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."
Apples (Score:5, Funny)
IGasify. Portable usb gasification plant.
Power your IPod with your own excrements! As only pop stars can do right now.
Re:Apples (Score:4, Funny)
That's spelled poop stars now. And I'm damn glad smellovision wasn't invented yet.
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Actually... Smell-O-Vision exists already (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, Smell-O-Vision exists already, and made its only appearance in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery. The process injected 30 different smells into a movie theater's seats when triggered by the film's soundtrack.
And director John Waters released a movie in 1981 called Polyester, with "Odorama", whereby viewers could smell what they saw on screen through scratch and sniff cards.
I saw/smelled it, and it was GROSS!
Be very glad that technology is still quite immature.
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It was also done as part of Children in Need one year here. All of the scratch and sniff slots smelt of mothballs.
Even worse (Score:2)
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Don't forget the new IGasify Nano. Now ENIAC-sized!
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How about getting a bunch of these things and backing them up to the local landfill? We have large ones scheduled to go on line at our local landfills but it might be a lot faster to simply get a bunch of small ones. Supposedly our entire garbage mountain can be used to make electricity.
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Also at $850,000 for a highly complex peace of equipment, I wonder what they maintenance charge will be? What's the lifespan of the major components? Did that 3 years at full capacity to pay for itself estimate take those costs into account?
Lawsuit ready to happen... (Score:2)
Here's a better idea... (Score:2)
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Beans, beans, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot
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Eat Beans!
America needs gas!
I have that beat: (Score:4, Informative)
You obviously never went on a high school trip with teenagers in a van eating pumpkin seeds. That was the highest efficiency matter to gas conversion I've ever seen.
They need a 'reformer' (Score:2, Interesting)
A reformer that removes all the carbon before it's burned would have made the tech a homerun.
Just =5 on a 10 point scale.
reformers are being researched for fuel cells because they can convert gasoline to hydrogen and remove that carbon.
"removed"? (Score:2, Informative)
You do realize that reformers turn the carbon into CO2 right?
Re:"removed"? (Score:5, Funny)
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Transformers, Carbon in disguise.
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hmm that was meant to be Reformers, Carbon in disguise. Oh well.
Thinking Creativly About Energy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy (Score:4, Informative)
rural folks in india have been doing that since forever.
Yeah, there are definitly gasifiers that are smaller than the 'factory size' that the summary claims. Germany, for example, had many cars running gasifiers during world war 2, since they were short on oil.
There are also DIY projects that have build cars like that:
A Honda Accord that runs on Trash [treehugger.com]
A converted pickup truck [laughingsquid.com]
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Re:ALL Power Labs (Score:2)
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rural folks in india have been doing that since forever.
http://www.vatanappally.com/images/yp_cow.jpg [vatanappally.com]
Rural folks in India must have got the idea by watching Meatloaf in the 1980 musical 'Roadie'.
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Says something about your productive value when you can be replaced by someone akin to the person in that photograph.
Re:Thinking Creativly About Energy (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose there is no one single way of dealing with shortage of fossil fuels so we will need many methods if one of them deals with big part of our garbage that is only good.
Plants that process manure are maybe not a common thing but their use is getting more and more popular. The advantage is there also that the processed thing can be used as fertilizer and it does not stink as terrible as the original thing. Why the method is not more popular I do not know. Seems to be no brainer.
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I can think of two reasons. The first is that manure digesters, like all energy infrastructure, requires a lot of money up front. Farms are strapped for capital as it is with buying seed, fertilizer, and equipment, so it's tough to come up with the necessary money, even if it pays for itself in X number of years. That doesn't explain why it isn't done on a municipal level, but at that scale the logistics of collecting the waste an
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I don't know about Burning them for power but we used to take dried cow chips and pack them with us on camping trips. You could light them with fatwood (sawdust and wood splinters mixed with wax or oil and presses into sticks with wicks on one end for lighting like a match) and they would stay lit long enough to dry out wet wood. It doesn't smell like crap at this stage and if you can't find wood, several pieces of this would give you a fire big enough to cook on. Also, it was relatively light so it made pa
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Sounds like a bunch of B.S.
