemist but it's a pretty fun read.
Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 251 Location: Siberia of Canada
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 12:45 am Post subject:
big_rc wrote:
Here is a pretty good rebuttal of the TDP process that brought up a number of questions that I hadn't thought of. It's in the form of a rant by a chemist but it's a pretty fun read. Here is the answer to my turkey guts question. It looks like a bust. Sorry folks. Doesn't look like to much here to get excited about.
Well, I would agree with the rebuttal only in that the thermal depolymerization can convert only animal waste consisting of proteins and fats to oil. Hence, it will not convert old refrigerators or tires or plastic bottles ot junk paper into oil as the authors claim. But everything else seems to be OK. As far as the low yield is concerned, turkey offal consists of at least 70% of water. Plus maybe 4% is nitrogen. So only 25-26% of the offal can possibly be converted into oil.
Then it is quite stupid to write something like that:
Quote:
That's an 18 percent yield. Where is the rest of it going?
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