Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum No More Waste, No More Pollution, Plenty of Oil

This article is reprinted from Discover Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 5, 5 May 2003

In an industrial park in Philadelphia sits a new machine that can change almost anything into oil. Really. "This is a solution to three of the biggest problems facing mankind," says Brian Appel, chairman and CEO of Changing World Technologies, the company that built this pilot plant and has just completed its first industrial-size installation in Missouri. "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." Pardon me, says a reporter, shivering in the frigid dawn, but that sounds too good to be true.

This came out over two years ago. I wonder what the process is doing now. If it was a success, it's the quietest success story in the manufacturing world. What happened to the pilot plant and the turkey guts?

This should put recyclers out of business pronto. Well, except for glass and metals.

A Turkey In Your Tank
http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2005/Turkey-In-Your-Tank1feb05.htm
" One solution to America's energy crisis just may be gobbling away at a poultry farm near you. Changing World Technologies has developed a working system to convert turkey guts and scraps into fuel oil. But CWT's tribulations show how hard it is for even the most innovative green company to compete in the energy business...

...the company's next operation is likely to be in Europe, where food processors will pay to have CWT dispose of animal offal and where most governments offer tax incentives to biofuel producers. Appel is negotiating to license CWT's technology to Irish Food Processors, one of Europe's largest, which plans to build a biofuel facility by the end of 2006."

I put in a call to CWT for information. I spoke with a representative and will be speaking to someone able to share a bit more about current planning. Hopefully, there will be more of interest, later ~
http://www.changingworldtech.com/

Thermal depolymerization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

I contacted them about eight months ago. I wanted to know what exchange their stock was traded on. They told me they weren't publicly traded but they would put me on their list to be contacted when or if they ever went public. I haven't heard anything yet.
I live near Philly and I asked if I could tour their operation. They said not now but if they went public I would be welcome to inspect.
To date, that's all the info I have to offer.

In europe the diesel engine is common in thier automobiles. In the U.S. a turbo diesel-electric-hybrid could produce prolific gas mileage returns. If supplied by cheap (cheaper than gasoline or diesel fuel) turkey guts, even better.

In the text of http://www.changingworldtech.com/information_center/press_releases.asp
can be found the sentance "TCP is also more than 80% energy efficient."
This implies that their process consumes 100 units of energy to produce a quantity of fuel containing about 80 units of energy. Not bad, actually, if you consider what they are doing. But its still a net energy loss. It might even make sense economically if they are able to sell their offal management services as well as the fuel they produce. Even so, the 20% energy loss is probably made up from the usual (fossil, hydro-electric, etc.) sources.

Actually I believe what it means is that for every 100 units of energy inherent in the input material, 20 units of energy are used in the process to refine the input into and output of 80 units of energy.

In other words, 20 units of energy yield 80 units of energy.

from my original link:

Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.