The solution is a distributed architecture (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a nice idea. In fact I think all solutions which work by localizing energy distribution is the way to go. Minimizing needless transportation of energy and waste is a huge improvement over the current situation.
I don't think there will ever be a single "silver bullet" tech to solve our energy and environment issues. The solution is lots and lots of small local (even house-level) improvements.
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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
Re:The solution is a distributed architecture (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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True men (which I make no claim of being) build their man cave first, then let the woman build thier poofy "doll house" on top.
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Check out ICF (insulating concrete forms) construction. You can have a house that's made out of poured concrete that looks pretty much like a "normal" house. Certain systems go up to R50 insulation value in the walls.
Re:The solution is a distributed architecture (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The solution is a distributed architecture (Score:4, Funny)
Economies of scale isn't just a fancy word
No, it's three words.
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Perhaps one day in the hopeful future, large apartment complexes or city blocks will have mini-plants which have a septic and solid waste processor, and perhaps even something to separate metals or plastics for re-use.
Here in Europe we have processors like that... called humans.
In our household we separate paper, cardboard, glass, metal, energy (burnable trash) and biodegradable (gets composted).
Of course, we have separate trash cans for most of these in our apartment complex. Only metal, glass and energy has to be transported elsewhere. (Our local shopping center accepts those in their recycling center.)
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?
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Nitrous oxides are primarily a concern as a smog/ozone precursor. Ground level NOx is a health concern because it will create an acid, as the parent mentioned.
CO and NOx are basicly dueling pollutants any time you have a combustion process. High temperatures lead to NOx, low temperatures lead to CO. In California, most reguins are in attainment for CO, but many are not in attainment for NOx. Permitting most combustion sources will
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Sulphur dioxide dissolves in water to form sulphuric acid. Nitrogen oxides dissolve to form nitric acid.
Please keep those cattle farming by-products to yourself.
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Perhaps the thought underlying that teaching (and this is something I'm guessing at) is that the sulphur impurities in fuel more readily form oxides when burnt, and as a part of the overall mix of exhaust gases, nitrogen oxides didn't contribute much.
However (if this is indeed the case) this may be different for different fuels and different combustion temperatures.
Carbon Monoxide? (Score:4, Interesting)
CO to me usually means toxic and dangerous, not fuel source. I'm willing to believe it could be used to produce power, but I'd want to be quite sure it was well contained. It doesn't take much concentration of that stuff to kill a person, and the toxicity means you often lose consciousness before you know you're suffocating (and end up on the floor, where the air quality will be worst).
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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:Carbon Monoxide? (Score:5, Informative)
Then you will be pleased to discover that carbon monoxide is not only an ubiquitous industrial chemical used for more things than you are likely to imagine, but that it has been used as automotive fuel in times past, a bit like how compressed natural gas is used in some vehicles today. Yes it is toxic, but then so are most industrial chemicals and commonly used gases. This is actually pretty retro fuel technology, used when petroleum distillates were in short supply since you can produce it from damn near any organic matter (wood waste was a popular source). It says something about educational systems that you do not know that carbon monoxide has a long history as a fuel, since that was its primary application for a long time, usually by converting a carbon rich source into "water gas", a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. We have long since replaced water gas with natural gas and short-chain hydrocarbon gases from mined sources, which is far more cost effective in bulk.
I am not really directing this at you, but we need to get past the "gosh, it might be toxic!" over-reaction to some really basic chemistry. We have used "water gas" and carbon monoxide systems for a very long time as chemistry goes, and long before anyone really properly characterized its asphyxiating properties. If they could use it in the 19th century without killing everybody, then we can certainly use it in the 21st century without killing everybody. There is more truly nasty chemistry waiting to happen in your average household than any normal person likely imagines, and yet we somehow survive as a society.
