Thermal Depolymerization and Peak Oil stuff

[ewt]

Thermal depolymerization is kindof like a big compost heap, very hot. You take your complex waste and make it very hot and you get water, ad oil, and carbon, and gas, and minerals. You can't take carbon dioxide and methane and turn them into oil, but you can put carbon dioxide into trees and turn _those_ into oil. Pretty neat, eh? Past attempts to do this have proven too inefficient to be practical but Changing World Technologies are getting good yield using turkey offal; the yield from plastic bottles is even better.

The FAQs at CWT say that this process destroys prions. This is pretty cool considering that we don't currently have any real methods of getting rid of these, and they're a pretty huge problem. But the Wikipedia article says the sludge is heated to 250°C and then later to 500°C, and hairyears says prions are only destroyed at much higher temperatures than these. Prions don't have nuclei, so they aren't affected by all the lovelies that kill stuff by disrupting nucleic acid. I suppose different prions will denature at different temperratures. I wonder whether the high-pressure part of the thermal depolymerization process is part of this. Hmm.

I wonder whether any of the various parties campaigning for election have looked into this. I'd vote for a party that pledged to turn all waste processing facilities into thermal depolymerization plants, for sure. You know, if I'd managed to get the electoral register forms turned in on time and stuff, which I didn't, so I won't be able to vote in this election. Fuck a duck.

Does Thermal Depolymerization Solve the Problem of Peak Oil? An interesting article, but it only touches the surface. The good thing is that thermal depolymerization is much cheaper than many other suggested solutions (biodiesel, hydroelectric-driven hydrogen generation) to the Peak Oil problem, so it might get developed enough, and used widely enough, to stop everything going apeshit as some of the more doom and gloom sources seem to suggest.

But running out of oil is not the whole story.

Power that is not made locally still has to be transported, and this is still inefficient. Ideally you'd want your waste processing plant right next to your thermal depolymerization plant, and that right next to the power plant so you don't have to transport the oil too far (although some of it could go to cars and so on). If you have a large power plant using this stuff and then sending electricity out over the grid, you're still losing lots and lots of electricity to heat and resistance. If you're burning coal, it's more efficient to burn it all in one place so you can control the emissions - there are economies of scale, here - but you're still losing around seven per cent of the power just getting it from point A to point B.

I think there is still a very good argument for distributed generation - make what you need, send any surplus back to the grid, if you can't make all that you need you take some off of the grid. The smaller windmills are no more offensive to look at than TV aerials, and solar panelling is much more efficient and affordable than it used to be - and it's possible to go even more direct, with direct solar hot water heating (yes this even works in sunny Engrand). With some efficiency measures thrown in as well I tend to look at suburbia as a huge power plant waiting to be set up. All these arguments apply to food distribution too, and I do tend to think of suburbia as having massive potential to grow lots of vegetables and fruit, as in the Victory Gardens of WWII.

So if we've got a renewable supply through the waste we create and thermal depolymerization, what's the point of better efficiency? A renewable supply is not the same as an unlimited supply; we only have so much matter, we only have so much sunshine, and it's sunshine that's driving all this really (even if we are a long, long way away from using all the energy the sun provides). There will still be limitations, and there will still be some scarcity.

Better efficiency means more people can have a higher standard of living. Having a higher standard of living makes it easier to get on with things like art and education and stuff. Nobody is going to pay for their kid to take piano lessons if they can't put food on the table. I have a vested interest in the basics of life being delivered as efficiently as possible. It means I can do a job I like, instead of manual labour (not that manual labour is all bad, and I quite like growing some of my own food, but I'm quite glad not to have to struggle too much to survive, thankyouverymuch). What would your life be like if nobody bought your product, or your company's product, because everyone was poor and struggling? Think about that. Then go out and get some fluorescent bulbs. Your bills will be lower, too, so it is not all that bad.

There's another side to this, too. We have already increased the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and not growing enough things. Switching to fossil fuels that are basically from biomass (human waste, turkey sludge, et cetera) is noble and will, in theory, prevent further disruption to the carbon cycle. We got the disruption we have by using a fuel that has very high latency - in the natural world, it takes a LONG TIME for burned fossil fuels to become plants and then dead things and then fossil fuels waiting to be burned. Previously, lots of the carbon that has been floating around as carbon dioxide was locked up in, um, plants and rocks and stuff. If we were to switch over to thermal depolymerization as the method of oil production tomorrow, using waste products, we'd still have way more carbon floating around the atmosphere than we used to, and it would take a lot more than just a few trees and some vegetable gardens to soak it up.

