Trash Talking… Too much energy?

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Our garbage is really black gold. It is time to think about thermal depolymerization and other technologies that might start shifting the balance of the energy equation.



We should stop burying twelve billion tons worth of solid waste a year in this country and start converting more of it into fuel. This is happening already but on a very small scale. I wonder why some stimulus money was not put toward technologies like this instead of some of the places it really did or didn’t go.


I was a little bit baffled by the term “Thermal Depolymerization” when I first came across it but again it was Google to the rescue: “Thermal Depolymerization (TDP) is a depolymerization process using hydrous pyrolysis for the reduction of complex organic materials (usually waste products of various sorts, often known as biomass and plastic) into light crude oil. It mimics the natural geological processes thought to be involved in the production of fossil fuels. Under pressure and heat, long chain polymers of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon decompose into short-chain petroleum hydrocarbons with a maximum length of around 18 carbons.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

Basically, TDP is converting anything containing carbon into exploitable energy - sewerage sludge into light oil or even agricultural waste into energy… turning chicken doo-doo into chicken salad. This is not growing corn or other vegetable matter for conversion and having to utilize energy in the production. This is the actual transformation of food production wastes directly into needed energy components. It is happening in Carthage, Missouri where they take waste from a turkey processing plant and digest it to produce fuel oil.


Six billion tons of agricultural waste produced annually in this country could be turned into more than four billion barrels of oil (the same amount the United States imports yearly). Someone missed the memo.


The Rumpelstiltskinian stratagem that underpins TDP is to harvest carbon that abundantly exists, that we have already used and seem to have no further use for except disposal. Admittedly not a brand new idea since green advocates have turned plant, human and animal wastes into methane and other fuels for years in lower tech Mother Earth News or Popular Science kinds of ways. However, this more universal and global thinking of turning sewerage treatment plants and landfills into resources instead of a money pits is going in the right direction. Recyclable carbon is the vast majority of all the solid waste we bury instead of use. We must take advantage of the fact that it as part of a renewable energy cycle. We can mine what we are throwing away instead of burying mountains of it in suburbia or dumping it into the ocean. More effort should go to recycling non-carbon based waste.


Not everything about TDP plants or conversion stations is perfect. There is much criticism of start up and operating costs in the press regarding new and previous attempts. At least these people are coming up with new ideas that need to be investigated. Waste not, want not.


Let’s start being proactive about our garbage and thinking of it as a resource instead of transshipping it out in the country and paying for its disposal. There is getting to be too much trash to keep trying to hide the problem.


Private enterprise may force our government to do something once processing trash is profitable enough. Until that happens I don’t expect my elected representatives to do much more than try to figure out how to get reelected.


Coming down off my garbage mountain soapbox.

© 10.04.2010 stevendphilbrick SR+ DakotaDawg