27-02-2013, 10:36 AM
Transforming Waste to Fuel
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Abstract
The research for this paper was collected by Michael Wolford; a student in the Environmental Management Master’s program at Webster University located at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. It is the premise of this research that Changing World Technologies’ (CWT) thermal conversion process can be used to significantly reduce or eliminate organic waste and produce oil in amounts that can alleviate the United States’ dependency on foreign oil.
The population increase in the United States will continue to prove problematic with regards to oil consumption and waste disposal. Over seven billion tons of organic waste is produced every year and could be used to make oil using the thermal conversion process. The process converts organic material to an equivalent of #4 diesel fuel. A commercial production facility has been built in Carthage, Missouri and processes 200 tons of turkey offal a day with a conversion rate of approximately 2.5 barrels of oil per ton of waste. This process also turns the bone from these carcasses into a paste and separates it from the oil; this fuel is sold as heating oil for boilers and the bone paste is sold as a high grade fertilizer. Tests were conducted on various forms of plastics (also called shredder residue) from the automotive industry and proved this feedstock would also be an excellent source for the thermal conversion process.
Study Limitations
CWT’s thermal conversion process is not new science, but a new process with limited available research data. Some of the material that was reviewed or requested from the testing source was proprietary and could not be used for this research. Research still needs to be conducted on various forms of waste to determine the amount of oil that will be produced and the types of other products that will result from the process.
Work Plan
Research for this paper was conducted through a combination of interviews with the primary researchers and documents found on websites. The primary researcher was the engineers at CWT, Ford, Daimler/Chrysler, and General Motors; the secondary research was collected from the Environmental Protection Agency, CWT documents, and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
The paper was structured first with data from waste disposal procedures and figures, oil consumption, oil production procedures, and then with the CWT and automotive industry facts from their primary research.
Waste in the United States
There are several environmental and economic issues that should be considered when developing a solid waste management plan. When waste managers consider the viability of using the thermal conversion process, it is important to consider the content of the municipal waste in their area. It is reasonable to assume that municipal solid waste is fairly consistent from community to community with a few exceptions for areas that are home to certain industries such as steel, paper, etc; therefore, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) publication, “Municipal Solid Waste in the United States” is an excellent guide in determining the feasibility of using the thermal conversion process.
Environmental Issues Associated with Waste Disposal
Although the number of landfills has decreased since the 1990s, the capacity of new landfills has increased. Several environmental issues should be considered when building a landfill that will have lasting impacts on communities and their environment. Leaking wastes from a landfill into drinking water sources is always a possibility and landfills are notorious for odor problems, rodents and vectors which can spread disease. Although wastes that enter a MSW landfill are not considered hazardous waste, consider the hazardous materials that are thrown away from private homes. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act strictly regulates businesses and government, but does very little to regulate individual households. The individual may not discard a significant amount of hazardous waste, but collectively the community can discard thousands of tons of hazardous waste per year in MSW landfills.
Oil Refining
We get our fuels and many other products from crude oil. Crude oil is a combination of hundreds of different types of hydrocarbon chains that are useless unless you separate them. The refining process is fairly simple and hydrocarbons can be separated by heating the crude. Each type of hydrocarbon has a specific boiling point so the crude is heated and the carbon chains are distilled into separate useful products. The length of these chains will define the type of product that is made; see Table 2 for the types of products and the associated carbon chain length. The thermal conversion process takes the long carbon chains in the plastics, waxes, heavy oils, etc. and converts them to smaller chains or fuels (How Stuff Works, 2007).
Thermal Conversion Process
The thermal conversion process consists of pressure cooking the material so that the chemical bonds break and the feedstock converts to the individual constituents that make up the material. For example, the plastics may contain several different molecules beside hydrocarbon chains. This process breaks the bonds so that the other elements may be separated from the hydrocarbon molecules and breaks the larger chains of hydrocarbons form the plastics into smaller chains of molecules that make fuel/oil. Figure 2 is a representation of the thermal conversion process of shredder residue. (Appel, 2006)
Thermal Conversion Successes
The initial CWT pilot project was conducted near Philadelphia. The Philadelphia pilot project was used to determine if the thermal conversion process would work for waste food processing. The pilot facility is located at the Philadelphia Naval Business Center, Philadelphia PA. The facility was designed to process 5 to 7.5 tons of food waste per day (Navy, 1999); the pilot project was eventually expanded to process shredder residue from the automotive industry.
The automotive industry creates millions of tons of waste each year from their manufacturing processes as well as automobiles being dismantled after their usefulness. CWT teamed with Daimler/Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford to turn shredder residue into a usable product. (Wheeler, 2007) After a car has been sent to the junk yard, they are generally sold for their scrap metal value and once all the metal is stripped from the vehicle the left over pieces are called shredder residue (approximately 25% of the vehicle). This residue contains both organic and inorganic material, but the inorganic material is separated and the organic material turned into oil by the thermal conversion process. Also included in the shredder residue are large appliances such as refrigerators and ranges. (Winslow, 2007)
Conclusions
The waste disposal problems in the United States will continue to escalate with the growth of our population and the United States will continue to see a dependency on foreign oil because of our dwindling supplies. A process is available for mitigating both problems. Changing World Technologies has developed a thermal conversion process that can transform waste to fuel. This technology would be a feasible alternative to sending municipal waste, bio-waste, and other organic wastes to a landfill as well as offer a source of fuel to aid in relieving our dependency on foreign oil.
The waste-to-oil numbers clearly indicate that the amount of waste we could convert to oil every year could not only eliminate our need for foreign oil, but would reduce or eliminate waste disposal in the United States. The science behind the process is valid and the commercial production of renewable oil has been a success for CWT. The process works for any organic material and would be an excellent technology to add to an existing municipal solid waste management system.