[TomSaidak]

Wow.....

Did anyone actually READ the materials on TDP?

Thermal inputs....
The process takes any hydrocarbon or CARBOHYDRATE and turns it into gas, kerosene, naptha (gasoline), diesel oil, sterile and clean water, and chemicals, including materials either immediately useable for fertilizer or easily synthesized into fertilizer, metals and industrial carbon.
Note the first out put - gas. The plant burns the gas to produce heat, pressure and electricity. The plant requires external power for about the first hour of operation. After that, it creates its own power and doesn't require external power. While the Carthage plant is said to produce 600 BBL per day, it ACTUALLY produces 720 bbl. The first 120 bbl equivalent of energy is used to run the plant to produce a 600 bbl per day surplus. No external energy source is needed once the plant is up and running. It takes 60 minutes to process a batch.

Feedstocks.

TDP talks about feedstocks - whether turkey guts and bones or sewage or trash or tires or people. Each feedstock has its own mix of gas, liquid fuels, water and chemicals. Each comes in with LONG hydrocarbon chains that are broken down into short chains, called fuel.

The US produces 4,700,000,000 tons of household waste a year. Catalytic Depolymerization would yield 2,000,000,000 bbl, or 25% of our oil useage. Check out the sources, any way you cut it, our waste products would replace all our oil needs based on US consumption. US aggricultural wastes alone would produce 4 billion bbl per year. The two sources would net out 6 billion bbl. IF we went ahead and mandated that all passenger cars, light trucks, medium trucks (FEDEX/FRITOLAY/ALHAMBRA) and shuttle buses were all PHEV's, US oil consumption would drop about 40% to about 4.6 billion bbl per year. That would leave us with at least a 1.4 billion bbl per year surplus.

Caveat: Any plastics or tires used represent fossilized oil. The amount of oil produced by a "waste" tire is much less then the oil initially used to produce it. The same can be said for plastics. On the other hand...... How far this technology can go depends on how widely deployed it is. It can handle industrial waste such as pulp from paper mills. US papermill wastes could be changed from caustic, poisonous and ecologically damaging products to oil, gas and clean water, while providing 2.5% of current US oil consumption. There are figures floating around that deployed world wide would net 60 billion bbl per year. Current world consumption is 30 billion bbl per year. If true, that would take care of any concern about replacing losses from converting plastics/tires to oil and back to tires/plastics.

Global Warming, Air pollution and the Environment: The fuels derived from TDP have had almost all contaminants removed, and have not sat in the ground for millions of years collecting other chemicals. This results in less sulphur emissions and for the diesel almost zero particulates. The NOX problems remain the same - that is a function of efficiency in burning. The CO2 problem dissapears to the degree that we are using carbohydrates for the feedstock. That CO2 is released by burning, then taken up into the food chain, which becomes waste or produces waste and is turned back into oil. Legacy tires and plastic will release fossilized CO2, but as the TDP oil starts being used to make tires and plastic, the C02 ceases to be from fossilized sources. Initially, 60 to 70% of the C02 is "current", and as production ramps up it will top out at 100%. Another immediate impact is that the materials places into landfills will drop by about 95%. For laughs and giggles, we can even revisit old landfills that are releasing methane (20x worse the CO2 as a green house gas) and dig them up for additional feedstock.

Costs and common misunderstandings about Carthage......
The cost... It depends on the feedstock and whether you have to buy it or are paid to collect it. Carthage is a partnership started with I beleive ConAgra. They had a waste product worth nothing. They saw an opportunity to make money by converting the waste into oil. At the time the Carthage plant started, concerns about mad cow disease made turkey offal a favored stock for animal feed. The Carthage plant went from being given feedstock to having to pay to buy the turkey offal. The processing costs, including capitalization, maintenance, staff, etc. comes to about $30.00/bbl. The cost per ton of turkey offal forced the change to $80.00/bbl. IF this plant had used household trash instead, then the plant would be making money at $40.00/bbl, as under todays market pressures they would be paid to take the trash from peoples homes. Obviously, uneconomical while oil is at or below $40/bbl. But wait.. theres more.... The last energy policy bill included TDP for the $42.00/bbl tax credit for "bio fuels". So now, the plant can sell at $38.00/bbl and make a profit.
About the smell....... Sigh... Picture if you will that I buy the land next to your home. And every day, I plunk down 250 tons of turkey offal first thing in the morning. Do you think you might notice a slight odor by 6 in the evening when you come home for dinner? Carthage gets most of its money from tourists. The plant was built 6 blocks from their money making downtown. This was not a case of planning to fail, or being an industrial failure. IT was a case of failing to plan more intelligently.