Chemical toxicity is becoming like "nuclear" and "radioactive", bogeymen perceived as ineffable evils that will kill us all. It betrays a deep disconnect with the reality of the situation that, if allowed to drive political decisions, really will kill us all even if indirectly in a carefully designed hypo-allergenic padded cell. Fortunately, biology evolved in environments filled with radioactive, toxic crap, and is pretty good at mitigating the damage except in the most extreme cases that only a human could engineer. Yes, carbon monoxide is toxic, but it is also easily managed with some fairly primitive engineering.
Re:Carbon Monoxide? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Co-generation, or taking the products of one process and using the heat products or byproducts to power another has been around for generations. The distributed (geographically) nature of the co-generation process and the inability to handily drop the generated power into a grid is what kills that process.
In terms of toxicity, the groundwater is already contaminated in many areas with PERC (which could have been broken down through cheap catalysts and then 'burned') because we don't handle toxic chemical 'l
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CO/H mixtures are also known as Syngas [wikipedia.org].
I agree completely. Everything is turning into a DHMO scare [dhmo.org]. If you want to scare the heck out of someone, have then read the MSDS of some of the chemicals you can buy by the gallon at you local DIY store. Methyl Ethyl Ketone [jtbaker.com], xylene [jtbaker.com], etc. People blithely ignore the safety data for these because they think if it's at a DIY store it must be somehow 'safe'.
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I am not really directing this at you, but we need to get past the "gosh, it might be toxic!" over-reaction to some really basic chemistry. We have used "water gas" and carbon monoxide systems for a very long time as chemistry goes, and long before anyone really properly characterized its asphyxiating properties. If they could use it in the 19th century without killing everybody, then we can certainly use it in the 21st century without killing everybody. There is more truly nasty chemistry waiting to happen
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My landlord was cleaning house once for a dinner party they were having, and running short of one type of cleaner he added another (Clorox) to the bucket. We ran around the house opening all the windows (Germany in February is rather cold). Don't think "everyone knows". What "everyone knows" will get someone killed.
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Thank you for your informative response. I'd heard of "water gas" but didn't recall the chemical mixture involved - chemistry is fun but far from my strongest subject, and I've not studied it in some time.
I both agree and disagree with your "gosh, it might be toxic!" paragraph. True, we do need to understand that things which might be dangerous can be safely contained - I'm a big proponent of fission power, for example - and I in no way meant to imply that I thought these things *would* be dangerous. It was
Re:Carbon Monoxide? (Score:5, Funny)
Err, it's pretty obvious that they'd build some kind of safety mechanism. If you're going to point out dangers of various power sources and assume there are no safety measures being taken, here's a bit of airy scary information for you:
* Nuclear fuel, uranium, is radioactive and will cause cancer or direct radiation poisoning.
* Coal is full of mercury, and eating it will cause people to call you a mad hatter.
* Oil is bad because you can drown in it.
* Solar power is bad because the sun can give you sunburn.
* Wind power is really nasty because all those spinning blades can chop you up into teeny tiny pieces.
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* Nuclear fuel, uranium, is radioactive and will cause cancer or direct radiation poisoning.
* Coal is full of mercury, and eating it will cause people to call you a mad hatter.
* Oil is bad because you can drown in it.
* Solar power is bad because the sun can give you sunburn.
* Wind power is really nasty because all those spinning blades can chop you up into teeny tiny pieces.
You forgot a few.
Burning wood is bad for you. It produces toxic smoke.
Burning animal wastes for fuel is bad for the same as above reaso
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It can also cause asphyxiation, drowning and other nasty effects.
This is interesting - we see a potential to remove ourselves of one issue and hold up the red flags before it is even fully discussed.
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You misunderstood. I'm not saying that I don't think it could be safely contained, or that I'm unaware of the dangers of other fuel sources (although radiation aside - and I do in fact support nuclear reactor use - most fuels used in homes or businesses won't kill you just from being in the same room as a leak - will it have an added odor like natural gas does so you can smell it before the concentration becomes lethal?)
