[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')esearchers Find Way To Convert Sewage Into Biofuel
Washington: It may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants may turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to this new research that took place at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

“There is plenty of carbon in municipal waste water sludge and interestingly, there are also fats,” says Corinne Drennan, who is responsible for bioenergy technologies research at PNNL, at Richland, in Washington.

“The fats or lipids appear to facilitate the conversion of other materials in the wastewater such as toilet paper, keep the sludge moving through the reactor, and produce a very high quality biocrude that, when refined, yields fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuels,” Drennan noted in an official statement.

Can Fuel Created From Sewage Be The Future

The technology is called hydrothermal liquefaction and mimics the geological conditions Earth uses to create crude oil.

Quick Fact: Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is a thermal depolymerization process used to convert wet biomass into crude-like oil which is also referred as bio-oil or biocrude.

This process uses high pressure and temperature to create biocrude oil to within a few minutes. To put this in perspective, the same process would take millions of years to yield this naturally. The biocrude obtained is similar to petroleum pumped out of the ground, with a small amount of water and oxygen mixed in. This biocrude can then be refined using conventional petroleum refining operations. – Researchers Of US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
With this technology, a single person could generate two to three gallons of biocrude per year, according to an estimate by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Sewage, or more specifically sewage sludge, has long been viewed as a poor ingredient for producing biofuel because it’s too wet.

The approach being studied by PNNL eliminates the need for drying required in a majority of current thermal technologies which historically has made wastewater to fuel conversion too energy intensive and expensive.

Hydrothermal liquefaction may also be used to make fuel from other types of wet organic feedstock, such as agricultural waste, according to the researchers.

Using hydrothermal liquefaction, organic matter such as human waste can be broken down to simpler chemical compounds.

The material is pressurised to 3,000 pounds per square inch – nearly one hundred times that of a car tire. Pressurized sludge then goes into a reactor system operating at about 660 degrees Fahrenheit.

The heat and pressure cause the cells of the waste material to break down into different fractions -biocrude and an aqueous liquid phase, the researchers explained.

In addition to producing useful fuel, the technology could give local governments significant cost savings by virtually eliminating the need for sewage residuals processing, transport and disposal.

[ROCKMAN]

Sub - OK: so how much does it cost to make a gallon of diesel using this tech?

[efarmer]

Rockman: I think you have to know how the local fat consumption profile to estimate diesel yield.

The true shame of this is that the mix of feedstock methane, so useful to create the process heat at the depolymerization plant, is wastefully discarded at each individual "well head" in the supply community and not able to be captured as well. This methane is not burned off for safety reasons and is instead just vented to the atmosphere. Claims of burn off, and isolated examples have taken place, but were novel experiments and under conditions that did not represent the normal operating conditions of said feedstock supply apparatus whatsoever.

I do know the process is viable and works. I just can't see the energy budget scaling up in any major
viable way.

Hydrothermal areas are scarce and sewage treatment is widely dispersed. And 3,000 PSI is a lot of embedded energy as well in addition to process heat. The cost of thermal depolymerization would replace the cost of sewage treatment in this scenario for a community and only if it was cheaper would it save them money.

[Tanada]

New portable Japanese machine converts plastic back into crude via dry thermal deplolymerization.

https://youtu.be/Qgd0F0cp4kw

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')regon-based Agilyx Corp. has secured a financing option for its pyrolysis facility near Portland. The conversion facility can process up to 10 tons of polystyrene scrap per day using the patented thermal pyrolysis technology and will convert the scrap into liquid styrene monomer, which can be sold to refiners for the production of oil. The company, along with other giants such as Dow Chemical, has been a part of Hefty Energy Bag program that converted enormous plastic debris into high-value synthetic crude oil. This oil was further refined and could be used to manufacture fuel and various petroleum products, including gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, and lubricants. The crude oil could also be transformed back into plastic. These developments reiterated the commercial viability of recycled plastic and plastic waste to oil technologies.

[Newfie]

That good, I think.

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'T')hat good, I think.

[diemos]

Even if it's not a net energy source it could be a useful way of disposing of plastic waste that doesn't involve it ending up in the ocean.

Of course, the Japanese already just incinerate their plastic waste. Which is about as good as you can get.

[Zarquon]

Plastic to diesel fuel: that's basically a DIY technology, as long as you can get pure PE or similar as a feedstock. 100kg plastics yield ~95l in fuel and some black carbon. This thread contains the details, and enough pictures to convince me that it's real. The guy claims it takes about 8 cents of electricity per liter, that's where I smelled a rat at first. Unfortunately he doesn't mention until later in the tread that he built this in Indonesia in 2010, where the economics worked out...

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable ... eaply.html

But a little googling will turn up companies selling you a complete, large installation that can produce thousands of liters per day.

P.S.: I do not recommend building a plastics pyrolysis device at home, like this guy did. License and safety issues alone could probably land you in prison. But the comments and questions of the people responding to the post are... priceless. "Great idea! Can I use a steam cooker instead?"

[Zarquon]

I've read some more in this old 2010 thread I mentioned above and I don't know what kind of forum this really is, but it's amazing. First, the amount of interest this post about how to refine your own fuel from garbage got. 146 pages, last post from this year. One guy responds who claims he's been driving for over a year now with homemade fuel from plastics.