I haven't done the arithmetic, but my suspicion is that the rate of oil consumption we currently have leaves more carbon in the atmosphere than is sustainable in terms of keeping the Earth's climate habitable for humans. In other words, it's great we wouldn't be finding even more carbon that is locked up undergroud somewhere, but we're still in for a nasty global warming surprise unless we stop using so much, or create some pretty massive rainforests to act as carbon sinks. We've already got loads too much up there, and it takes time for the effects to be seen and it also takes time for the effects of carbon sinks (ie forests) to be seen. If we were to stop drilling for oil tomorrow, and only use what we've already got hanging around, we'd still be in for a pretty rough ride. We need to redress the balance somehow.

Am I missing something here, or should we all be out planting loads of trees all the time?

Comments

[caradea.livejournal.com]

My little roof garden is helping sink some carbon and it helps with urban flooding because they soak up rain water (besides the two water butts holding 100l of water).
direct solar hot water heating (yes this even works in sunny Engrand).
I know someone in Cambridge who heats his water with sun! It even gets up to a reasonable temperature in the winter.

Wouldn't this be a good post to the Techno Hippie Commune?

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't this be a good post to the Techno Hippie Commune?

Yup. Was going to put it there next. And maybe some of the peak oil communities as well.

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

Mail it to the Metro as an article. Seriously.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

I think you're looking in the wrong direction when it comes to Peak Oil. Although Peak Wood may have been a major factor in finishing off Rome, Britain survived both Peak Charcoal and Peak Coal by moving onwards. The obvious next step in energy production are the Pebble Bed Reactors the Chinese are playing with (other than being vastly more efficient than conventional nuclear power, Pebble Bed Reactors have the huge advantage of failing safely rather than exploding - and can be made small enough to put onto ships). Rather than burning oil in situ to power cars, we can move to electric cars - lowering the transportation costs for energy- and there has been a recent large improvement in battery technology. Beyond fission/electric comes fusion/electric and fusion should be viable in About Thirty Years™ (although they have managed to reach break even off a fusion reaction).

And I definitely agree with planting more trees. I'm not sure that I don't want some bright spark of a geneticist to get his hands on Kudzu and then use dense-packed kudzu as building material.

[caradea.livejournal.com]

I think it would go over the heads of most Metro readers unless this is a different Metro than what I'm thinking of.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Well, most of them are already commuting...

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

You think? I'd have to clean it up some, though. And deadtree formats don't do hyperlinks so well, so maybe I'd have to explain a lot more about various things (thermal depolymerization, prions, global warming) that I've either linked to or assumed my readership already understand.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Britain still generates rather a lot of electricity using coal.

An advantage of thermal depolymerization over pebble bed reactors is that thermal depolymerization does not rely on uranium, plutonium or thorium as a fuel. These are not renewable resources, and mining is nasty in general. And pebble bed reactors still have waste storage issues.

Interesting, though; thanks for the heads-up.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Also, roof gardens definitely win, as do water butts. It has been suggested that should I find myself in a place with chickens and garden shed and so on that all outbuildings should have their own water butt. A water butt doesn't take up much room and is much easier than carrying water all over the place in buckets.

Now to work out how to fit a water butt to a geodesic dome...

[rillaith.livejournal.com]

Some of the things I've seen in the Metro are as thought provoking. Not every week, mind.

[juliet]

The problem with the balcony is that we have sufficient overhang from above that it doesn't soak up much water :-/ I'm not sure what to do about this - I'm not allowed to hang things over the balcony so couldn't fix any sort of funnel out over the railing to catch more water (plus it still wouldn't do all that much), and the drainpipes are hooked straight into the drains on the floor under us.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

If you use something like Ecover to do your washing-up, and you do washing-up in a washing-up bucket rather than just in the sink, then conceivably you could use that water to water your plants, some (would have to look up arithmetic for exactly how much soap they can tolerate - maybe Ecover would advise on this?). This doesn't make a huge difference, but it is something.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

solar panelling is much more efficient and affordable than it used to be - and it's possible to go even more direct, with direct solar hot water heating (yes this even works in sunny Engrand)

It also works in not-so-sunny Wales. Huntley, the house in Wales, has solar-panel water heating. It works pretty well, despite the fact that Carmarthenshire isn't exactly renowned for its sunshine.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Woot!

I wish more people would do this. Why pay for electricity or gas to heat water when you can paint a radiator black and put it on your roof instead? If one is really clever one can have it go to the flash heater afterwards anyway, for top-up heating if it is really seriously cold out.