I was merely surprised that something which, until now, has been the cause of people ins
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It is a fuel source and was a major part of "town gas/coal gas" which was the usual form of piped gas prior to "natural gas". Which is where they idea of people commiting suicide using gas comes from...
Also used in the Second World war were reactors which partially burned wood to fuel internal combustion engines. Often for civilian use since the German military had priority access to regular fuel.
carbon monoxide is toxic (Score:3, Informative)
The pellets are dropped into the aforementioned downdraft gasifier, which breaks them down under high heat into a mix of methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Finally, this "syngas" is sucked into a generator or microturbine to make electricity, or piped to a furnace to make heat.
The summary has the idea that carbon monoxide is NOT an green house gas. While, this might be true the gas is then burned which should result in carbon dioxide. Tim S
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You could sequester the CO instead by using to gas bunnies, weighting the bunny corpses down with compacted garbage and chucking them into the ocean somewhere where it is really deep.
Oh you said a green solution. Sorry, try the next cubicle along. Chap with the pony tail will help you.
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The problem comes in when you're releasing carbon that has been sequestered for millions of years all at once.
So a forest fire is carbon neutral in your opinion? Tim S
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Still, shouldn't TFA still mention that the process still DOES produce pollution?
If it is efficient enough it does NOT produce air pollution; carbon dioxide is not pollution. Carbon Dioxide is a green house gas; but green house gas does not mean it is a pollution. Tim S
I wouldn't wanna be the guy to has to... (Score:2)
... siphon out and cart off all the, ummm, residue that's left after the gasification. Can you say "shitty job"?
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Is that an example of syllabic simplification? And is this an example of alliteration?
nothing wrong with landfill. (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you any idea how many billions of dollers there are to be made exploiting old landfill sites? Either by mining or collecting that methane for sale.
Most people who don't like them seem to think they are just holes in the ground that get filled up with crap and left to pollute. I live less than five miles from one, have done for many years, and not once has there been any smell or environmental damage. That area has some of the best hedgerows in the county, and as they cover over finished portions, the local wildlife is left alone to repopulate.
In contrast, constant development closer to me has destroyed a marsh, displacing a population of kingfishers (among other species, but they were the most prominant to my mind) and disrupting local river systes. They even redirected one river entirely, and now it floods every few years.
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There is a land fill not far from me that ended up polluting the local water table and made a crap load of people sick before it was discovered. The company that owned the landfill ended up putting water storage tanks in place of the wells and trucked in treated watter until it could plumb the entire country side and build a water treatment plant that those effected residents are forced to use.
Also, sometime around the 70's, the land fills started having to cover the garbage as it went in. They couldn't hav
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Needs "Marty!" tag (Score:2, Informative)
But can it power a flux capacitor?
Contrast? (Score:2)
So what exactly happens to the carbon monoxide "used to run generators and furnaces"? Oh, it's burned and so "dump[s] carbon dioxide into the atmosphere".
Where's the contrast again?
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The original article says
"waste-to-energy" sounds like they're saving some other fuel doesn't it?
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But "simply burn the waste" implies the opposite - and that's in the same sentence. The whole article is a load of shite.
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Yes, the same CO2 will still enter the atmosphere. But now it has heated some homes. Which in turn do not need to burn natural gas or heating oil for their heat, so that CO2 production is saved.
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Seriously, did you read the article? They're contrasting existing waste to energy plants (which burn the crap, and use the heat, either for heating, or electricity generation, or both) with gasification, followed by burning the gas for heating, electricity generation, or both.
Where's the big win?
