For decades, scientists, pundits, ecologists and strategists have been forcasting an eventual replacement of the petrochemical economy to a new, cleaner energy economy. Perhaps it will be based on hydropower, wind, tidal or geothermal energy. Perhaps it will be hydrogen or nuclear (er, nukular) based. Perhaps fuel cells will be involved.
Yet all of the prognostications remain just that. The petrochemical economy is just too entrenched. That's why electric cars remain impractical, but gas/electric hybrids are quickly proving quite practical.
So, if we're not going to ween ourselves off of petrochemicals any time soon, why not find better ways to acquire them -- better than drilling in ANWR or importing oil from abroad?
Discover reports on an enterprising group of Philadelphians who have developed an efficient process for converting anything into light crude, natural gas, clean water, and raw minerals.
Experimentation revealed that different waste streams require different cooking and coking times and yield different finished products. "It's a two-step process, and you do more in step one or step two depending on what you are processing," Terry Adams says. "With the turkey guts, you do the lion's share in the first stage. With mixed plastics, most of the breakdown happens in the second stage." The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for example, yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other solids. So far, says Adams, "nothing hazardous comes out from any feedstock we try."(via Schuyler)"The only thing this process can't handle is nuclear waste," Appel says. "If it contains carbon, we can do it."
Re:Why not?!
ziggy on 2003-04-17T15:46:33
Actually, we consume remarkably less energy than the sun provides. I think the entire energy needs of the planet are roughly equivalent to what the sun provides on a few acres or a few square miles of land (I forget the exact area, but it is a small fraction of the earth's surface). The problem is that we are horribly inefficient in using that energy.We consume more energy than the sun provides, switching to synthetic oil wouldn't solve this problem.The two most workable energy sources we have at our disposal are chemical and nuclear (er, nuk-u-lar). They work far better than natural sources because (1) they are transportable anywhere in the world, (2) they provide a consistant source of energy that is not disrupted by weather patterns, reduced by distance or limited to a specific geographic area. (You could throw animal-generated energy into the mix, but it provides a miniscule fraction of the energy demands of the world.) Given the problems with nuclear energy, it's no wonder that virtually all energy production ultimately revolves around chemical energy.
It's not an ideal scenario, but them's the facts.
A petrochemical based solution is ugly, but it's what we're using today and what we're going to be using for the forseeable future. The best we can do is to remove some of the political entanglements that come with oil, and be much more efficient with the oil we do use (e.g. fewer SUV's, more hybrid cars; better gas milage and lower emissions for everyone).
It's not an ideal solution, but them's the facts.
It would be nice to switch to a hydrogen based economy, where places like British Columbia and Iceland were the world energy powers. But that's a chicken-and-egg problem -- it can't happen until there's a hydrogen distribution infrastructure, and there won't be an infrastructure until there's a use for it. And the long term impact of adding millions of point sources of water vapor is generally unknown as well. It may not contribute to global warming as we know it today, but there's no guarantee that it won't change the microclimate around, say, Los Angeles by increasing humidity from traffic jams.
One distinct advantage to this waste-into-oil system (assuming it does work on a ridiculously large scale) is that it is less damaging to the environment than waste dumping. Oil is one byproduct, but so are natural gas, water and pure minerals. "No more waste" is also a significant byproduct. Petrochemicals are very useful outputs, and they don't necessarily need to go into internal combustion engines. CO2 is not a required second-order byproduct of this process. It's not even the most significant byproduct.You still have combustion byproducts, namely CO2. Ever heard of the greenhouse effect?Re:Why not?!
belg4mit on 2003-04-17T17:14:47
Where do you get your numbers? Everything I've
seen in my studies indicates we are in fact
burning capital. And sure, we may actually receive
more energy from the sun than we use, but not
in any useful form. Much of it goes to maintaing
the temperature of the planet and supporting non-human life. Or do you think we need a Dyson's
Sphere?Re:Why not?!
ziggy on 2003-04-17T20:50:08
I used to read a lot of material from the ecological press (WorldWatch Institute, Sierra Club, E Magazine, etc.) as well as various mainstream science press (SciAm, Technology Review, i-forget-what-else), and a wide variety of books on the topic too numerous to name (I read all of the original sources Al Gore cited in his book long before I read Earth in the Balance).Where do you get your numbers?Sorry, I don't have any exact figures at my fingertips. I find more value in caching Perl module APIs in my head than boring figures and statistics.
:-) There's a difference between burning capital and burning oil.Everything I've seen in my studies indicates we are in fact burning capital.We're burning capital in the sense that the oil coming out of oil wells is a finite, non-renewable resource. There are problems with burning oil per se (CO2 emissions, pollution, thorny geopolitical issues), and there are problems with the foundations of the petrochemical economy (neverending road construction, automotive fatalities, blight, etc.).
It's important to separate the issue of burning capital -- using non-renewable oil reserves -- from the greater issues of the petrochemical economy. If this waste-to-oil technology works on a grand scale it reduces resource depletion because it makes light crude a renewable resource (from waste, no less!). The article in Discover postulates that standard agricultural waste could produce 4B barrels of crude per year in the US (we currently import 4.2B barrels of oil annually.)
So there are three direct net benefits there: less "burning capital", less reliance on imported oil (and the related geopolitical implications), and overall reduction of waste (and pollution, and land set aside for dumping).
Add it all up, and the only problem with this technology is that it doesn't replace oil burning fast enough. That problem is a truly tough nut to crack, and it will take decades (or a few years of massive dedication and discipline to switch to a non-petrochemical based energy economy).
