$90M plant will turn garbage into gas

[u4ic]

A new $90-million plant in Edmonton will transform garbage into synthetic gas.

The plant, announced Thursday, will take waste that would normally end up in the city dump because it can't be recycled or composted.

The material will go into a high-tech system that heats it and turns the waste into a synthetic gas.

Epcor, a utility owned by the City of Edmonton, will use the gas to fuel its power plants.



http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/11/24/power-plant.html

[Warpy]

1. Somebody seems to be at work to suppress this technology

in the US. A commercial TDP operation was up and running, recycling the waste from a Butterball plant. It was commercially viable. Then, out of the blue, somebody bid up those waste products to go into animal feed. What a surprise, the TDP operation was no longer a viable one.

I've often said the best places for these things are at our stinking, leaking landfills. The process loves things like non biodegradable plastics, used Pampers, old telephone bodies, all the stuff that will stay nasty for decades if not centuries.

I wonder what it will take for cities to figure this one out.

[MindPilot]

2. That's a very very good question!!

I have contacted my city's officials about TDP and I just get blown off. The only thing I can think is they see TDP as such a fantastical technology that it can't possibly be viable, kind of like trying to get people in the 1890s to build an airport.

But for my city, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, running out of landfill space, can't process all it's sewage or guarantee adequate future water supplies, a couple TDP plants would be a perfect solution.

But the mayor and city council are way more concerned about buying the football team a new stadium and making sure that medical pot smokers don't "send the wrong message" to the children.

[Javaman]

3. I wonder some times what the future alien race that sifts through our ruins..

will think when they discover massive geological veins of used pampers running through our detris.

[Warpy]

4. They're useful for one thing

getting rid of woodchucks. Just locate the den and shove a used disposable diaper into the entrance. The woodchucks move, often far enough that your garden is safe.

They probably work on gophers and other burrowing animals, too.

[Javaman]

5. Perhaps then they will reason that we were overrun by masses of

wild woodchucks.

snicker snicker...

[JohnWxy]

7. very interesting-

"The process loves things like non biodegradable plastics, used Pampers, old telephone bodies, all the stuff that will stay nasty for decades if not centuries." ---

--- damn! I didn't know that!

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Phone books and newspapers from the 50's can be dug out of landfills today

and are quite legible. All the air gets squeezed out, so there is very little decomposition. If paper doesn't rot, plastics certainly aren't going to.

[midnight armadillo]

8. How about on Deer Island?

Deer Island in Boston holds a massive sewage treatment plant. Once treated, the sludge is sent out a 9.5 mile pipeline to the bottom of Cape Cod Bay.

The big tanks at bottom left are the bacterial digesters:


Imagine sticking a TDP plant here instead and turning all that concentrated shit into fuel instead of throwing it away.

[JohnWxy]

10. all the money spent to treat this as waste when it could be turned into valuable fuel!!

this truly IS a waste!

[phantom power]

6. My dogs do that for free.