AgroWaste to Oil a Growing Market

EvilTwinSkippy writes "Last May Slashdot covered the story of Changing World Tech's opening of a plant that converts agricultural waste to oil. Fortune magazine has picked up the story, and followed up on their success. Apparently the turkey guts are not as profitable to recycle as hoped, the company paying $30-$40/ton for animal offal. They are producing diesel fuel at $80/barrel (compared to $50/barrel for petroleum derived diesel). However, the plant has been successful enough to spawn ventures in Europe and the U.S. A pilot plant in Philadelphia has successfully used the process to safely break down and extract oil from sewage, medical waste, electronics, even leftovers from petroleum refining. The solids are metal, pure carbon, and fertilizer. And aside from gas and oil, the only other thing the system produces otherwise is sterile water."

Sterile water?

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Does that mean it can't reproduce?

SEWAGE!

[Evil W1zard]

Well I have the perfect marketing slogan for this! We can call it STOOL FUEL, Straight from people's butts into your engines.

Confusing title...

[wildwood]

How, exactly, does one oil a market?

No, never mind. I don't want to know.

Medical waste?

[Aardpig]

...from sewage, medical waste, electronics...

Wouldn't it be truly ironic if the medical waste was liposuction fat (think Fight Club)? Then, the clinical obesity afflicting one in three Americans would itself be powering the automobiles that are, in part, responsible for the obesity.

Wow, some new technology...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Changing World Tech's opening of a plant that converts agricultural waste to oil.

You mean like what you get when you stuff dead trees and foliage in mud, burry it deep underground under billions of tons of rocks, and wait a few million years?

$30-40 a ton for offal?

[Nine Tenths of The W]

A)Do they deliver?
B)What's Darl McBride's address again?

Sigh...I see the protest signs now

[Anonymous Coward]

"NO MORE FECES FOR OIL!"

Re:Economical?

[Anonymous Coward]

This has value even if it consumes energy in the process. The 'beauty' of diesel/gas/petrol is that the energy is portable; you can put it into a gas tank and consume it hundreds of miles away. While it might not make sense to take this diesel and put it in a power plant, it does make sense to pipe it to a gas station. Same goes for fuel cells.

Frankly, I'd love to see the Dakotas were turned into solar/wind farms with chicken crapping farms under them, piping the feces into contraptions that turned it into diesel, and see the USA tell the Saudis to screw themselves. (Fat Chance)

Oil from medical waste????

[VAXcat]

It's PEOPLE! Soylent Diesel is PEOPLE!!!!!

this was done in 1985

[kevinx]

Great SCOTT marty! I knew I should have patented this process. luckly they haven't figured out how to reproduce the flux capacitor. We have plenty of time........

Re:Sterile water?

[MyLongNickName]

Does that mean it can't reproduce? Much like Slashdot readers, yes :)

You misspelled "is"

[Anonymous Coward]

the giant flaming shitheap IS Nebraska....

There, better.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[abigor]

"Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process."

That's one phrase I never thought I'd ever see.

Re:Price may not be a problem for long

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise)...

OMG! Oilent Green is made out of people! People!

Re:SEWAGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Ass2Gas?

Re:SEWAGE!

[JPelorat]

STFUEL?

Re:I've got trouble believing that

[cayenne8]

"All they'd have to do is undercut the cost of trucking the stuff to New Jersey and they'd have all the feedstock a 400 bbl/day plant could handle, and probably much more."

That and give Tony Soprano his 'cut' off the trucking end of it....else CWT 'might' have some union problems flair up....

:-)

Re:Medical waste?

[That's Unpossible!]

I know a more efficient way: it's called "cycling".

That depends on your definition of "efficient."

I am in decent shape, and only rarely am I able to obtain a speed of 60MPH on my human-powered bicycle, and even then only for moments at a time. (Usually after colliding with a vehicle traveling at 60MPH.)