Anything into oil!

Discover magazine online ^ | May 2003 | Brad Lemley

[AlextheWise1]

Anything into Oil

Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year

By Brad Lemley Photography by Tony Law

Gory refuse, from a Butterball Turkey plant in Carthage, Missouri, will no longer go to waste. Each day 200 tons of turkey offal will be carted to the first industrial-scale thermal depolymerization plant, recently completed in an adjacent lot, and be transformed into various useful products, including 600 barrels of light oil.

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." Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true. "Everybody says that," says Appel. He is a tall, affable entrepreneur who has assembled a team of scientists, former government leaders, and deep-pocketed investors to develop and sell what he calls the thermal depolymerization process, or TDP. The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing. Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

[AlextheWise1]

If this is true, not a new cold fusion myth, and can be scaled it changes well... everything

[Consort]

We've been there, done this story once or twice already.

[Windcatcher]

One thing we do well here in Philly...is refine oil. There are refineries stretching for upwards of 20 to 30 miles, from Philly all the way down to the Delaware state line.

Like my high school Physics teacher used to say (paraphrasing):

"Don't worry about a war with the Russians. Don't worry about getting drafted. We're a primary target. If a war starts, we're dead. They might miss the Navy yard, but they'll make SURE to hit all the refineries, all the way down to Marcus Hook. Half the county will be vaporized."

[petuniasevan]

If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

Fremen Deathstill!

[happydogdesign]

"There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant.

If it works for bull excrement, Washington, D.C. will put the Middle East out of business!

[Windcatcher]

If it gets rid of that STINK between the airport and the Girard Point Bridge, I'm all for it.

That smell when you land in Philly is *not* the entire city. I promise. Whoever decided to put a treatment plant there should be beaten.

[rellimpank]

--I'm not going to buy stock in this company quite yet--

[capitan_refugio]

Let me tell you, I read that article in the hardcopy version of the magazine. The spread gegan with a two-page gatefold of turkey guts and other parts. It would have made you heave, just to see it.

Most anything organic can be rendered into oils. But at what cost - that's the rub!

[capitan_refugio]

That's why it's called "science fiction"

[Cold Heat]

Fremen Deathstill!

Yes, we can take their water and convert them into Soy-lent Green.

[capitan_refugio]

A few decades ago (about 1915 +/-), the city of Milwaukee had a sewage problem. That's when one of their engineers developed "Milorganite" fertilizer.

Milorganite is people!

[ffusco]

If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

............And I would yield 30 pounds of oil, 6 pounds of gas, 6 pounds of minerals and 98 pounds of water.

My Dog would produce 19 pounds of oil.....

My Cat would yield 3 pounds of oil!

[ffusco]

Human feces.

[capitan_refugio]

I credit wirestripper as my inspiration for my previous post on this thread!!!

[ffusco]

.......I wonder how much oil he would yield? Hmmmm.

[Cold Heat]

I have used that Milorganite.

Good stuff! (Grows really big tomatoes)

[ffusco]

Any one know how much Tim Robbins weighs?

[ffusco]

What was that movie a few years back where undesiresble dinner guests are buried under enormous tomato plants? Jeremy Previn was in it.

[Cold Heat]

I would think he is mostly gas. (toxic gas)

[ffusco]

Micheal Moore could heat a small mid-western town with this new technology!