[qadira.livejournal.com]

hm, I don't know how much plants could tolerate of the dishwater, but I just bought Ecover dish soap for just that reason. :) I figure a bit of the soapy water won't hurt the outdoor plants, as long as I also pour my rinse water on them to dilute the suds even further.

I haven't quite worked up the nerve to do this, but one can probably just scour dishes with a course washcloth or some clean sand, and rinse with hot water. After all, the soap itself just makes the task of getting off oils and such easier, it's not killing germs.

[qadira.livejournal.com]

I am still reading all the related links, but just wanted to say this is a nice post :) I read somewhere recently can't remember where, about dispersing people and their small settlements in a hexagonal? grid over the globe. I wish my brain were more functional today. I think they were saying that it would make local sustainable living achievable, accommodate the ups & downs in population growth/declines, and allow for communities to interact with neighboring communities iwthout a lot of undue hardship in getting back & forth.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Might it have been here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/gigglingwizard/191572.html)?

[qadira.livejournal.com]

yes! thanks :) It was driving me nuts trying to recall where I'd seen that.

[caradea.livejournal.com]

You could be extremely naughty (and this is probably hard for you to do with what space you have) and cut the drain pipe and fit one of those um.. thingums that divert water to your waterbutt and when your butt is full, it switches so it goes down the downspout or something.
We did a slightly different approach which I would have an easier time showing a picture of it than explaining it(but it's dark out now).
Balconies I'd be a little more concerned about weight but the slimline butts are only 50litres=50kg=one person weight.

[sci.livejournal.com]

Focus magazine ran a very good article on TCP a lil while back. I scanned it in to show some peeps in the US.
Page 1 (http://www.sci.starborneworks.com/offsitelinked/image1.jpg), 2 (http://www.sci.starborneworks.com/offsitelinked/image2.jpg), 3 (http://www.sci.starborneworks.com/offsitelinked/image3.jpg), 4 (http://www.sci.starborneworks.com/offsitelinked/image4.jpg).

Now, you mention solar power, but I've wondered about the TCP and that before. Not using solar panels to produce power to power the TCP, but what about powering the TCP directly from the sun? I mean, all it really needs is heat and pressure. The sun can certainly provide heat enough. Solarthermal plants have core operating temperatures of thousands of degrees.
Anyway, it makes a nice lil thought experiment.

Still, finding an alternative source of oil is a bad thing. People will just keep on burning stuff until there's nothing left to burn, to preserve their perceived affluence. As you seem to know, that takes a sustainable more cautious future and turns in into a sudden and complete collapse of society as we know it.
I rekon a couple of decades of nearly no power will do hummanity a power of good. Then I'll release nuclear fusion power, and dictate my demands. Mwahaha.

I don't suppose you caught the report some time back of the scientist who conceived of carbon-processors to clean up the air? Huge slabs on pylons that would filter and collect carbon out of the air. Aparently the fellow had never heard of "trees".

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Still, finding an alternative source of oil is a bad thing. People will just keep on burning stuff until there's nothing left to burn, to preserve their perceived affluence.

If you can process human sewage and other biological "waste" products into oil, the "nothing left to burn" problem doesn't exist. Yes, supplies of oil would be limited, hence the need for efficiency, but the oil wouldn't completely run out. This isn't a new source of oil as much as a way of recycling stuff that we already have (which now goes to landfill).

I think of it in terms of latency. If you take firewood as your fuel, you have a latency of a generation or so - it takes time to plant and grow enough trees to make up for the ones you've used as fuel or building supplies. If you start using trees faster than you can regenerate them, eventually wood production will peak and you'll be screwed. Easter Island here we come. If you can make sure you plant loads and loads of trees, and limit consumption to be within what can be sustainably generated, you can theoretically use trees for fuel and building materials indefinitely. You can have a limited supply, forever. All you have to do is balance. If you don't outstrip demand you can't get the carbon in the atmosphere too messed up, because all that carbon that is released by burning trees is sucked up again by growing ones.

Now, there are reasons why using wood as a main fuel source hasn't worked well. One is that people tend to deforest locally rather than being aware of global supplies, and so sustainable re-generation rarely reaches optimum levels. Another problem is that there are fuckloads of humans, and we keep having this nasty habit of living where there would have been forests.

