A Waste Gasification Plant In a Truck 148
waderoush writes "There are plenty of waste-to-energy plants around the US, but most of them simply burn the waste, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Gasification technology, by contrast, converts nearly all of the waste into gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be used to run generators and furnaces. The problem is that most gasification facilities are factory-sized. Now a startup outside Boston has built a combination shredder-dryer-pelletizer-gasifier that fits into 30-by-8-by-8-foot shipping container. The so-called 'Green Energy Machine' can be backed up to a loading dock by truck, processing 3 tons of solid waste per day and putting out enough synthetic gas to run a 120-kilowatt generator or a 240-kilowatt-equivalent furnace. The makers say the machine can eliminate 540 tons of carbon emissions per year, in large part by reducing the amount of waste that goes to methane-generating landfills."
Always something to forget about... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure about the emission standards of Massachusetts, but I know that California was a stickler for oxides of nitrogen emissions.
It sounds like the temperatures involved here are high enough to form oxides of nitrogen (the cylinder of an automobile can be) and these are precisely the gases that are responsible for "Acid Rain".
Trading one problem for another?
won't reduce carbon emmission at all (Score:1, Insightful)
Whatever this system does to the waste, it won't reduce carbon emmission. The gas it produces still contains all the C-atoms of the original waste, and when burned, will release them as CO2. Apparently it will generate much more energy from the same amount of waste, which is obviously a Good Thing, but it only reduces the carbon emmissions per kWh generated, not the carbon emmissions per ton of waste.
Re:Carbon Monoxide? (Score:5, Insightful)
CO burns to CO2 with enough O2. It can be used as fuel, albeit a dangerous one. However, there are ways to deal with that. Gasoline, for instance, isn't a health drink, but we still use it everyday.
Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy (Score:2, Insightful)
Says something about your productive value when you can be replaced by someone akin to the person in that photograph.
Re:won't reduce carbon emmission at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Carbon Monoxide? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The solution is a distributed architecture (Score:2, Insightful)
The solution is lots and lots of small local (even house-level) improvements.
Mostly true. Need to keep in mind all costs and benefits however. There's a reason why centralized, large scale factories etc. developed.
Economies of scale at a central plant, including centralized transport and centralized construction, may outweigh the benefit of distributing the plant and reducing the costs of product transport. It depends on many different factors. e.g. The A380 is one of the most efficient passenger aircraft ever produced but it requires a big factory to build it. Ditto oil tankers. On the other hand there is currently much energy waste in the average first world suburban home with room for significant improvement. Just improving building codes would help a lot.
Oh, how true this is... (Score:4, Insightful)
A concrete subterranean bunker would be an awesome house! I've been dreaming about one of them for years. They have several advantages over traditional wood-frame-and-siding-with -lots-of-windows houses:
-Better insulation, so less energy leakage and lower electric bills
-Better disaster resistance (though flooding might be a concern). Your house won't get blown away in a hurricane or tornado, and you don't have to worry about the roof collapsing under heavy snow.
-Impervious to termites
-More resistant to burglars and vandals, and easier to defend against home invasions
-Possibly more fire survivability (structurally, at least). Assuming you get out, you might lose some possessions, but the structure will not contribute to the fire and will still be there after it's over. Done right, you could even seal it and let the fire suffocate itself, assuming that doesn't pose a problem to evacuation.
Unfortunately, my wife wants a traditional house. Something about appearance being more important than functionality...