April 2006 Issue of Discover Magazine has an article entitled Anything Into Oil about a “thermal conversion process” developed by Changing World Technologies (CWT), that can extract oil from almost any waste. How is this possible? Think of it this way: carbon buried in the Earth’s crust for thousands of years can turn to diamond under the extreme heat and pressure. We can mimic that heat and pressure in the lab to create diamonds in a matter of days. Well, oil is produced in the same way – extreme heat and pressure coming to bear on biologicals over thousands of years – and we can likewise mimic the process to create oil (and extract other useful byproducts) from waste in a matter of hours. Yes, hours. Basically, this process makes oil a renewable resource. It isn’t a pipe-dream either; there is a small, operational, proof-of-concept plant in Pennsylvania and a full-sized working plant converting Butterball Turkey waste in Carthage, Missouri.
Additionally, the process destroys bacteria, viruses, and prions (the infectious proteins that cause mad cow and related diseases), eliminates toxins and carcinogens, and breaks down non-biodegradables. The useful byproducts include water and a potent, organic fertilizer. Plus, it would reduce the need for landfills. To top it off, it creates far more energy than it uses. This is the ultimate in recycling.
Yes, we should be working to get ourselves off of oil, but that will take a long time. In the meantime, this could ease the transition and help make us energy independent. I have already sent a letter to my mayor and city council asking them to look into the technology.
Read below the break for more about this amazing technology.
Here is what CWT says about the thermal conversion process (TCP), also known as thermal depolymerization (from CWT website):
Many technologies have been used over the years to destroy troublesome waste (bioremediation, incineration, gasification), but at an expense to the environment. Now, technological development has produced new processes that allow waste streams to be reformed into valuable and marketable alternative fuel products, thereby minimizing the environmental effects.
The TCP successfully converts fats, bones, cartilage, feathers and other wastes into renewable diesel, high-quality fertilizers, and valuable specialty chemicals. Unlike pyrolysis and gasification, TCP works with a wet feedstock. Since most waste streams are wet, there’s no need to expend energy drying the materials.
Agricultural wastes alone make up approximately 50% of the total yearly waste generation (6 billion tons) in the U.S. With the TCP, the 6 billion tons of agricultural waste could be effectively converted into 4 billion barrels of oil. Realizing this incremental domestic energy production is clearly in our national interest, because it ensures greater national energy independence. At the same time, this production provides a permanent solution to serious environmental problems caused by current waste disposal practices.
How does it work? Here is how Discover describes the Carthage plant converting Butterball waste:
The first thing a visitor sees when he steps into the loading bay is a fat pressurized pipe, which pushes the guts from the receiving hopper into a brawny grinder that chews them into pea-size bits. Dry feedstocks like tires and plastics need additional water at this stage, but offal is wet enough. A first-stage reactor breaks down the stuff with heat and pressure, after which the pressure rapidly drops, flashing off excess water and minerals. In turkeys, the minerals come mostly from bones, and these are shunted to a storage bin to be sold later as a high-calcium powdered fertilizer.
The remaining concentrated organic soup then pours into a second reaction tank–Appel says the two-stage nature of the process distinguishes it from dozens of failed single-stage waste-to-oil schemes devised over the last century–where it is heated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit and pressurized to 600 pounds per square inch. In 20 minutes, the process replicates what the deep earth does to dead plants and animals over centuries, chopping long, complex molecular chains of hydrogen and carbon into short-chain molecules. Next, the pressure and temperature drop, and the soup swirls through a centrifuge that separates any remaining water from the oil. The water, which in the case of slaughterhouse waste is laden with nitrogen and amino acids, is stored to be sold as a potent liquid fertilizer. Meanwhile, the oil goes to the storage tank to await the next truck. The whole process is efficient, says Terry Adams, the company’s chief technology officer: Only 15 percent of the potential energy in the feedstock is used to power the operation; 85 percent is embodied in the output of oil and other products.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t (from Discover):
The oil itself meets specification D396, a type widely used to power electrical utility generators. The oil can be sold to utilities as is, further distilled into vehicle-grade diesel and gasoline, or, via a steam process, made into hydrogen.