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The big win is there are fewer toxic by products when using a plasma furnace. By use of the plasma ultra high temperatures (e.g. 30,000 deg F) everything ionizes and breaks down to their atomic levels and then recombine as much smaller and less toxic molecules. If you wanted to get rid of the US's stockpiles of chemical weapons this is the way to do it. Too bad it doesn't work for radioactive wastes as well.
http://gas2.org/2008/02/03/more-on-plasma-gasification-technology/ [gas2.org]
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There isn't one on the surface. I suppose burning-garbage > electricity > electric heat may be a less efficient way to heat a house than gasification > gas transport > gas furnace, but that all depends on how good their process is.
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Yeah, but the smart way to burn garbage is in combined heat and power (CHP) plants (that's what we do here in Paris),
garbage -> heat -> electricity + low-grade heat. Low-grade heat used to heat homes & offices, electricity used for lighting and so on.
For reference: (Score:3, Funny)
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Ehh, slap a compressor on it and fill 100 gallon tanks to drive around with.
The Nazis... (Score:3, Funny)
did this back in the '40s. you don't want to be like hitler, do you? burn fossil fuels like every other red-blooded american, dammit!
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Can this machine power itself? (Score:2)
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Does it generate enough energy to power itself and yield a surplus?
TFA says once it has been running for about 2 hours, it uses 7% of the generated fuel to power itself. It also talks about selling surplus power back to the utility.
Break even point? (Score:2)
What is the carbon footprint for the manufacture of this item? How long does it have to be run before the amount of carbon that went into its manufacture is balanced by the amount of carbon not being released into the atmosphere?
Eliminate? (Score:2)
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.
So instead of burying carbon, it's being shifted into a fuel that will be burned (releasing it into the air)?
A Possible Set of Clients... (Score:2)
I couldn't help but think of Landfills being an excellent customer base. The problem of Landfills filling up is serious around large metropolitan areas. I don't know how much tonnage of gases are generated at a Landfill, but if one of these contraptions generates 90% of energy as excess, then its time to start figuring out how to wire them up to the power grid.
As a side note, I looked at their web site. Company is still private, no stock ticker symbol. And their running a LAMP on Ubuntu, cool.
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The gas it produces still contains all the C-atoms of the original waste
How do you know that? Maybe part of carbon is left in compact solid residue that can be buried, while the produced gas has higher content of hydrogen than the original waste.
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It does redcue greenhouse gases (Score:4, Informative)
The system burns methane that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere. Methane has a much higher greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, because it absorbs more infrared radiation, therefore converting methane to CO2 has a positive effect in reducing global warming, even if the total carbon amount released is the same.
from TFA (Score:2)
The fact that it's truck size doesn't mean you cann
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They burn oil already to move the trash around. In the nearest city to me, they collect the garbage at a site then truck it to a landfill 35 miles away. Actually, about every town in the county does this except the ones closest to the landfill who take the garbage directly there. Suppose they permanently park this thing at the end of the street and instead of everyone taking their trash to the curb to be picked up by large trucks, they take it to the end of the block like they would if they had to put it in
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Electric cars aren't clean, they're hypocritic.
It depends on the fuel source.
Wind
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2135/2220294203_2023ebf503.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/12954724%40N00/2220294203&usg=__DkEq9CvwRsc7OiH5jhGtatUa4Sw=&h=360&w=500&sz=94&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=KHGmIM39nWPf3M:&tbnh=94&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Deastern%2Boregon%2Bwindfarm%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN [google.com]
Solar
http://images.google.co [google.com]
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I learned this on \. or similar so take it with a bit of salt. A lot of power stations run all night long, it's not cost effective to turn them on and off so much. As long as they don't have to crank up the power plants to meet the demand placed on teh grid (at night) by the 2 or 3 electric cars out there, there's no net increase in C02 emmissions to charge them. I could be talking through my ass though, I don't know the numbers involved.
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Which add up to what - 10% of domestic energy in the US? 15%?
In some parts of the country, this is true, but living a short distance from a huge windfarm and the Columbia river, a coal plant is a far distant and exotic power source to me. It would be expensive to ship in coal over the vast expanse of the great plains and continental divide.
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Or in the photovoltaic panels on the roof of the garage you park your car in...