Processing Plants That Turn Waste Into Oil

What kind of processing plant can turn a rotting, slimy, disgusting-smelling pile of turkey slaughterhouse waste into $12,600 worth of fuel oil? How about municipal sewage, old tires and mixed plastics? Discover Magazine highlighted Changing World Technologies, the company that owns this plant, back in 2006.  It’s exciting technology, and Changing World Technologies is hardly the only company working on it.  The Dutch have harvested enough power from chicken manure to power 90,000 homes.

From Discover Magazine:

The smell is a mélange of midsummer corpse with fried-liver overtones and a distinct fecal note. It comes from the worst stuff in the world—turkey slaughterhouse waste. Rotting heads, gnarled feet, slimy intestines, and lungs swollen with putrid gases have been trucked here from a local Butterball packager and dumped into an 80-foot-long hopper with a sickening glorp. In about 20 minutes, the awful mess disappears into the workings of the thermal conversion process plant in Carthage, Missouri.

Three tanker trucks arrive here on peak production days, loading up with 500 barrels of oil made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat. Most of what cannot be converted into fuel oil becomes high-grade fertilizer; the rest is water clean enough to discharge into a municipal wastewater system.

Despite these breakthroughs, Changing World Technologies has struggled over the years.  The highly complex process is expensive, and government subsidies were hard to come by. People who live near the plant complain about its odor incessantly.  Changing World Technologies recently applied for a $100M IPO, hoping it will help them get off the ground.

Other companies have had more luck.  Inhabitat reports that the Dutch have built the world’s largest biomass power plant to run entirely on poultry manure.

Situated in Moerdijk, the 150 million euro plant was constructed by the Dutch multi-utility company Delta. It will convert roughly 440,000 tons of chicken manure into energy annually, generating more than 270 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year. The plant also addresses a key environmental problem in the Netherlands: “managing the vast excess stream of chicken manure, which, until today, had to be processed at a high cost”.

Delta’s biomass plant has even been described as being carbon neutral, since it will prevent the manure from sitting in fields and seething greenhouse gases into the air. Once methane from the poultry waste has been extracted and ignited, the left over ash will be used to make fertilizers and other agricultural products.

This is exciting stuff.  Imagine if we could use this technology to its full advantage – fuel from waste! It’s the ultimate in Cradle to Cradle.

Link [Discover Magazine] + [Inhabitat]

Brunton Vapor-AF: Precision Stove Burns Any Flammable Liquid

What a cool bit of green gear for any traveler! Wired reviewed the new Brunton Vapor-AF, a precision stove that’s able to burn any flammable liquid from butane to kerosene. It’s easy to use, looks nice, and pumps out 12,000 BTUs. Perfect for camping, hiking, power outages or anytime you need an efficient little portable cook stove.

From Wired:

WIRED Comes with 20.3-ounce aluminum fuel canister and thick foil windscreen. Stuff sack pocket is a perfect stash for included multitool and jet-cleaning needle. Beerlover’s bonus: Multitool has an integrated opener. Precision flame control for both butane and liquid fuel — we can’t stress enough how fantastic this is.

TIRED No built-in ignition. Legs don’t lock in place. A tad noisy. Plastic fuel pump won’t outlive the brass/aluminum/steel stove. Modest 6-inch diameter from end to end, so no super-wide pots. Two bills for a single burner?

The Brunton costs $180 and is available over at Amazon.

Link [Wired]

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Beleaguered Airline Industry Forced to Start Going Green

Things are looking pretty grim for the airline industry, which has suffered major setbacks in the last couple of years due to rising fuel costs. They’re not just dealing with how to stay in the sky without charging customers outrageous prices, though: environmentalists are forcing the industry to finally take responsibility for the huge amounts of carbon emitted by air travel. All of these factors have airlines scrambling to save themselves, and they’re finally putting some real innovation to work in the process.

From Wired:

Virgin Atlantic recently made a test flight of a Boeing 747 fueled by a mixture of kerosene and biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. But the emphasis is on algae, led by Boeing’s recent commitment to the alt fuel and efforts by JetBlue and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to turn pond scum into fuel.

Christopher Surgenor, editor of GreenAirOnline, says algal fuel is the most promising alternative because “It has the right properties for a jet fuel and can be produced in comparatively large quantities.” But others say it’s too early in the game to pick a winner, and Arvi warns that narrowing the research to one field “is self-defeating. It stifles innovation.”

For all the advancements in engines and airframes, the system we use for moving all those planes around is stuck in the 1940s. Airlines say replacing the radar-based air traffic control infrastructure with a satellite system would reduce fuel consumption and cut emissions by 10 to 15 percent while making the business of getting planes in and out of airports more efficient. Adopting a more efficient means of approaching airports — called “continuous descent approach” — would further cut fuel consumption and emissions while also reducing noise.

Unfortunately, none of these solutions provide a quick fix for the problems that are plaguing the industry today. It’ll be 2-3 years before we see next generation aircraft, and modernized air traffic control is at least a decade away. Analysts say that alternative fuels won’t be anything more than a pipe dream for at least 5 years. And there are some critics who are skeptical that green initiatives will do anything at all for the industry and are simultaneously denying greenwashing accusations: “We care about the environment and we want a clean planet. We just don’t want the industry to get ruined in the process”, says Ernest Arvi, CEO of aviation consultancy The Arvi Group.

They’d better figure out something quick, because with oil prices reaching new heights nearly every day, soon the everyday person won’t be able to afford air travel.

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Flickr user lrargerich

High School Team Cruises To New Record Of 2,843 MPG!

At Eco-Marathon Americas — sponsored by none other than Shell (shoot me) — a team from Mater Dei High School out of Santa Ana, CA came in first place by motoring to a new record of 2,843.4 miles per gallon. Of course, the size of the vehicles don’t allow for such options as cup holders, but their form and technology are important in creating even greater efficiency for future commercial models. From the article,

Those top three vehicles, like most in the competition (25 out of 33 total), used internal combustion engines. The goal for all entrants was to travel as far as possible using as little fuel as possible. Vehicles–sans driver–couldn’t weigh more than 160 kilograms (352 pounds), while drivers had to weigh at least 50 kilograms. The lone diesel entry, from The College of the Redwoods in Eureka, Calif., achieved 304.5 mpg. The one vehicle to use liquid petroleum gasoline, from Schurr High School of Montebello, Calif., hit 163.5 mpg.

It’s worth noting that the Pulsar vehicle from Purdue University came in first in the solar power category with a 2,861.8 mpg finish. Not too shabby — plus, it would look cooler in your driveway than the Mater Dei winner.

For information on the rest of the entrants, hit Shell’s website (Oh, the horror!) for additional deets.