Anything into oil (from Discover Magazine)

[labman]

If the price of oil marches upward even by fits and starts, new sources of energy will come out of the woodwork. What the government needs to do is to stay out of the way and let it happen. Also let people contemplate replacing Bill Gates as number 1 in the Forbes rich list if they come up with a truly great idea. Millions of people itching to get rich will solve any problem. Shenanigans like opening the Navel Reserves to keep the price of gas down until after the election is the worst possible thing to do.

 

[XS650]

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Originally posted by labman: If the price of oil marches upward even by fits and starts, new sources of energy will come out of the woodwork. What the government needs to do is to stay out of the way and let it happen. Also let people contemplate replacing Bill Gates as number 1 in the Forbes rich list if they come up with a truly great idea. Millions of people itching to get rich will solve any problem. Shenanigans like opening the Navel Reserves to keep the price of gas down until after the election is the worst possible thing to do.

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I agree on not opening the reserves, I also don't want drilling in ANWAR and other protected areas. If we don't use that oil now, it will still be there when we are desparate instead of just incovenienced like we are now. Use Mid-East oil up first. Where I do disagree is in gumnt involvment. We need some gumnt inviolvement to keep prices at a high stable level if OPEC starts cutting prices. Last time there was big price oil crunch (1970s?), energy programs were started, OPEC cut prices and the programs were dropped. I expect OPEC to pull the same stunt again. We also need better concieved and run energy programs. We need intelligent gummnt (oximoron alert) intervention to keep the bigger hogs from crowding the smarter smaller hogs away from the trough. We also need to keep the morons that believe hydrogen is an energy souce instead of just a way to store energy far-far away from gumnt run programs. If the gumnt puts some control on prices, prices to industry can be kept low to help our international competitivness. Prices for private use can be kept up to help wean J.J. MachoBalls out of his oversized 4x4 pickup. Also to encourage Buffy soccer mom and Biff the yuppie lawyer to move out of their Cadillac Escapades, Chevy Subdivisions and other Wankermobiles. [ October 23, 2004, 01:15 AM: Message edited by: XS650 ]

 

[labman]

Great post even if we disagree on what the government should be doing. Why don't you check in on the thread about California's first hydrogen fuel station. Hope you don't get flamed too badly.

 

[Steve S]

When the profit is there to do it ,then it will be done. If the government pays it will cost way more than private enterprise and will suck. Use up the mideast oil first.

 

[garyb80]

Here is an article about using thermal depolymerization to make fuel from swine manure. http://www.age.uiuc.edu/bee/RESEARCH/tcc/tccpaper3.htm

 

[garyb80]

Here is another article on the turkey guts plant. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2004-01-22-kantor_x.htm

 

[XS650]

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Originally posted by Steve S: When the profit is there to do it ,then it will be done. If the government pays it will cost way more than private enterprise and will suck. Use up the mideast oil first.

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Steve, the unfortunate part is that the people who say government will screw it up and business will screw it up are both right. Gumnt turns things into boondogles and business is continually whipsawed by the need to meet short term financial performance targets. Gumnt urinates away our money and business won't act until it hits them in the face, then when OPEC cuts prices, business will pull back. Gumnt needs to provide a financially stable environment (not jerked around by oilprices) that encourages business to solve the problem, with assistance from gumnt labs and universities. The chances of those things happening aren't very good.

 

[XS650]

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Originally posted by garyb80: Here is another article on the turkey guts plant. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2004-01-22-kantor_x.htm

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Great articles! Here's a quote from the turkey gut article that should cause a few more people to read it:

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According to Appel, there are more than 12 billion tons of agricultural waste generated every year in the U.S. (And that's undoubtedly a low number; it's based on 1988 figures.) Were it all to be put through the TDP process it would turn into more than four billion barrels of light crude oil. That ain't chicken feed. (Not once the system's done processing it, anyway.) According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we imported about 3.3 billion barrels of crude oil in 2002.

