To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 07:06:46 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Fw: Soylent Green: TDP machines turn waste into fuel
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

--------- Forwarded message ----------

<http://www.discover.com/may_03/gthere.html?article=featoil.html>

Anything into Oil

By Brad Lemley

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. ...

...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. ...

Garbage In, Oil Out

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 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 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.

RELATED WEB SITES:

To learn more about the thermal depolymerization process, visit Changing
World Technologies' Web site: www.changingworldtech.com.

A primer on the natural carbon cycle can be found at
www.whrc.org/science/carbon/carbon.htm.

.

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