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Steve's link and the Ehrlich material reminded me of a recent
discussion on another forum on thermal depolymerization. Disclaimer: My
brother, the professor of Chemical Engineering, says the numbers in the
article below are bogus. The concept is fascinating, namely that if we
convert all the existing carbon in the current system into fuel, we
don't increase CO2 in the atmosphere, since it is a closed loop. Only
by burning fossil fuels would we continue to increase CO2.<br>
<br>
For your consideration.<br>
Lynn<br>
<br>
Steve wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid01C47D25.7B016F10.shovland@mindspring.com">
<pre wrap="">Start here:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.homepower.com/">http://www.homepower.com/</a>
Steve Hovland
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 5pt 0in;"><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1<![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--><span
style="font-size: 10pt;">This
discussion is from:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt;"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=829&SearchTerms=thermo,depolymerization">http://forums.biodieselnow.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=829&SearchTerms=thermo,depolymerization</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 5
(May 2003)<br>
Table of Contents<br>
<br>
Anything into Oil<br>
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and
other waste
into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year<br>
By Brad Lemley<br>
Photography by Tony Law<br>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<br>
In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can
change almost
anything into oil. Really.<br>
"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 <br>
slow down global warming."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that
sounds too
good to be true.<br>
"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 <br>
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 <br>
manufacturing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
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 <br>
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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
"The potential is unbelievable," says Michael Roberts, a senior
chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research
group.
"You're not only cleaning up waste; you're talking about distributed
generation of oil all over the world."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
"This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step," agrees
Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and
a
former Bell Laboratories director.<br>
The offal-derived oil, is chemically almost identical to a number two
fuel oil
used to heat homes.<br>
<br>
<br>
Andreassen and others anticipate that a large chunk of the world's
agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste may someday go into
thermal
depolymerization machines scattered all over the globe. If the process
works as
well as its creators claim, not only would most toxic waste problems
become
history, so would imported oil. Just converting all the U.S. <br>
agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent
of 4
billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2
billion
barrels of oil. Referring to U.S. dependence on oil from the volatile
Middle
East, R. James Woolsey, former CIA director and an adviser to Changing
World
Technologies, says, "This technology offers a beginning of <br>
a way away from this."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
But first things first. Today, here at the plant at Philadelphia's
Naval
Business Center, the experimental feedstock is turkey processing-plant
waste:
feathers, bones, skin, blood, fat, guts. A forklift dumps 1,400 pounds
of the
nasty stuff into the machine's first stage, a 350-horsepower grinder
that
masticates it into gray brown slurry. From there it flows into <br>
a series of tanks and pipes, which hum and hiss as they heat, digest,
and break
down the mixture. Two hours later, a white-jacketed technician turns a
spigot.
Out pours a honey-colored fluid, steaming a bit in the cold warehouse
as it
fills a glass beaker.<br>
It really is a lovely oil.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
"The longest carbon chains are C-18 or so," says Appel, admiring the
liquid. "That's a very light oil. It is essentially the same as a mix
of
half fuel oil, half gasoline."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Private investors, who have chipped in $40 million to develop the
process,
aren't the only ones who are impressed. The federal government has
granted more
than $12 million to push the work along. "We will be able to make oil
for
$8 to $12 a barrel," says Paul Baskis, the inventor of the process.
"We are going to be able to switch to a carbohydrate economy."<br>
<br>
Making oil and gas from hydrocarbon-based waste is a trick that Earth
mastered
long ago. Most crude oil comes from one-celled plants and animals that
die,
settle to ocean floors, decompose, and are mashed by sliding tectonic
plates, a
process geologists call subduction. Under pressure and heat, the dead
creatures' long chains of hydrogen, oxygen, and <br>
carbon-bearing molecules, known as polymers, decompose into short-chain
petroleum hydrocarbons. However, Earth takes its own sweet time doing
this</span>—<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—generally
thousands or millions
of years</span>—<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—because
subterranean heat and pressure changes are chaotic. Thermal
depolymerization
machines turbocharge the process by precisely raising heat and pressure
to
levels that break the feedstock's long molecular bonds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Many scientists have tried to convert organic solids to liquid fuel
using waste
products before, but their efforts have been notoriously inefficient.
"The
problem with most of these methods was that they tried to do the
transformation
in one step</span>—<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—superheat
the material to drive off the water and simultaneously break down the
molecules," says Appel. That leads <br>
to profligate energy use and makes it possible for hazardous substances
to
pollute the finished product. Very wet waste</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—and much of the
world's waste is wet</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—is particularly
difficult to
process efficiently because driving off the water requires so much
energy.