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The turkey guts article Garyb linked to is an easy read, take a look. In both the turkey guts and the pig [email protected] articles, a food industry products that are big envirinmental problems is being turned into useable fuel oil. Sweet! The oil produced from those sources is coming from recent raw materials to animal to fuel conversions, so shouldn't be adding to our net atmospheric CO2 load either.

 

[garyb80]

Here is a field observation report I found on the Carthage, MO. plant. http://home.everestkc.net/tasir/CWT/Depolymerization.htm

 

[Mickey_M]

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Originally posted by XS650: [QUOTE]The oil produced from those sources is coming from recent raw materials to animal to fuel conversions, so shouldn't be adding to our net atmospheric CO2 load either.

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On June 25, 1921, Friedrich Bergius - a German - liquefied coal into oil in Stuttgart. Beginning with brown coal (lignite) he ground it into a fine powder and placed into a high pressure reactor with hydrogen gas at high temperature and pressure. The Standard Oil (NJ) Company developed this into a commercially viable process. Dr. Bergius received the Nobel Prize in 1931 for this contribution. The process that Standard Oil developed - after Frank Howard of Standard Oil (NJ) Company visited the BASF facility in Ludwigshafen, Germany - involved the use of catalysts. These catalysts were so good that they could be used on oil to generate gasoline, kerosene, or diesel fuel. This was the beginning of "cracking," the basis for all future oil refining and the foundation for synthetic rubber production. Returning to coal, a U.S. company is helping China to build the world's first commercial plant to turn coal into diesel fuel and gasoline: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/16472/story.htm China has a proven reserve of coal of one trillion tons and its annual output is one billion tons. The U.S. has coal reserves almost twice those of China: http://www.ehbennett.co.uk/second_level_pages/ff2.htm Another process, simpler and less expensive than the full Bergius coal conversion, can produce a feedstock for the thermal depolymerization process. So, it isn’t just turkey parts and swine manure that we could be filling our tanks with and lubing our engines with. We have a 200 year supply of coal.

 

[kenw]

great....just when we get the OPEC clowns nuked into submission (my dream actually), we now get to deal with the TPEC....(Turkey Producing and Exporting Countries.... Dealing with Sheik Leroy of Kansas gonna be a whole new ballgame! "As God is my witness, I thought they could fly..."

 

[salesrep]

I entered the plant in Carthage Mo. and it is running and producing. They are up to speed to produce 600 barrels from 200 tons of turkey leftovers. Folks I think this may be the real deal.

 

[Ugly3]

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Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

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Hard to believe.

 

[salesrep]

Some of the neighboring twps. and villages have begun running it. I will be curious as to the feedback and results. The Equipment specialist I spoke with said that there is no waste material left over, with the exception of water which they clean and send thru the local ww treatment plant. Even mentioned something along the lines of the minerals from bones and feathers and end uses.

 

[Bryanccfshr]

This is amazining. There is more than one way to skin a cat. or a pig, or cow, or there manure, .. **** , we could empty out landfills if this becomes viable.

 

[salesrep]

http://www.res-energy.com/ Here it is. 50/50 joint venture conagra and nwt.

 

[Schmoe]

I've always said that the next gold mines will be old landfills. The stuff that we threw away 50 plus years ago is simply amazing.

 

[loudist]

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Originally posted by kenw: "As God is my witness, I thought they could fly..."

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You're killing me... great reference! heheh Great technology!

 

[Shannow]

Schmoe, I've referred to lanfill as "modern day midden heaps" for quite a while. I think that you are close to the mark. The power stations that I work at produce 4,000 tonnes per day of ash. Ash that is 35% alumina, and 60% silica. I maintain that in the future, these deposits will be mined.

 

[Ironhorseman]

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Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process."

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I could be very wrong on this, but wouldn't 85% efficiency mean it takes 100 BTU's of energy to produce 85 BTU's of product. I'm not minimizing the importance of this technology though. Still taking the proverbial chicken (or in this case, turkey) doodoo, and making chicken salad. Very cool.