Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 25 Location: Palatine, IL
Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:38 pm Post subject: Thermal Depolymerisation Process
This was listed in another thread, and I was wondering if anyone else knew where I could find more information about this process. Here is the article:
An experimental unit that uses a technique known as the "thermal depolymerisation process" (TDP) that can recycle seven tonnes of waste a day into gas and oil has been running for three years in Philadelphia. A scaled up version is due to open in Carthage, Missouri next month. It is designed to transform 200 tonnes of guts, beaks, blood and bones a day from a nearby turkey processing plant into 10 tonnes of gas and 600 barrels of oil.
Trials at the Philadelphia pilot project have given the engineers a good idea of what different feedstocks would produce. For instance, a 175lb (79kg) man could, theoretically, yield 38lb of oil, 7lb of gas, 7lb of minerals and carbon and 123lb of sterilised water. More practically, 100lb (45kg) of sewage becomes 26lb (11kg) of oil, 9lb of gas, 8lb of minerals and carbon and 57lb of water. Medical waste, generally regard as tricky to dispose of, is particularly valuable - its equivalent yields are 65, 10, 5 and 20.
TDP is said to be 85% efficient - that is, only 15% of the energy it produces goes to fuelling the process. The initial estimate of the cost of the oil from the Missouri plant is $15 (£9) a barrel. The "lifting" price - how much it costs to get oil out of the ground - is very cheap in the Persian Gulf, around a dollar a barrel, while from Gulf of Mexico, North Sea or Alaska the "lifting" price is $8-12. So a price of $15 a barrel for this technology is high but Appel predicts his prices will come down to $10 in a few years, making them comparable with a medium-size oil exploration and production company. "The oil that comes out is very light," says Appel. "It is essentially the same mix as half fuel oil, half gasoline."
I think when peak oil really starts to hit hard we may start recycling corpses into one of these thermal depolymerizers. The enfeebled and incapable may even be encouraged to recycle themselves.
From a serious (and partially de-humanised) outlook, recycling corpses is a great idea.
It's got to be better than the energy intensive and CO2 crazy process of cremation and it saves wasting bodies on worms.
Politically though, how on earth would you even propose a law like "all people must enter the recycling vats after the funeral unless it is expressly forbidden by their religion". How many politicians would have the nerve to even discuss such a thing?
I like to think I'm open minded (and hope I am), but I'd still feel uncomfortable wearing a condom that could have been made from my late Great Aunt Mable? *creepy*
I suppose most people wouldn't make the connection, lucky for them! _________________ Burning the midnight oil, whilst I still can.
Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 10:36 am Post subject: Soylent Green
OilBurner wrote:
I like to think I'm open minded (and hope I am), but I'd still feel uncomfortable wearing a condom that could have been made from my late Great Aunt Mable?
Who cares? All C12 carbon atoms are the same. You probably have one or two atoms that used to be part of Adolf Hitler, it doesn't change anything.
But hey, you don't have to recycle corpses, it would make a lot more sense to recycle their wastes. I'll bet the average person produces 100x more sh!t during his/her life than their body weight.
Speaking of recylcing corpses, ever see the 70s sci fi classic "Soylent Green"?
It's more about scale than technical feasibility. _________________ "When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen F Roberts.
Matt's calculation is valuable but unfortunately inaccurate. Philosophically, it includes the following errors:
1. The conversion from us tons to metric tons is performed twice. Note that the first number in the calculation is 1.27e9 which is the total annual agricultural waste in metric tons per year. The third term in the calculation repeats the conversion.
2. The "8.9% of mass can get extracted as oil" seems low and does not agree with the claims from CWT. The claim is that 69.8 tpd of oil can be produced from 210 tpd of turkey offal[1], or a 33.2% mass conversion.
3. Whatever the correct mass conversion, it would include process efficiency, so there would be no need to factor in the 85% again.
So, recalculating we find:
1.27E9 tons/ year ag waste x .332 x 45GJ/ton = 19E9 GJ/year or 19EJ/y,
or more than 50% of the 35 EJ/y needed as oil.
Let me point out that the 33.2% conversion is bound to depend on a number of factors, including:
1. The source of waste. Fats and oils pack more energy per unit mass (GJ/ton) than carbohydrate and protein.
2. The water content of the original waste. Turkey offal and all agricultural waste will include a fair amount of water, which would tend to reduce the conversion. Dry wastes such as plastic, tires would achieve a far higher conversion.
3. The source (CWT) does not mention how much water is added to the turkey offal. The 210 tpd reportedly includes 108 tpd of water. It is not stated how much of that is part of the offal and how much is added. Conversion would be even better if it turns out that a significant amount of water is added.
A better way to calculate the potential energy production would be to use the claimed 85% efficiency. Does anybody know how much energy agricutural waste typically packs (GJ/ton)?