Usually, the Btu content in the resulting oil or gas barely exceeds the
amount
needed to make the stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
That's the challenge that Baskis, a microbiologist and inventor who
lives in
Rantoul, Illinois, confronted in the late 1980s. He says he "had a
flash" of insight about how to improve the basic ideas behind another
inventor's waste-reforming process. "The prototype I saw produced a
heavy,
burned oil," recalls Baskis. "I drew up an improvement and filed the
first <br>
patents." He spent the early 1990s wooing investors and, in 1996, met
Appel, a former commodities trader. "I saw what this could be and took
over the patents," says Appel, who formed a partnership with the Gas
Technology Institute and had a demonstration plant up and running by
1999. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
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.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
So how does it work? In the cold Philadelphia warehouse, Appel waves a
long arm
at the apparatus, which looks surprisingly low tech: a tangle of
pressure
vessels, pipes, valves, and heat exchangers terminating in storage
tanks. It
resembles the oil refineries that stretch to the horizon on either side
of the
New Jersey Turnpike, and in part, that's exactly what it is.<br>
Appel strides to a silver gray pressure tank that is 20 feet long,
three feet
wide, heavily insulated, and wrapped with electric heating coils. He
raps on
its side. "The chief difference in our process is that we make water a
friend rather than an enemy," he says. "The other processes all tried
to drive out water. We drive it in, inside this tank, with heat and
pressure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
We super-hydrate the material." Thus temperatures and pressures need
only
be modest, because water helps to convey heat into the feedstock.
"We're
talking about temperatures of 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of
about 600
pounds for most organic material</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—not at all extreme or
energy intensive. <br style="">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">And the cooking times
are pretty
short, usually about 15 minutes." Once the organic soup is heated and
partially depolymerized in the reactor vessel, phase two begins. "We
quickly drop the slurry to a lower pressure," says Appel, pointing at a
branching series of pipes. The rapid depressurization releases about 90
percent
of the slurry's free water. Dehydration via depressurization is far
cheaper in terms
of energy consumed than is heating and boiling off the water,
particularly
because no heat is wasted. "We send the flashed-off water back up
there," Appel says, pointing to a pipe that leads to the beginning of
the
process, "to heat the incoming stream."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
At this stage, the minerals</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—in turkey waste, they
come mostly from bones</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—settle out and are
shunted to
storage tanks. Rich in calcium and magnesium, the dried brown powder
"is a
perfect balanced fertilizer," Appel says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
The remaining concentrated organic soup gushes into a second-stage
reactor
similar to the coke ovens used to refine oil into gasoline. "This
technology is as old as the hills," says Appel, grinning broadly. The
reactor heats the soup to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit to further break
apart
long molecular chains. Next, in vertical distillation columns, hot
vapor flows
up, condenses, and flows out from different levels: gases from the top
of the
column, light oils from the upper middle, heavier oils from the middle,
water
from the lower middle, and powdered carbon</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—used to manufacture
tires, filters, and printer toners</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—from the bottom. "Gas
is
expensive to transport, so we use it on-site in the plant to heat the
process," Appel says. The oil, minerals, and carbon are sold to the
highest bidders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Depending on the feedstock and the cooking and coking times, the
process can be
tweaked to make other specialty chemicals that may be even more
profitable than
oil. Turkey offal, for example, can be used to produce fatty acids for
soap,
tires, paints, and lubricants. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">Polyvinyl chloride, or
PVC</span>—<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—the
stuff of house siding,
wallpapers, and plastic pipes</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—yields hydrochloric
acid, a relatively benign and industrially
valuable chemical used to make cleaners and solvents. "That's what's so
great about making water a friend," says Appel. "The hydrogen in
water combines with the chlorine in PVC to make it safe. If you burn
PVC [in a
municipal-waste incinerator], you get dioxin</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—very toxic." <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Brian Appel, CEO of Changing World Technologies, strolls through a
thermal depolymerization
plant in Philadelphia. Experiments at the pilot facility revealed that
the
process is scalable</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—plants
can sprawl over acres and handle 4,000 tons of waste a day or be "small
enough to go on the back of a flatbed truck" and handle just one ton
daily, says Appel. <br>
<br>
The technicians here have spent three years feeding different kinds of
waste
into their machinery to formulate recipes. In a little trailer next to
the
plant, Appel picks up a handful of one-gallon plastic bags sent by a
potential
customer in Japan. The first is full of ground-up appliances, each
piece no
larger than a pea. "Put a computer and a refrigerator into a <br>
grinder, and that's what you get," he says, shaking the bag. "It's
PVC, wood, fiberglass, metal, just a mess of different things. This
process
handles mixed waste beautifully." Next to the ground-up appliances is a
plastic bucket of municipal sewage. Appel pops the lid and instantly
regrets
it. "Whew," he says. "That is nasty."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Experimentation revealed that different waste streams require different
cooking
and coking times and yield different finished products. "It's a
two-step
process, and you do more in step one or step two depending on what you
are
processing," Terry Adams says. "With the turkey guts, you do the
lion's share in the first stage. With mixed plastics, most of the
breakdown<span style=""> </span>happens in the second
stage." The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for
example,
yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other
solids.
