It's hype. But it's also not completely impossible. The video and statements by company employees do a whole lot to over-hype things and obscure what's really happening, so it's hard to tell what's fact and what's fiction.
Clearly, turning all carbon into fuel oil isn't possible without a significant energy input. It's possible that their process is a net energy loss, that it requires more energy to produce the oil than you would get from burning it.
It is also possible that being able to turn 'anything' with carbon in it to fuel is a false statement. They might be able to only turn long-chain polymers such as you would find in rubber, plastic, or feces into fuel. That is distinctly possible, and basically means their plant is a bio-diesel plant that doesn't require relatively pure plant oils. This would possibly be a process that did not require a net input of energy.
Looking up the one little real bit of non-dumbed down and disneyfied technical jargon in the entire video gives you this Wikipedia entry on thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization).
The article specifically mentions the plant the video is hyping. Apparently this process has been known about for awhile but it was a net energy loss. Apparently these people have made it more efficient. I'd still be wary of hype here though. The Wikipedia entry shows signs of having been edited by company people.
I'm a little worried about the overall effect this might have on the environment. But only a little. I'll explain in a different reply.
I did do a quick google search that turned up the wiki entry, but I was skeptical of the claims. I hadn't noticed that the editing was done by company members, but I'd like to see a little independent opinions on the feasibility of this.
I was talking with someone who is more excited by this possibility than I am. I remember the hype of the salt-water-to-energy guy and how that takes way more energy than it outputs. The person I was talking to says that this being a relatively new procedure, it might be less cost efficent now, but over time and with more research/experimentation/funding could turn into a cost-efficient method. So I pointed out that someone told me the salt-water method was just not capable of becoming "more efficient" over time because of the physics involved that I, frankly, don't fully understand. So he countered with "and heavier-than-air flight was once thought to be against the laws of physics too".
So I gave up arguing and thought I'd see what my more scientifically-well-educated friends might have to say about this. I'm not willing to get all hopeful about this because I want to know how come, with our current energy crisis, we haven't heard anything about this before and how come companies and government researchers aren't jumping all over it?
I look for little things about phrasing or wording. Especially if it seems like certain phrase or ways of describing things come directly from something else the company published, like the video. Looking at IP addresses is more definitive, but it's not hard to hide that you're a company person if that's the only means of detection.
As for the comparison with the salt-water method, I think you will find a calculation of the total chemical energy in salt-water to be significantly lower the the total chemical energy in free hydrogen. So any process that transforms one into the other is going to need a net input of energy. If you can somehow induce an atomic reaction in water, then all bets are off, but there would be several interesting signs (almost all atomic interactions possible in that scenario would produce free neutrons) if the salt-water guy had been doing that.
But old tires, feces and other kinds of biological waste clearly have tons of energy in them. For example, tires will burn for days if you manage to get a big store of them to start burning. So then, the 'impossible' becomes engineering impossible, not theoretical physics impossible.
I still think there are environmental implications. Though, for things like plastic bags and old tires, not so much.
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Date: 8/24/08 09:47 pm (UTC)From:It's hype. But it's also not completely impossible. The video and statements by company employees do a whole lot to over-hype things and obscure what's really happening, so it's hard to tell what's fact and what's fiction.
Clearly, turning all carbon into fuel oil isn't possible without a significant energy input. It's possible that their process is a net energy loss, that it requires more energy to produce the oil than you would get from burning it.
It is also possible that being able to turn 'anything' with carbon in it to fuel is a false statement. They might be able to only turn long-chain polymers such as you would find in rubber, plastic, or feces into fuel. That is distinctly possible, and basically means their plant is a bio-diesel plant that doesn't require relatively pure plant oils. This would possibly be a process that did not require a net input of energy.
Looking up the one little real bit of non-dumbed down and disneyfied technical jargon in the entire video gives you this Wikipedia entry on thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization).
The article specifically mentions the plant the video is hyping. Apparently this process has been known about for awhile but it was a net energy loss. Apparently these people have made it more efficient. I'd still be wary of hype here though. The Wikipedia entry shows signs of having been edited by company people.
I'm a little worried about the overall effect this might have on the environment. But only a little. I'll explain in a different reply.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 09:56 pm (UTC)From:I was talking with someone who is more excited by this possibility than I am. I remember the hype of the salt-water-to-energy guy and how that takes way more energy than it outputs. The person I was talking to says that this being a relatively new procedure, it might be less cost efficent now, but over time and with more research/experimentation/funding could turn into a cost-efficient method. So I pointed out that someone told me the salt-water method was just not capable of becoming "more efficient" over time because of the physics involved that I, frankly, don't fully understand. So he countered with "and heavier-than-air flight was once thought to be against the laws of physics too".
So I gave up arguing and thought I'd see what my more scientifically-well-educated friends might have to say about this. I'm not willing to get all hopeful about this because I want to know how come, with our current energy crisis, we haven't heard anything about this before and how come companies and government researchers aren't jumping all over it?
Signs of having been edited by company people
Date: 8/24/08 11:10 pm (UTC)From:I look for little things about phrasing or wording. Especially if it seems like certain phrase or ways of describing things come directly from something else the company published, like the video. Looking at IP addresses is more definitive, but it's not hard to hide that you're a company person if that's the only means of detection.
As for the comparison with the salt-water method, I think you will find a calculation of the total chemical energy in salt-water to be significantly lower the the total chemical energy in free hydrogen. So any process that transforms one into the other is going to need a net input of energy. If you can somehow induce an atomic reaction in water, then all bets are off, but there would be several interesting signs (almost all atomic interactions possible in that scenario would produce free neutrons) if the salt-water guy had been doing that.
But old tires, feces and other kinds of biological waste clearly have tons of energy in them. For example, tires will burn for days if you manage to get a big store of them to start burning. So then, the 'impossible' becomes engineering impossible, not theoretical physics impossible.
I still think there are environmental implications. Though, for things like plastic bags and old tires, not so much.