Second, the almost total ignorance of some people. The more you read, the more you want to tear your hair out:

"Can I use a pressure cooker?"
"Can I use an old electric stove?"
"Have you tried shredded CDs/DVDs?"
"Thanks! I'm thinking about starting a business making and selling this fuel. Can somebody here advise me on the legal stuff? There might be some issues, but I don't know."
"If you use PVC, any way (not necessarily EPA-approved) to somehow vent chlorine gases?"
"The recycling firm asked £400 for a ton of shredded PE. That's how corporate interests try to prevent us from making our own fuel! Conspiracy!"
"Hey, I need some questions to be answered regarding plastic conversion back to biofuel, mind helping?"
"My first batch did not heat well. The tank I used was a 25 gallon air compressor tank and with only a few inches of barrel to insulate it; it was not enough. I was using sand and fiberglass and a simple propane weed torch for the heat."
"I used to do a little work at a plastics recycling plant, in the UK, that made plastic garbage cans. His whole plant ran off fuel he made but he never told me how he did it."
"What if I filled the reactor with the wood shavings and then filled the rest with used motor oil, would I then be able to make this work?"
"Has anyone done anything with ABS plastics (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (number 7 on the resins identification scale)? It may be off topic here but has anyone attempted a similar thermal de-polymerization process with waste motor oil/transmission oil."
"The fuel oil goes into my furnace usually mixed with used motor oil or vegetable oil that i get for free and the same into my Listeroid 16/1 diesel engine running a 12kw china st gen head making about 10Kw."
"Hi to all, This is what I am doing. It is in principal the same as with the plastic, but I am using waste motor oil. No temperature control, insulation or any safety devices! Do not inhale the fumes if you want to try this!"
"I dit somme testing with eps isomo,disolve in aceton is fast but 3€ for 1 liter. So I dit a test with 200° hot cookingoil(wvo)and it disolv fast like aceton. I will do some more testing with old plastic flowerpots nobody wants."
"These are just my thoughts and when I get back home on the 15th I will get to work on it and let you know if it worked or not and if I don't right back that means things went horribly wrong and I am to embarrassed to admit my mistake or it went kaboom and I no longer have to worry about energy."
"Would it address this if i 'bubbled' the exhaust from such a burning through something, to capture the dioxin.If so, then what do I do with it?"
"scares the living be#@$& of every one and doesn't follow up with his assumptions about Dioxins escaping into the atmosphere...if you are out there come in with some scientific proof and set our minds at rest...could be a sitin from the petro company's scarring us ..."
"An addon project would be to try putting together an engine which could utilise this unadulterated fuel to its full potential. An engine that could do 200 miles to the gallon (be it US gallons (≈ 3.79 L) or UK ones (4.55 L)), would really make the container store go a long way."
"Do you think you could just pour concrete in around the chamber as an insulator?"

FREE FUEL! LIKE, FOR FREE! FREE! Then all higher brain functions lock up. I'm only on page 6 now, and that's the first time somebody there mentions dioxin and that it's probably not too good for your health. Or other people's health. Not that many people responded to that, with FREE FUEL on their mind. Apart from the idea of total amateurs handling gasoline fumes heated to 400°C while burning off the propane...

Makes me wonder how many people are already doing this.

P.S: Apparently, the OP did this in Latvia, not Indonesia.

P.P.S: A picogram of dioxin is considered a dangerous amount of carcinogens. By burning this fuel in your car or furnace you don't destroy it, you just spread it around the neighborhood in a very fine mist. But you know there's no risk because the guy from the garbage company told you the plastic he sold you is clean.

[Subjectivist]

Do you have stats on how bad dioxins actually are? I have a brother in law who was exposed to dioxin laden agent orange during his service in vietnam. Hes not the healthies 70 year old around, but it hasn't killed him yet either.

[Zarquon]

Sorry, all I could give you is the wikipedia page, which I'm sure you already know. The problem is that dioxins do not appear to cause cancer themselves so much, as to accelerate it. That's where it gets complicated.

[Newfie]

Synergy-World Energy is planning on building a $2 Billion dollar bio fuel and plastics to liquid energy plant in Lewisporte, Newfoundland.

There is one simple press report with very few details. I can’t find the complies website, there are a bunch of “synergy world” hits but nothing clearly discussing this site and technology.

Anyone hear of this outfit?

https://www.thetelegram.com/business/lo ... te-355490/

https://vocm.com/2019/09/24/lewisporte-fuel-facility/

[Newfie]

Bumping the post because it’s not showing up on “View Hour Posts.”

[Newfie]

The name of the company was misquoted in the above link. It is:

Synergy World SNERGY

https://www.synergyworldpower.com/new-foundland/

CBC just did an article about the company and the process.

https://www.synergyworldpower.com/new-foundland/

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ova Scotia companies in need of feedstock to produce renewable fuel

Two Canadian companies are looking for sources of waste feedstock in Nova Scotia to produce transportation diesel, jet fuel and naphtha fuel.

Cielo Waste Solutions (CSE: CMC) and Renewable U Halifax put out a call for expressions of interest for their planned Joint Venture Renewable Fuel Facility that will be located in or within 150 kilometres of the provincial capital, Halifax.

The idea is that companies and organizations that generate industrial, commercial and municipal waste in Nova Scotia submit their proposals so that they can provide the feedstock needed to put in motion Cielo’s facility. The plant is being engineered to convert eight tonnes of dried waste per hour into approximately 32.7 million litres a year of high-grade renewable fuel.

“We are very optimistic that this EOI for Nova Scotia will provide multiple feedstock sources and help us select the right location for our green waste-to-energy facility,” Don Allan, Cielo’s CEO, said in a media statement.

“Our technology can convert multiple different waste streams into high-grade renewable fuel without having to sort the feedstock,” Allan said.

The company is in advanced discussions with an industry buyer who is interested in entering into a long-term agreement to purchase the fuel and who doesn’t need the producer to remove the sulfur from it.

“Although reduced fuel prices will impact Cielo’s cash flow, it’s expected that Cielo’s highly efficient production costs will help insulate the company from current low fuel prices and allow for solid margins on the sale of product,” Allan said.