Frankly, some waste streams for feedstock may push the price to $80.00 per bbl without the tax credit. Other waste streams would let the price potentially coast profitably at or about $40.00/bbl. Depending on the exact mix of feedstock, the price would average out to about $67.00/bbl. This ignores the additional impact of keeping ALL our dollars here at home as opposed to adding hundreds of billions of dollars to our trade deficit, and address issues like global warming or energy independence.

Costs: The biggest weakness in TDP or CDP is capitalization. My best guestimate is that it would take 5.4 trillion dollars to fully deploy the technology. Using a banking strategy, assuming a standard reserve of 20%, that would mean about 1.08 trillion would need to be put together in some sort of banking consortium.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent, feel free to ask questions and pot shots will be dealt with based on whim.....
Sources:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory: ... on_(Oiling)
http://www.changingworldtech.com/index.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory: ... on_Process

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', '
')The biggest weakness in TDP or CDP is

[nicknick]

You could throw hundreds of thousands of dead things into it and turn it into oil.

Sounds like something that may be arriving soon.

[TomSaidak]

Ludi wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')ts incredible stench.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'T')he US produces 4,700,000,000 tons of household waste a year. Catalytic Depolymerization would yield 2,000,000,000 bbl, or 25% of our oil useage. Check out the sources, any way you cut it, our waste products would replace all our oil needs based on US consumption.

[TomSaidak]

Hrrrmm.....
Thanks Kublikhan!
Lessons Learned (aka Notes to Self….):
1.) Please put notes on tables that they cannot be trusted or erase…
2.) Please note these are intelligent peeps – do NOT go by memory…
3.) Breathe. Do NOT get so excited as to forget #1 and #2 above….
Using numbers from Green Energy (you have to email them to get the brochures) and based on 4.6lbs/per person/per day MSW and population of 305,000,000 in the US……
701,500 tons MSW per day.
2,735,569.4 bbl per day
At 21,000,000 bbl per day, that is 13% of US oil consumption.
47 gwh of electricity per day. Or 0.1% of US electrical consumption. Okay, this IS chump change, but it is elegant!
All US sewage at 9900 lbs per person per year, 4% solids (sludge) as per San Jose Water Company Sewage treatment plant engineer, yields 312,900 bbl per day, or 1.49%
Paper mill pulp and chemicals yields 525,000 bbl per day, or 2.5% of daily consumption. Based on figures from http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21811/?a=f.
CWT sticks by its figure of 52% of US oil consumption and gives no figures for excess electricity. As to sources of agricultural waste, US cows patriotically produce 1 billion tons of manure annually.
This all adds to 68.99% of our current oil consumption. It does require putting all of every waste stream into making oil. That would mean no recycled paper or recycled plastic. Use it, waste it and then turn it into oil. All US waste comes out to over 20 tons per person per year from all sources. The one untapped source that has not really been looked at is industrial waste (8% of aggregate). The paper pulp figure is significant in two ways: 2.5% is not chump change and it points to the fact that many – NOT all industrial waste streams can be used to produce oil, including the 1 billion pounds of medical waste the US produces every year.
IF on the other hand, we mandated PHEV technology, we could drop from 66% of our oil going to transportation to 26%. This turns 68.99% of US consumption to 115% of US oil consumption. We can now build HEVs to FedEx van and shuttle bus sizes - http://www.azuredynamics.com/products/b ... ectric.htm.
The upshot is that we can get away from both foreign oil and drilled oil in one strategic move.
Will this be problem free? No.
Will this be better than using fossil oil? You betcha!!
Will using TDP and/or CDP as a solo strategy work? No. It only works out if you use it in conjunction with other strategies, such as PHEV deployment and shifting recycling priorities.
Will we need to continue drilling oil? Maybe. Industry uses 24% of our oil (http://www.oilshockwave.com/pdf/OS_FactSheet_042808.pdf.) I don’t know if CDP or TDP derived oil will do for that, but it is well within our domestic oil reserves to replace while we find alternatives.
Kublikhan wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he same can be said for nearly every single feedstock. Sewage, turkey guts, paper, etc.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'U')sing numbers from Green Energy (you have to email them to get the brochures) and based on 4.6lbs/per person/per day MSW and population of 305,000,000 in the US……
701,500 tons MSW per day.
2,735,569.4 bbl per day
At 21,000,000 bbl per day, that is 13% of US oil consumption.

