Trash-To-Fuel Process Validated By US Military

An anonymous reader writes "After going through all kinds of grief, including being shut down by the Washington State Ecology Department, classifying them as an 'incinerator,' it looks like Green Power Inc is finally ready to shine. The Air Force, Navy, Army, and Marines, in a joint effort, validated their technology in November, and the results are now being published for the first time. For every 100 tons of municipal solid waste feedstock processed each day, the plant produces 1240 gallons of Naphtha, 3700 gallons of Kerosene, 6900 gallons of Diesel and 3000 gallons of Fuel Oil. And even the ash can be used for cement or asphalt. They generate 1 MW of electricity to sell to the grid 24/7, running three shifts per day to keep the plant going, employing approximately five people per shift. Sticker price is $25 million. ROI, 3.5 years. Maybe with this announcement, the trend of no sales in the US will change, compared to the 72 foreign contracts backed by letters of credit."

If it sounds too good. to be true...

[tomhath]

... it probably isn't. This guy is a snake oil salesman [tradingmarkets.com].

Re:If it sounds too good. to be true...

[ladadadada]

I didn't see anything in that link to indicate that he is a snake oil salesman. There were certainly plenty of concerning allegations, but none of them alleged that he has sold them a product that didn't work. Most of them are regarding his failure to pay bills. The article mentioned the same thing, after mentioning that the reporter was a personal friend of the CEO. It all looks to me like he's a genuine guy with a decent product and bad business sense. I think I would have waited to see the results published by the third party before running this on Slashdot. The results linked from the site are actually hosted on its sister site, both of which are funded by Michael Spitzauer and don't look to be published by the US Military at all.

Re:Amazingly efficient...

[Atraxen]

If there is an additional energy input, and if that input is highly efficient, I'm ok with the energy balance. If we consider the trash to be thrown away (ah, love what I did there...) then it's energetically lost. That means for an additional energetic input of 8E8 BTU (I rounded up for high-but-not-perfect efficiency), we get fuel worth 19E8 (scaled to matching exponents). There's something to that sort of process - it's like having a huge interest rate savings account.

And let's remember that converting crude oil into fuel forms requires energy inputs (hydrocarbon cracking, etc.) - but the energetic 'loss' is worth it to us since we get a portable energy source with more energetic value than we spent (ignoring the intrinsic energy from the fuel oil, which =0 to us in terms of utility until after processing.) As long as we break even (or better) in terms of processing energy input vs. energy of the fuel output, we lose nothing we haven't (literally) already thrown away.

If, of course, their information is otherwise complete and not overstated, and if the energy input is efficient enough to break even or better.