“I’m impressed,” says Gabriel Miller, a New York University chemistry professor and a consultant to KeySpan Corporation, a gas and electric utility that serves New York. “The fuel that comes out is better than crude, and you don’t need a refinery to use it. I think they can bring it deep into commercialization.” Miller has recommended that KeySpan burn the oil in its generators.
CWT thinks their process may not face as many obstacles as other alternatives because it is not challenging the current energy producers or oil empires (from CWT website):
CWT can also work seamlessly within existing petroleum infrastructures. Rather than rendering the oil industry obsolete, TCP can access and utilize the infrastructure for additional refinery support for the creation of specialized products. The oil industry’s pipelines and energy stations can be used to transport and distribute TCP renewable diesel… The provision of a new and reliable source of “crude” for refineries will be viewed favorably by major oil companies.
For more about a potential alliance between CWT and the oil companies and why CWT also believes the power generation and heating oil industries will be more likely to embrace them than alternatives, see the CWT website.
So this technology should be ready to take off, right? Well, sort of. Discover says that TCP has gotten a great deal of interest in Europe because of the fear of mad cow disease. It is believed the disease is spread by feeding infected animals back to livestock, so most European countries have banned the practice. That means Europe has an emerging animal waste problem. Thermal conversion plants would solve that problem as well as produce oil, so CWT would be paid on both ends: first for taking the waste and then for the oil it produces. That means it would be very profitable for CWT to set up shop in Europe.
In spite of the dangers posed by prions, we continue to use animal waste as a food source for our livestock in the U.S. That means any TCP plant in the U.S. would have to pay for the waste, making the production costs prohibitive. According to Discover, only California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have incentives that could make the process financially worthwhile. Maybe avian flu will scare people enough to finally put an end to feeding animal wastes back to our livestock.
CWT also links the potential spread of animal born diseases and global warming in a way I have not seen done before. As global warming increases the frequency and ferocity of storms, animal death and displacement could pose a health threat (from CWT website:
In Hurricane Katrina alone, over 25,000 heads of cattle in Louisiana needed to be incinerated. The world also currently lacks the infrastructure to vaccinate entire continents of people from potential plagues, and so needs to develop a strategy of containment and destruction for infected animals.
But it isn’t just animal waste that can be utilized. CWT thinks cities should be salivating over their technology, because municipal waste could make cities energy independent while helping solve expanding waste management problems (from CWT website):
The common link across all market sectors is the challenge to develop more efficient, environmentally friendly technologies that reduce or eliminate the current waste streams produced. No where is this challenge felt more than in cities and municipalities where the accumulation of large amounts of landfill waste and the treatment and/or disposal of sewage sludge pose huge problems.
By establishing TCP plants designed to utilize MSW and/or MSS, municipalities could have a solid foundation upon which to expand their other core businesses, while eliminating the costly ones. The TCP can enhance the success of municipal recovery facilities (MRF) by taking the low-value recycled materials and processing them into valuable oils and solids. Landfill costs and liabilities can be reduced or eliminated. Sludges and other organic material, including mixed plastics, can all be processed after valuable materials such as ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals and glass are separated at the MRF. Estimates are that overall costs to municipalities for processing MSW and MSS can be significantly reduced.
And CWT isn’t just talking about cities in the Industrialized nations. Today, cities in industrializing nations are some of the dirtiest, unhealthiest places in the world. CWT thinks their technology could help industrialize the so-called third world in a more environmentally friendly way than is currently happening. Another benefit to developing nations is that the localized nature of the system would eliminate the need to develop such a complex infrastructure (from CWT website):
Many of the products manufactured by the TCP can ultimately be used to provide refrigeration, telecommunications, electricity and potable water – the basic elements for enhancing industrialization. Since the TCP converts waste generated by a community into a valuable fuel source, there is limited need for an expansive infrastructure comprised of tankers, pipelines, and numerable energy transfer stations.