[Cabrone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')omSaidak you need to understand EROEI (energy return on energy invested--use the search function above.) It is a key concept in the study of industrial ecology which looks at energy flows and especially energy accounting.

It is highly likely that the amount of energy required to cook the turkey guts into fuel is greater than the energy that would be available in the resulting stew.

What you propose is really a form of perpetual energy, a variant of that old saw perpetual motion. Think of modern turkey production. They are raised in hot houses kept warm all winter with copious quantities of fuel oil or propane. Their food is grown on giant farm with monster tractors and then shipped to Purina to be ground, hydrolyzed, formed, packaged into Turkey Feed. Which is trucked on big Semis to the turkey farm.

And you expect the entropic waste product of a modern industrial system to power that system and also drive Mom, Chuck, and Britney to the Mall? That Sir is . . . Madness

[TomSaidak]

Pstarr wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')omSaidak you need to understand EROEI (energy return on energy invested--use the search function above.)

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'T')he 10:1 ratio given for food production is flawed. At that ratio taken literally, then we are using 23% of oil consumption just to PRODUCE food. I assure you, we are not. 20% of US oil consumption goes to "industrial processes". Not just food production.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'O')n top of the solar energy, the 10:1 ratio doesn't mention the actual biomass produced for that 10 calorie input, just what hits your table. The actual biomass produced is several orders of magnitude greater then that one calorie that arrives for dinner. You don't eat all of the corn plant - just the kernels, leaving the cob, leaves, cornsilk, stalk and roots you don't eat behind. And without all those parts that those 10 calories were used to produce, you wouldn't have your kernels to eat.
As for the energy required to convert, I repeat that for every 5 barrels of oil delivered, 6 were produced, and the 1st barrel is used to provide the energy to "cook" the feedstock to produce the other 5 barrels. TDP is not interested in your food as feedstock until you throw it away. The major feedstock is the entire biomass left behind as trash.

[Pops]

This has all been said before but I'm bored so:

TDP could be a decent transition tech but relies on a primary energy source the depletion of which this site is all about - just like ethanol. Except TDP, ethanol plants and even power lines have a real problem with NIMBRism short term - and the short term is the period in which we'll have the best chance to make a transition.

Con-Agra had a waste product it found a market for - it might have been a better plan to use that waste for fertilizer but oil gave a better return. I did work for the largest egg producer west of the Rockies and they used everything but the cluck - chicken shit and almond shells make great compost.

But in the end, compost for the flower bed, guts from a Butterball plant, Egg McMuffins and that stuff in the landfill all rely on cheap energy and it ain't always gonna be around.

[TomSaidak]

Oh, where to start, where to start.....

Pstarr wrote:

Somewhat like methane, an attempt to capture waste and mitigate pollution but in no way a primary energy source.

And as you said, like methane capture, an annoyance and potential danger. The less this stuff is handled the safer all of us are.

If you don't touch it, what do you think is happening with it? In Mt. View, our Shoreline Ampitheatre is still belching methane. When it first opened, they had to shut it down while they installed a pipe system to carry the methane away. Methane is function of decomposition and is happening whether we do something about it or not. TDP would stop the methane cycle cold. Well, hot. Or something...

Pops wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut in the end, compost for the flower bed, guts from a Butterball plant, Egg McMuffins and that stuff in the landfill all rely on cheap energy and it ain't always gonna be around.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'O')ne of the possible TDP feedstocks is old landfills. Or even current ones - we can still excavate those out. They will run out - eventually. But not for 10 to 20 years or more.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'A')bout ain't gonna always be around....... One of the possible TDP feedstocks is old landfills. Or even current ones - we can still excavate those out.

[lonewolf]

... not this turkey shitte again - how many freaking times/ways do we have to debunk this stinking offal? Old turkey gut scams apparently never freaking die ...

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TomSaidak', 'A')s for plastic, we MAY start using recycled plastic in the US. But we have been exporting it to Asia for I don't know how many years - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... tml?page=2. And I shudder to think about the environmental mess that has been causing.