Also bear in mind that agricultural waste is only one feedstock for TDP. Other candidates include garbage, sewage sludge or any organic waste product such as mad cows. So it is possible to do much better than 50% of the total US oil requirement.
I say let's see what the MO plant can do and take it from there.
TDP is going to be huge, watch for it in the coming years.
As for Matt's response.
Why don't you tell everyone what your true intentions are here?
I gave up any shred of credibility in your work when you tried to refute someone who suggested we grow much more hemp to replace oil by saying..."but then what happens when we hit peak hemp?".
So you're suggesting that we don't find any solutions to the coming "oil crisis", instead we should fall into chaos and starvation, instead of continuing to grow using other methods, like hemp. Hell you used the same logic when suggesting nuclear power could replace it by saying "nuclear power plants are terrorist targets". WTH kind of answer is that?
That my friend, is when you lost all credibility and a big fat xmas tree of warning lights lit up for me.
So what is your alterior motive Matt? Gold bug? Stock market shorter? Republican? Trying to make a case to drill Alaska for oil?
TDP is going to be huge, watch for it in the coming years.
As for Matt's response.
Why don't you tell everyone what your true intentions are here?
I gave up any shred of credibility in your work when you tried to refute someone who suggested we grow much more hemp to replace oil by saying..."but then what happens when we hit peak hemp?".
So you're suggesting that we don't find any solutions to the coming "oil crisis", instead we should fall into chaos and starvation, instead of continuing to grow using other methods, like hemp. Hell you used the same logic when suggesting nuclear power could replace it by saying "nuclear power plants are terrorist targets". WTH kind of answer is that?
....
What Matt meant is that with hemp (or other energy resource ) you will replace oil with other resource and you will kicking the problem into the future. (and it will be worst). Why? We have been using growth-based economies. What if we use hemp as a source ? We will probly go through 50/100/200 years more... but it will come a time that energy needs for world population would surpass energy output (oil / hemp, or whatever).
And at that time, we will need to have our growth-based economy to something else. And if a Die off might happen, it better be now with 6.5 billion ppl fighting for the scraps than with 12 billion or more.
TDP is going to be huge, watch for it in the coming years.
TDP wont work as an energy source because of thermodynamics...
Lets say you put lots of plastic in it, you will always get a lower quality of oil out of the TDP process than the oil used to create the plastic bag.
TDP will be great as a recycling process tho.
I think that the future world will need to reduce all kinds of waste (for energy reasons), and using waste into TDP will create more efficient process. The problem is we might be out of time to switch to a world fullof thousands of TDP plants.
As some1 said before is a problem of scale (and time)
TDP is going to be huge, watch for it in the coming years.
As for Matt's response.
Why don't you tell everyone what your true intentions are here?
I gave up any shred of credibility in your work when you tried to refute someone who suggested we grow much more hemp to replace oil by saying..."but then what happens when we hit peak hemp?".
So you're suggesting that we don't find any solutions to the coming "oil crisis", instead we should fall into chaos and starvation, instead of continuing to grow using other methods, like hemp. Hell you used the same logic when suggesting nuclear power could replace it by saying "nuclear power plants are terrorist targets". WTH kind of answer is that?
That my friend, is when you lost all credibility and a big fat xmas tree of warning lights lit up for me.
So what is your alterior motive Matt? Gold bug? Stock market shorter? Republican? Trying to make a case to drill Alaska for oil?
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:16 am Post subject: TD Numbers
Optimists says that
1) I converted the waste from Metric tons to US tons twice.
This is correct. I doubled up on the conversion so I reduce the final number by 10%. I will re-write the article and make the terms more clear (it should have GJ/(oil * tons), for example). I will correct this slight error there as well. BTW, this isn't a philosophical problem. Its a mathematical one.
in over 90 experiments, they got a 8.9% average oil conversion out of the process. They got 3.3% soilds, 4.9% gas, and 82.9% water.
These numbers come from scientists doing real trial runs on real bio-organic matter of the MOST plentiful type, manure.
Yours come from a business conference and site "discover" and "money magazine" as refrences using the LEAST previlant type, corpses.
You can be the judge on the credibility yourself.
3) That we can discount the 85% efficiencies.
Here we get to see Optimists real problem. He thinks that things don't cost energy. The TD people THEMSELVES state this 85% energy efficiency for a reason, they want to show how that their process doesn't need external energy input. You don't get to discount it or throw it away. So by saying it is "part of" your pie-in-the sky 33% number, you ignore the costs of conversion. Just like you ignore that we don't have 1.2 billion tons of turkey corpses a year.
I like TD. I think it will help. I say we should be spending BILLIONS in that technology right now. It won't produce much more than 10% of our current oil needs, however.