So far, says Adams, "nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we
try."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
"The only thing this process can't handle is nuclear waste," Appel
says. "If it contains carbon, we can do it." </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><br>
<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">This Philadelphia
pilot
plant can handle only seven tons of waste a day, but 1,054 miles to the
west,
in Carthage, Missouri, about 100 yards from one of ConAgra Foods'
massive
Butterball Turkey plants, sits the company's first commercial-scale
thermal
depolymerization plant. The $20 million facility, scheduled to go
online any
day, is expected to digest more than 200 tons of turkey-processing
waste every
24 hours.<br>
<br>
<br>
The north side of Carthage smells like Thanksgiving all the time. At
the
Butterball plant, workers slaughter, pluck, parcook, and package 30,000
turkeys
each workday, filling the air with the distinctive tang of boiling
bird. A
factory tour reveals the grisly realities of large- scale poultry
processing.
Inside, an endless chain of hanging carcasses clanks past knife-
wielding
laborers who slash away. Outside, a tanker truck idles, full to the top
with
fresh turkey blood. For many years, ConAgra Foods has trucked the
plant's waste</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—feathers, organs, and
other
nonusable parts</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—to a
rendering facility where it was ground and dried to make animal feed,
fertilizer, and other chemical products. But bovine spongiform<span
style=""> </span>encephalopathy, also known as mad cow
disease, can spread among cattle from recycled feed, and although no
similar
disease has been found in poultry, regulators are becoming skittish
about
feeding animals to animals. In Europe the practice is illegal for all
livestock. Since 1997, the United States has prohibited the feeding of
most
recycled animal waste to cattle. Ultimately, the specter of
European-style
mad-cow regulations may kick-start the<span style="">
</span>acceptance of thermal depolymerization. "In Europe, there are
mountains of bones piling up," says Alf Andreassen. "When recycling
waste into feed stops in this country, it will change everything."<br
style="">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">Because
depolymerization takes
apart materials at the molecular level, Appel says, it is "the perfect
process for destroying pathogens." On a wet afternoon in Carthage, he
smiles at the new plant</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—an
artless assemblage of gray and dun-colored buildings</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—as if it were his
favorite child.
"This plant will make 10 tons of gas per day, which will go back into
the
system to make heat to power the system," he says. "It will make
21,000 gallons of water,<span style=""> </span>which will be
clean enough to discharge into a municipal sewage system. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Pathological vectors will be completely gone. It will make 11 tons of
minerals
and 600 barrels of oil, high-quality stuff, the same specs as a number
two
heating oil." He shakes his head almost as if he can't believe it.
"It's amazing. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't even
consider
us waste handlers. We are actually manufacturers</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—that's what our permit
says. This process changes
the whole industrial equation. Waste goes from a cost to a profit."<br
style="">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">He watches as burly men
in
coveralls weld and grind the complex loops of piping. A group of 15
investors
and corporate advisers, including Howard Buffett, son of billionaire
investor
Warren Buffett, stroll among the sparks and hissing torches, listening
to a
tour led by plant manager Don Sanders. A veteran of the refinery
business,
Sanders emphasizes that once the pressurized water is flashed off, "the
process is similar to oil refining.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">The equipment, the
procedures, the
safety factors, the maintenance</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—it's all proven
technology." And it will be
profitable, promises Appel. "We've done so much testing in
Philadelphia,
we already know the costs," he says. "This is our first-out plant,
and we estimate we'll make oil at $15 a barrel. In three to five years,
we'll
drop that to $10, the same as a medium-size oil exploration and
production
company. And it will get cheaper from there."<br style="">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">"We've got a lot of
confidence in this," Buffett says. "I represent ConAgra's investment.
We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't anticipate success." Buffett
isn't
alone. Appel has lined up federal grant money to help build
demonstration
plants to process chicken offal and manure in Alabama and crop
residuals and
grease in Nevada. Also in the works are plants to process turkey waste
and
manure in Colorado and pork and cheese waste in Italy. He says the
first
generation of depolymerization centers will be up and running in 2005.
