Morgan BellInventor builds a machine that turns garbage into oil!
December 19th 2007 17:50
It might be too good to be true, it might be a hoax. It might even be a bad idea, but I love the idea behind this story.
Frank Pringle has made a machine that turns rubbish into oil!
What?
Apparently, Pringle looked at a pile of tires burning and thought that there was a lot of energy in that reaction... he chopped up some rubber tire and threw it into a device that he had built for something else - the device bombarded the rubber with microwave energy, which promptly disintegrated the tire.
Then Pringle noticed that there was a black liquid all over the floor of his workshop. His microwave emitter had just turned the tire into oil.
Read it for yourself:
"Petroleum is composed of strings of hydrocarbon molecules. When microwaves hit the tire, they crack the molecular chains and break it into its component parts: carbon black (an ash-like raw material) and hydrocarbon gases, which can be burned or condensed into liquid fuel. Pringle figured that some gases from his microwaved tire had lingered, and the cold air in the shop had condensed them into diesel. If the process worked on tires, he thought, it should work on anything with hydrocarbons. The trick was in finding the optimum microwave frequency for each material—out of 10 million possibilities. "
The machine is being built for recyclers in New York and the military, which means that people have seen it in action. Why isn't this getting major press??
Is it real? It is feasible to run?
"Every hour, the first commercial version will turn 10 tons of auto waste—tires, plastic, vinyl—into enough natural gas to produce 17 million BTUs of energy (it will use 956,000 of those BTUs to keep itself running). "
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Comment by Louie
randomthoughts
Phil's Wellness Tips
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I'm sure this will be but one invention that mankind will eventually revert to in massive proportions to continue to generate power and electricity.
I'm thinking James Bond's New Astin on kitchen scraps (like the Delorean)... Oh my dream car, right there ...
Great post!
Lilla ...
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Lilla, your disdain is warranted. Really, the push should be to teach people to consume less, instead of finding new ways to keep making oil.
At least, both avenues need to be explored.
I'm thrilled of the idea of taking the plastics out of our landfills, though. Think of all the reclamation!
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I wasn't being disdainful at all, I think there is great merit in it as a 'bridging technology,' particularly if the microwave is eventually run on wind or thermal power, and especailly when you look at the garbage bags (alone) in landfills, (before they are phased out completely) ...it has huge potential ... I was just thinking about the logistics of things like the cost and mode of getting the stuff to the bowser (pump)... and that I had read somewhere that someone had invented a tyre that never needed replacing, but dunlop had snavelled up the patent and vaulted it.
That's what makes me burn.
Lilla ...
Comment by Techno
Geeky Blog
Exciting idea.