Wednesday, February 23, 2005

It's gross, but it works

A process called thermal depolymerization can turn just about any kind of waste into oil, minerals and water and in the process rearrange many bothersome chemicals into harmless molecules. The linked article shows how the process is used on waste from a turkey processing plant. The lead picture is not for the fainthearted.

(Thanks to Flying Talking Donkey for spotting this story.)

(Comments are open to all. See the list of environmental blogs on my sidebar.)

1 comment:

JMS said...

Interesting. I browsed around the company web site and this looks promising.

I'm not sure it really solves the carbon issue (despite their claims) because even with oil left in the ground, their technology takes carbon that is "interred" in things like tires and plastics, as well as organic material, and frees it right back into the atmosphere. If it was actually the case that tomorrow we could stop pumping oil out of the ground, and replace it with a static carbon cycle, that would be one thing.

History tells us we would simply consume more.

The four billion barrels estimate on their web site is something I'd like to see documentation for. Suspiciously close to present US consumption of 4.5 billion barrels...

Anyways, very though provoking.