Thank you for pointing out my double conversion, however!
Baloney. Nobody knows when this so called "peak" is going to happen. There is all the time in the world to set these things up. Obviously they can't become a "source" for oil because they're just pulling up 85% efficiency. However when you consider how much human and animal waste, garbage, and left over agricultural waste there is, this could extend the peak for oil, way into the future if at all.
Anonymous wrote:
Another thing.
Hydro wrote:
TDP is going to be huge, watch for it in the coming years.
TDP wont work as an energy source because of thermodynamics...
Lets say you put lots of plastic in it, you will always get a lower quality of oil out of the TDP process than the oil used to create the plastic bag.
TDP will be great as a recycling process tho.
I think that the future world will need to reduce all kinds of waste (for energy reasons), and using waste into TDP will create more efficient process. The problem is we might be out of time to switch to a world fullof thousands of TDP plants.
As some1 said before is a problem of scale (and time)
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:41 am Post subject: Peak When?
Hydro wrote:
Baloney. Nobody knows when this so called "peak" is going to happen. There is all the time in the world to set these things up. Obviously they can't become a "source" for oil because they're just pulling up 85% efficiency. However when you consider how much human and animal waste, garbage, and left over agricultural waste there is, this could extend the peak for oil, way into the future if at all.
ASPO says 2008 for peak oil. Do you have better data? I doubt it, because you didn't post it.
Human waste, as I pointed out, is 134 times less than agricultural waste. It doesn't even form a blip given the quantites we are talking about.
Agricultural waste, as I pointed out, does not have the ability to give us more than 10% of our current oil requirements. Now if you use your critical thinking skills, and see that 9 out of 10 calories that we eat come from oil related processes, you will find that 10% quantity will shrink AS we run out of oil due to there not being enough agriculture to convert.
Garbage, as I pointed out, serves only as a non-renewable resource as we go back, dig up the garbage, and convert it back to oil. We hopefully will do this, but no one has as of yet. So we don't even know if we CAN get much back from our dumps. Hopefully we can start reclaiming our tires, however. That seems like the biggest "win" right now. But all of these processes require TONS of work, ie not cheap oil.
I don't even know where to begin to correct this issue. No one else does either, other than fight over the scraps. Your blind faith in civilization, well, blinds you. Civilizations cannot work. They rely on false premises and eternal war against other species and thus ultimately cannot keep sustaining themselves. 200 years from now, no civilizations will exist. The question to us, our choice, comes down to this.
"Do we want humans to exist in 200 years?"
I say yes. Most other people, due to their ignorance, say no. I hope their minds will change.
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2004 12:52 pm Post subject: Re: Peak When?
ASPO says 2008, Savinar says 2005, Simmons says 2010, IEA says 2030, Department of energy says somewhere between 2010-2020.
So here's the damn point. How the hell can anyone just arbitrarily pick one of those as "the one" because its a fact that none of them can, with 100% certainty, say how much proven reserves there are left. On top of that, we have no idea what the demand for oil will be with the alternatives coming online, and further, we have no idea how to predict technology's role in prolonging well declines.
Point being, nobody knows, and nobody can say for sure. So cut the crap.
entropyfails wrote:
Hydro wrote:
Baloney. Nobody knows when this so called "peak" is going to happen. There is all the time in the world to set these things up. Obviously they can't become a "source" for oil because they're just pulling up 85% efficiency. However when you consider how much human and animal waste, garbage, and left over agricultural waste there is, this could extend the peak for oil, way into the future if at all.
ASPO says 2008 for peak oil. Do you have better data? I doubt it, because you didn't post it.
Human waste, as I pointed out, is 134 times less than agricultural waste. It doesn't even form a blip given the quantites we are talking about.
Agricultural waste, as I pointed out, does not have the ability to give us more than 10% of our current oil requirements. Now if you use your critical thinking skills, and see that 9 out of 10 calories that we eat come from oil related processes, you will find that 10% quantity will shrink AS we run out of oil due to there not being enough agriculture to convert.
Garbage, as I pointed out, serves only as a non-renewable resource as we go back, dig up the garbage, and convert it back to oil. We hopefully will do this, but no one has as of yet. So we don't even know if we CAN get much back from our dumps. Hopefully we can start reclaiming our tires, however. That seems like the biggest "win" right now. But all of these processes require TONS of work, ie not cheap oil.
I don't even know where to begin to correct this issue. No one else does either, other than fight over the scraps. Your blind faith in civilization, well, blinds you. Civilizations cannot work. They rely on false premises and eternal war against other species and thus ultimately cannot keep sustaining themselves. 200 years from now, no civilizations will exist. The question to us, our choice, comes down to this.
"Do we want humans to exist in 200 years?"
I say yes. Most other people, due to their ignorance, say no. I hope their minds will change.
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