Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

Yeah riiight...

Meet the Gasifier -- Washington Post has the story:

'Gasifier' Promoted As Energy Answer
Machine Designed To Run on Sewage And Garbage

D.C. Council member Marion Barry and comedian-activist Dick Gregory stood in a Southeast Washington parking lot yesterday to unveil a giant machine that they said has the power to transform the world.

The contraption looked like something that would incite a call to 911. Metal pipes and wires led to a two-story-tall black metal chimney, which led to more metal pipes that were connected to electric motors and high-tech doodads and dials. The inventor, Simon Romana, called the machine a "gasifier" and said it can use garbage or sewage to create pollution-free electricity and drinking water.

"As a native, I'm not a polluter," said Romana, a member of an indigenous tribe in New Zealand.

Romana said he and his investors, which include members of native American and Canadian tribes, built the demonstration machine for $1 million and trucked it from Canada to the District so diplomats, federal officials and sewage experts could see for themselves. But because of objections from the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, pastor of the church near the demonstration site, the machine was not turned on yesterday.

A bit more:

Gregory, who introduced the inventor to Barry, agreed. "You're looking at something that is going to revolutionize the whole world," Gregory said.

However, neither Barry nor Gregory has seen the machine operate.

And a bit about Gasification:

Gasification uses heat, steam and pressure to convert biodegradable matter into a gas, which is then cooled and scrubbed of impurities. Romana said his machine burns waste at 3,200 degrees Fahrenheit, creating the gas as well as distilled water as a byproduct and nontoxic ash -- all in a plant that is within federal air-quality standards.

Some sewage gasification plants use coal and wood as fuel to produce energy, and some large incinerators produce energy as well. Romana said the advantage of his machine is that it burns hotter and cleaner. How? He declined to say, calling it his "magic" secret.

I think the only "hot air" here is what's coming from Mr. Romana's cake hole. In April 2003, Discovery magazine touted a similar thing which took turkey guts from a nearby processing plant and could turn them into a hydrocarbon soup from which oil could be extracted. Unfortunately, the process is a net energy sink and it doesn't scale -- after all, who produces 600 Million Tons of turkey guts each year -- the USA sure doesn't but that was the number they were flashing around. Gregory Hlatky at Dogs Life writes:

Everyone has been oohing and ahhing over this article which describes a process for turning "anything into oil." While I can't say I'm an expert on the subject, at least I've read the patents on the process (U.S. 5,269,947, U.S. 5,360,553 and U.S. 5,543,061) and have at least a nodding acquaintance with petrochemical processes. Permit me to say that I'm skeptical that this can produce "4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year."

Let's start by saying that it won't convert "anything into oil." Certainly, the process assumes a carbonaceous feedstock. The first step of the process mixes the feedstock with water, which serves as a process medium to heat the feedstock evenly. Under air-free conditions the slurry is forced through an auger to subject it to high pressure and shear. Entering a heated (about 900 degrees Fahrenheit) low pressure environment, the water is evaporated along with any volatile hydrocarbons and the solids fall out and are collected or go onto further refinement. This kind of "heating and beating" is not much different than that practiced in refineries on crude oil. The novelty of the process is what appears to be an efficient method of driving the water from sodden reactants (life byproducts or liquid municipal waste).

I'm extremely skeptical when the article says that halogenated materials like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are converted to "relatively benign" hydrochloric acid. Well, in a perfect world the gasoline in your tank is converted only to "relatively benign" carbon dioxide and water. Engines are less than perfectly efficient as we know and produce carbon monoxide, NOx, and other pollutants in the exhaust. So unless the process converts PVC efficiently, it's going to produce volatile halogenated hydrocarbons, which no one wants in the air.

And a bit more:

There's also a question of scale. The capacity of the Carthage, Missouri plant is stated to be 200 tons of turkey waste per day, and that's for a huge ConAgra turkey processing center. Compare that to the capacity of a typical refinery, which processes some 320,000 barrels of crude per day or some 45,000 tons (42 gallons per barrel and assuming a density of 6.5 pounds per gallon). For our themal depolymerization process, how can you get enough waste feedstock for a world-scale plant and the efficiencies attendant thereto? As Cap'n Steve suggests, you can't.

And really, you just don't get a lot of energy out of a ton of turkey waste compared to a ton of carbon-based feedstock. A ton of coal produces 20.48 million BTU of energy. A ton of turkey waste (using the man in the story as a benchmark) would produce about 450 pounds of oil, or about 70 gallons, or around 10 million BTU, a figure that agrees well with the DOE figure of 12 million BTU per ton from poultry litter. Why buy a cow when you can get milk at the store? For sheer bang per pound (and dollar), oil, natural gas and coal are hard to beat.

So -- energy sink, not enough feedstock, doesn't scale. SO what do you do? You talk big, impress the backer and hope to walk away with enough money. Of course, taking this to a bonded testing lab (which would have pay a huge fee if someone let the secret out) and have them check the process out is not gonna happen. Nor does Romana seem to have any background in energy systems (Google is strangely quiet). Could not happen to a nicer city than WA DC... Posted by DaveH at November 13, 2005 7:19 PM