Thermal Depolymerization Process

A new way to make oil from any carbon waste

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

04/26/03

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Science&Environment/tdps.htm

I remember one morning picking up my copy of the LA Times, and after giving the headlines a scan, notedan inconspicuous six column-inch single wide story below the center fold. "New Fusion Process Claimed" it said. I scanned on, reading the sports and comics, and then, after I got a couple of cups of coffee in me, returned to the front page.

The Fusion piece caught my eye again. I frowned at it, expecting to read that scientists in Europe had achieved fusion for several microseconds at a temperature of several million degrees, producing a few BTUs of energy while using enough power to keep Manhattan lit for a few nights.

What the story related, of course, was so-called "cold fusion," and by the time I flipped the paper open (continued on page 28, but you’ll wind up on page 33 because the copy editor screwed up), I realized that I was reading about something quite extraordinary, something that, if true, could revolutionize the world. I particularly liked the fact that the apparatus was so small and simple that it might conceivably be a power source for individual homes, and even automobiles.

It was pretty exciting stuff.

Then came the great denouement. There was nothing to it. It was, at most, just a lab oddity, of no commercial value.

Since then, of course, the internet has come along and given everyone – including crackpots – all around the world a voice. So one is constantly exposed to the folks who believe that there’s a pill that can let a car run on tap water, or that a half-crazed Russian inventor discovered perpetual motion, or that an endless number of anti-gravity and spirit powered vehicles are available for our consideration.

Everyone just set their intellectual spam filters to exclude any announcement that contained the word "revolutionary" more than once, and flushed those breathless announcements that endless supplies of energy was yours for the low, low price of just $29.95.

So when I saw a subject header on Usenet that read, "It seems we’re not running out of oil", it caught my curiosity, since it was a remarkably understated header from a right winger who, while more rational than most, generally likes his hyperbole. I clicked, and found the even more restrained body consisted to two lines: " This, if it turns out to be viable, could solve a number of problems. .http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html " In fact, it reminded me of the way I mentioned the cold fusion story on my BBS that morning ‘way back when.

Discover magazine – the link in question – is a reasonably reputable source, so I went and took a look. And wound up reading the entire article.

A fellow named Paul Baskis took the same technology that is used in most oil refineries, and in a counterintuitive move of ADDING water to waste rather than trying to extract it, found a cheap and efficient way of making oil, gasoline, minerals, carbon and distilled water from any carbon based waste material.

An entrepreneur named Brian Appel bought up the patents, and is just about to open the first full-scale plant in Missouri. This plant will use 200 tons of turkey offal per day from a nearby Butterball Turkey processing plant. Appel claims that his process will produce from that smelly source some 10 tons of gas per day, plus 600 barrels of oil, 11 tons of pure minerals, and 21,000 gallons of water – all of which will be free of toxins and nearly all impurities.

Further, he claims that his plant – which cost $20 million to build – only requires 15 BTUs of energy to produce 100 BTUs of oil, and further, that the oil can be made for between $8 and $12 a barrel. All with equipment that is "off the shelf."

So right off the bat, this process is both technologically and economically feasible. Assuming, of course, that everything works as claimed.

The beauty of this process is that nearly any carbon-based waste will work just fine. Dead critters (Brad Lemfey, author of the Discover piece, used a 175 pound human as an example – such would render out to 38 pounds of oil. 7 pounds of gas, 7 pounds of minerals and 123 pounds of water), excrement, PVC piping, medical waste (non-radioactive, that is), ground up electronics, kitchen garbage, tires, all types of plastic – all can be converted, cheaply and easily, into gasoline, oil, and minerals, with the remainder of the bulk in almost pure water.

The article, well-written and well-considered, warns that it’s going to take a while for this new type of processing plant to really make its effects known.

If it delivers as promised, it’s as nearly a revolutionary breakthrough as cold fusion briefly promised to be.

Suddenly, the Middle East will no longer be of critical strategic importance. We can all go home and let the Arabs live their own lives. The North Slope becomes just another piece of land too barren and unfriendly to sustain human life. Santa Barbara gets to keep her channel, and oceans the world over can quit being at risk from oil spills.

The problem of waste disposal comes much more manageable, with cities powering their lights and fueling their cars from their own garbage. This includes waste that had been presenting particular hazards, either because of biological contaminations (animal excrement and offal, medical waste, disposable diapers) or because of heavy metals, dioxins, and other toxins (PVCs, electronics). Or just simply because of the space required to dump them (plastic containers of all kinds).

And of course, it makes the burning of hydrocarbons a sustainable, renewable resource – what Appel calls "a carbohydrate economy."

So it offers immense benefits.

But there are some drawbacks. First among them is the environmental concerns.

The article relates the claim that this new technology will actually help solve global warming. The argument given is that instead of bringing new sources of carbon up from deep within the earth and using them on the surface, we’ll now be taking carbon that is already on the surface and recycling it, not adding more to the amount of carbon on the surface.

The problem, of course, is that carbon on the surface of the earth isn’t what is causing global warming. It’s the carbon in the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide, and even if the new fuels are cleaner, they are still going to emit carbon dioxides when burned.

The other drawback is that if carbon-based fuels are cheap and sustainable, the efforts to find alternatives, such as fuel-cell technology, will be swept aside. And since this new technology addresses only the supply, and not the consequences of carbon fuel use in internal combustion engines, that will work to our detriment.

Still, the benefits are obvious and immense. In some ways, it’s almost as if we’re being offered a second chance to rectify all the mistakes we made with fossil fuels over the past century.

Will we take advantage of it to improve our lives, or will we just take it as an opportunity to keep repeating the worst of our mistakes?