By then
it should be clear whether the technology is as miraculous as its
backers
claim.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 5pt;"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
-------------------------<br>
EUREKA:<br>
<br>
<br>
Chemistry, not alchemy, turns (A) turkey offal</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—guts, skin, bones,
fat, blood, and feathers</span>—<span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—into a variety of
useful
products. After the first-stage heat-and-pressure reaction, fats,
proteins, and
carbohydrates break down into (B) carboxylic oil, which is composed of
fatty
acids, carbohydrates, and amino acids. The second-stage reaction strips
off the
fatty acids' carboxyl group (a carbon atom, two oxygen atoms, and a
hydrogen
atom) and breaks the remaining hydrocarbon chains into smaller
fragments,
yielding (C) <br>
a light oil. This oil can be used as is, or further distilled (using a
larger version
of the bench-top distiller in the background) into lighter fuels such
as (D)
naphtha, (E) gasoline, and (F) kerosene. The process also yields (G)
fertilizer-grade minerals derived mostly from bones and (H)
industrially useful
carbon black.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
<br>
Garbage In, Oil Out<br>
<br>
<br>
Feedstock is funneled into a grinder and mixed with water to create a
slurry
that is pumped into the first-stage reactor, where heat and pressure
partially
break apart long molecular chains. The resulting organic soup flows
into a
flash vessel where pressure drops dramatically, liberating some of the
water,
which returns back upstream to preheat the flow into the first-stage
reactor.
In the second-stage reactor, the remaining organic<span style=""> </span>material
is subjected to more intense heat, continuing the
breakup of molecular chains. The resulting hot vapor then goes into
vertical
distillation tanks, which separate it into gases, light oils, heavy
oils,
water, and solid carbon. The gases are burned on-site to make heat to
power<span style=""> </span>the process, and the water, which
is pathogen free, goes to a municipal waste plant. The oils and carbon
are
deposited in storage tanks, ready for sale.<br>
</span>—<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">— Brad
Lemley<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
A Boon to Oil and Coal Companies<br>
<br>
One might expect fossil-fuel companies to fight thermal
depolymerization. If
the process can make oil out of waste, why would anyone bother to get
it out of
the ground? But switching to an energy economy based entirely on
reformed waste
will be a long process, requiring the construction of thousands of
thermal
depolymerization plants. In the meantime, thermal depolymerization can
make the
petroleum industry itself cleaner and more profitable, says <br>
John Riordan, president and CEO of the Gas Technology Institute, an
industry
research organization. Experiments at the Philadelphia thermal
depolymerization
plant have converted heavy crude oil, shale, and tar sands into light
oils,
gases, and graphite-type carbon. "When you refine petroleum, you end up
with a heavy solid-waste product that's a big problem," Riordan says.
"This technology will convert these waste materials <br>
into natural gas, oil, and carbon. It will fit right into the existing
infrastructure."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;"><br>
Appel says a modified version of thermal depolymerization could be used
to
inject steam into underground tar-sand deposits and then refine them
into light
oils at the surface, making this abundant, difficult-to-access resource
far
more available. But the coal industry may become thermal
depolymerization's
biggest fossil-fuel beneficiary. "We can clean up coal dramatically,"
says Appel. So far, experiments show the process can extract sulfur,
mercury,
naphtha, and olefins</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—all salable commodities</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—from coal, making it
burn hotter and cleaner.
Pretreating with thermal depolymerization also makes coal more friable,
so less
energy is needed to crush it before combustion in
electricity-generating
plants.<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">— B.L.<br>
<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
<br>
Can Thermal Depolymerization Slow Global Warming?<br>
<br>
If the thermal depolymerization process WORKS AS Claimed, it will clean
up
waste and generate new sources of energy. But its backers contend it
could also
stem global warming, which sounds iffy. After all, burning oil creates
global
warming, doesn't it? Carbon is the major chemical constituent of most
organic
matter</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—plants take it in;
animals eat plants, die, and
decompose; and plants take it back in, ad infinitum. Since the
industrial
revolution, human beings burning fossil fuels have boosted
concentrations of
atmospheric carbon more than 30 percent, disrupting the ancient cycle.
According to global-warming theory,<span style=""> </span>as
carbon in the form of carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, it
traps
solar radiation, which warms the atmosphere</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—and,
some say, disrupts the planet's ecosystems. But if there were a global
shift to
thermal depolymerization technologies, belowground carbon would remain
there.
The accoutrements of the civilized world</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—domestic
animals and plants, buildings, artificial objects of all kinds</span><span
style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">—would then be regarded
as temporary carbon sinks. At
the end of their useful lives, they would be converted in thermal<span
style=""> </span>depolymerization machines into short-chain
fuels, fertilizers, and industrial raw materials, ready for plants or
people to
convert them back into long chains again. So the only carbon used would
be that
which already existed above the surface; it could no longer dangerously
accumulate in the atmosphere. "Suddenly, the whole built world just
becomes a temporary carbon sink," says Paul Baskis, inventor of the
thermal depolymerization process.<span style="">
</span>"We would be honoring the balance of nature."<br>
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;">— B.L.<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
RELATED WEB SITES:<br>
To learn more about the thermal depolymerization process, visit
Changing <br>
World Technologies' Web site: <span class="WP90"><span
style="color: blue;"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.changingworldtech.com">www.changingworldtech.com</a>.</span></span></span><br>
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