With coal and oil, the concept is about the same. The problem is that coal and oil take several million years to renew themselves naturally, and we didn't really know (or care) how much we had when we started mining/drilling, so we used it willy-nilly and we are running out. Fossil fuels have an extremely high latency. The other problem is that all those lovely carbon-rich fossil fuels were full of, um, carbon, which is now floating around the atmosphere making greenhouse effect at us and it would take - you guessed it - millions of years for that much carbon to get sucked back into the ground via natural processes. So, we have a sustainability problem in terms of supply, and a sustainability problem in terms of carbon balance.

If you can make oil out of human sewage, blue-green algae, and all the stuff we use that normally goes into landfills, the latency for making oil goes WAY WAY DOWN, to below the sort of numbers you'd be looking at for, say, trees or other biomass. Potentially, the oil supply would not run out. It would still be limited, but there would be a sustainable - perhaps even plentiful by today's terms - supply for well into the forseeable future, as opposed to the current scenario of supply dropping off and becoming so expensive to recover that nobody bothers and oil becomes expensive beyond words and society collapses.

It would still be possible to get things quite wrong in this - I can see eventual demand for oil outstripping what we can sustainably harvest from waste that we create and the less scrupulous companies wreaking environmental havoc by using things which are really not waste at all, but it would be rather far into the future - because for the moment, we have fuckloads of landfill to use up, much of it consisting of high-oil-yield plastics. With efficiency drives, and using alternate sources of power for electric generation (saving oil for transport and plastics manufacturing), we could stave off an outright peak oil crisis. This technology is much cheaper than extracting oil from tar sands or from shale, so I expect it to be taken up fairly quickly.

We would still be left with the problem of having more carbon in the atmosphere than it really bargained for, and so far my entry is the only place I have seen that addressed. Having longer-term oil doesn't help us if we bake ourselves through destroying forests.

[knockoutapathy.livejournal.com]

I love the mockery of the Shell logo and the Esso tagline. Do you mind if I steal your bandwidth and post this in powerswitch? (or perhaps ewtikins would like to ;) ). I knew there was a reason I used to read Focus magazine.

[juliet]

I would very much like to have solar panel heating, & if we had a roof then we'd be saving up for it. As it is: no roof, & indeed our hot water (for both water-purposes & for the radiators[0]) is supplied to the whole block by the Council, so we don't have a hot water tank anywhere.

[0] Not that the radiators ever get switched on, beyond about one week in January when it got *really* cold; we get enough heat out of being south-facing, concrete, & surrounded by other flats.

[juliet]

I don't use all that much washing-up liquid (you only need a smidge). My concern would be that our washing-up water does get pretty grubby, but I guess it's only vegetable-bits, so it'd be good fertiliser :-)

Hmm, will consult. Will have to get over my dislike of washing-up bowls, though :-( (they get dirtier than our nice stainless steel sink, & you have to find space under the sink to store them)

[juliet]

Hmm, might be worth investigating - thanks! The balcony is 5m x 1.5m, so fairly large, but I do have quite a few pots on there & need room for a couple of chairs as well. Slimline water butt might work. Don't think weight is a serious issue - it's pretty solid concrete.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Thermal depolymerisation: heat polymer a lot, get out water, CO₂, methane, minerals, larger fragments.

= burning, in a furnace.

Using it to dispose of prions = burning cow brains.

I think that getting suburban idiots to do this is a really, really bad idea. They already think it's alright to leave dog turds in playgrounds, for goodness' sake.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Last time I checked, burning plastic bottles doesn't leave you with oil you can use as fuel, and thermal depolymerization does. This is not the same process as incineration. If it were, I wouldn't have bothered writing anything at all about it.

I didn't suggest suburban idiots should carry out smale-scale garbage incineration, but that it would be good for suburban idiots to have small wind turbines and solar power, and grow vegetables in their gardens, and use try to be more energy efficient.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It's all oxidation, just under different conditions. Looks good though. There's a project somewhere (unfortunately I can't remember where or who or what the name of the plastic was, which is annoying) that developed plants which grow plastic precursors (as in, only one or two steps are needed after harvesting). We had some in the department for a while, it's very spiffy and would be rather good if thermal depolymerisation could be fed into this lot.

It would be good for suburban idiots to do these things. If only we could convince suburban idiots' landlords to let them use the gardens, and their employers to not work them until they drop before they've fixed anything.

[sci.livejournal.com]

Sure, though the server's pretty crappy. Might need to refresh a few times to get it.
(sorry for taking so long to reply!)

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

If we don't have oil, we might convert to using more coal...

I do like the idea of the thermal depolymerization. I hope it will save us all.