[Galemp]

This news article seems rather dubious... supporting articles are few and far between... but if this is for real... whoa.

Anything Into Oil: Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year

Apparently, "This process can deal with the world's waste. It can supplement our dwindling supplies of oil. And it can slow down global warming." What do you think?

[Ulala]

Hmmmm....

an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock.

Uhh.. it goes on talking about excrement, but couldn't one argue that an intimate human creation = a child/baby/fetus/whatever you call it these days.

[Ace]

Heard about this a few years ago. While it sounds like bull****, it's actually true. They've had problems going into full production though with their first processing plant.

[Andreas]

I must admit I didn't read the article through, but sounds like BS to me.  Correction; the more I read it, the more BS it sounds. Sure we could just use fat people to produce energy by burning them, and then sending the meat to some third-world country.

Did that make sense?

[Ulala]

It seems like it'd be all over the world news if they found a way to an endless supply of oil (since there seems to be an endless supply of garbage/human waste/whatever). I just find the whole thing too hard to believe. If it was true, they technically are burning oil, plus the many other ingredients, to produce oil. This points seemingly in a "I know! I'll use this water to make more water!" direction, assuming it's not a load of crap in the first place.

[Scuddie]

I know of these machines, and they are nothing new.  They are called by some people, "elemental reconstruction devices".  In theory, it can create anything out of anything else in the same manner as a catalytic converter shifts emissions gasses into CO2 and water.  

However, problems they have faced in development is that some of the common byproducts were often very dangerous.  Some even speculated that they would be equivelant of anti-matter (read: WMD).  Also, efficiently produce supplies from waste, there would need to be a HUGE amount of the said waste before mass production.  Furthermore, the power required would be too high to effectively re-arrange matter to suit the needs of the desired product.  

I dont know anything else besides this, but I have heard of these devices often.  And by the looks of the needs and risks, it wont be implemented any time soon.

[Carl]

can it turn space-time into oil? cause that would roxor! we could get fuel and warp drive at the same time!

[WMCoolmon]

However, problems they have faced in development is that some of the common byproducts were often very dangerous. Some even speculated that they would be equivelant of anti-matter (read: WMD). Also, efficiently produce supplies from waste, there would need to be a HUGE amount of the said waste before mass production. Furthermore, the power required would be too high to effectively re-arrange matter to suit the needs of the desired product.

I dont know anything else besides this, but I have heard of these devices often. And by the looks of the needs and risks, it wont be implemented any time soon.

So it can turn...*looks at word filter*...fecal matter into anti-matter explosives?

If that's true, I predict an investment made by the US government...

[Scuddie]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon


So it can turn...*looks at word filter*...fecal matter into anti-matter explosives?

If that's true, I predict an investment made by the US government...

No, not quite.  AFAIK, it doesnt work that way.  Supposedly, a large collection of waste or supplements - garbage, discharge, toxic materials, fecal matter, etc - can create certain materials by breaking them down to the elemental level.  Compounds are created from the elements, and supplies from the compounds.

For example, to make water, we have plenty of otherwise useless junk that gets thrown into the machine.  The supplies are broken down, and we now have lets say ten units of hydrogen, and five units of oxygen, plus a plentiful supply of other supplies as well.  The machine should then form five units of pure water (H20) as a result of the usage of the needed supply.

However, once the machine uses the most of the supplies, the remains may be in an unstable state.  Imagine taking the sodium out of table salt to create something else.  You are then left with a very poisonous and toxic gas, chloride.  What was once harmless has now become a very serious threat.

Anyway, what I am saying is that the device works like this:  Large variety of sources -> Large variety of products.  It would take several different items to re-form into one product, and those very same items are used multiple times to form more products.

EDIT:  But this device looks to be specific for re-forming carbon-based products, so it will work a bit differently, and probably for efficient for the products...  But much more inefficient for the sources.

[Flaser]

The reason why this looks really promising isn't that it makes more fuel - it's the potential to synthesize oil the base for the whole chemistry industry.

Burning oil - or its products - is the worst thing we could do.

The only pity is that it can't create long fiber carbon-hydrates.

@Scuddie - IMHO the best solution for the power demand would be going nuclear - use the atomic power to synthesize the carbon hydrates for the chemists.

[vyper]

I've heard about this type of device before. Frankly I'm both excited and concerned.

You could turn absolutely anything into a fuel source using this technology. This has obvious benefits, but it's the "anything" that concerns me as Ulala points out. What do we have a constant plentiful supply of? Dead human beings. Who is to say, in the name of averting a catastrophic energy crisis (no doubt played into hysterical proportions by the media and government experts), we would not use the dead as input for these devices?

Lovely thought eh? I wouldn't mind so much actually, since I figure it's better than slow decomposition - but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

[Tiara]

Dude, do you even know how much waste we produce each day? How much ****, cow****, garbage bags, whatever. Hell, couldn't we even use nuclear waste for this ****?

[vyper]

Was just an idea you know...

[Flipside]

Fire Colon Torpedos!

[WeatherOp]

And the money question is How much doo-doo does it take to make one pint of oil?

[vyper]

Originally posted by Flipside
Fire Colon Torpedos!

Talk about sh1ts and giggles.

[IceFire]

Is this similar to the incinerator technology that a company was building in Japan.  They were hoping to have it ready by 2010 or so and it was supposed to be a possible solution for garbage, even radioactive waste...the temperature was so high that it would break things down and you'd be left with a lightweight building construction material for new homes.

[Bobboau]

this is the thermal depolemerisation thingy right? the thing that was mentioned in Discover like two years ago?

it has major bakking by a number of large oil corperations as well as agrocultural companies, people are putting there monie were there mouth is so it seems like it works, more than that they actualy had a smaller scale plant in production already, proveing the proces works. now the thing is it isn't anything that can be converted to oil, it's anything can be put into the machine and it will get as much oil out of it as it can the rest will be reduced to dust, radioactive material is one of the few things that absolutely can not be used. the whole thing works by breaking the complex organic compounds that everything thing alive is made of (and makes) and breaking them down into smaller chuncks, that is were it ends the smaller chuncks are short chain hydro carbons, fule oil. anything carbon based can be converted into oil, this is mostly animal waist and plastic. now go through your trash right now, find everything that is plastic food (for anything) or paper. all of this would be great feed stock to be converted into oil.
this isn't magic, the energy is comeing from the sun, plants capture the CO2 convert it into some organic compound wich gets eaten by something converted into something else, energey is being used all this time to convert it to one thing to another, it isn't suprizeing that there would be a way to reurn it to it's simpler form. and best of all it would stop the greenhouse effect dead in it's tracks, this produces oil only as fast as it can be removed from the atmosphere.

[Sesquipedalian]

But is it worth it?  How much energy does it take to do the converting, and how will it be supplied?  This system will only be useful if we start building more and better nuclear plants or renewable resource generators to provide the power.  Otherwise we'll have to burn oil to make it.

[Flaser]

If we burnt oil we made with the plant to make more and have a net gain than it's still worth it.