One area the technology may gain some traction in the U.S. is in automotive waste disposal (from Discover):
American recyclers deftly pluck nearly all the metal from the 15 million cars junked each year, but up to 4.5 million tons of residual debris goes straight to landfills. Known as auto shredder residue, it is a virtually unrecyclable mix of at least 36 kinds of plastic, along with treated fabrics, rubber, and nylon.
Last May representatives of USCAR–a research consortium made up of DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors–along with the Argonne National Laboratory and the American Plastics Council arranged a test in which Changing World Technologies ran 3,000 pounds of the awful stuff through its Philadelphia pilot plant.
“The process is brilliant,” says Candace Wheeler, a GM research scientist. “There are substances of concern in shredder residue such as PCBs, and traditional incineration of chlorinated plastics can make dioxins.” But, she says, the preliminary test results indicate that the hydrolysis at the heart of the thermal conversion process breaks down the PCBs and converts the chlorine into hydrochloric acid. “No PCBs. No dioxins. No emissions,” says Wheeler, noting that the principal output of the process was a “light oil” that could be used at an electric power generation plant. “It looks good from all perspectives,” she says. “We think it has great potential.”
A lot of attention has also recently been focused on technology waste. Computers and other electronics contain a lot of toxins and carcinogens that thermal conversion could neutralize. Are you listening, Silicon Valley?
Want to know more about the organic fertilizer byproduct (from Discover)?
Along with oil, the thermal conversion process cranks out a liquid fertilizer that “works a great deal like some of the instant-gratification fertilizers out there,” says Jim Freiss, vice president of engineering for Changing World Technologies. Featuring 9 percent nitrogen, 1 percent phosphorus, 2 percent potash, and 19 amino acids, it is, in essence, “an organic Miracle-Gro,” he says. “In the organic industry, these kinds of nutrient concentrations are unheard-of. The best that’s out there is on the order of 6 percent nitrogen.”
Tests on tomato and pepper plants conducted by Joseph Kloepper, professor of plant pathology at Auburn University in Alabama, confirmed the fertilizer’s potency. “In my experience,” he wrote in a summary paper, “it is rare to find a biological product that demonstrates such a consistent promotion of overall plant growth and root growth on two crops in two different field soils.”
Fertilizer-industry officials are excited as well. “Because it has been through high temperatures, there is no coliform bacteria or any of the other problems often associated with organic fertilizers such as manures,” says Raj Mehta, president of Organica Biotech, a manufacturer of nonsynthetic fertilizers and pesticides. “I’m convinced there will be a large market for this.”
Ok, so we would still be burning carbon-based (fossil) fuels. That is bad for the environment, right? Well, CWT argues that their process would allow the carbon that is in the Earth to stay there, cutting down on the new carbon being added to the carbon cycle (from CWT website):
A committed global shift to the Thermal Conversion Process would allow carbon deposits below ground to remain there. All surface objects, both organic and man-made would exist only as temporary carbon carriers. At the end of their usefulness, they would be converted by TCP technology into short-chain fuels, fertilizers and industrial raw materials. People and plants would then reconvert them into temporary carbon carriers once again. Because the only carbon used would be that which exists above ground, the opportunity for CO2 to further increase and accumulate dangerously in the atmosphere could be virtually eliminated.
I’m not sure how much I buy this. After all, we bury a lot of the waste produced now, so aren’t we currently re-interring a lot of carbon that would not be re-buried if we adopt TCP? Still, CWT says its process has been independently analyzed and found to be much more environmentally friendly than burning coal or oil pumped from the ground (from CWT website):
Our technology’s lifecycle has also been analyzed, and was shown to provide positive global environmental benefits with regard to global warming, environmental acidification and oxidation of nitrogen. CWT hopes that the introduction of a diesel product which meets the specifications of petroleum diesel, but made from a renewable source (organic waste), can help bridge the gap from traditional oil drilling and foreign imports to domestic waste reformation and sustainable energy.
So, what do you think? Brilliant, or folly?
