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Thursday, February 09, 2006

Hydrocarbons!!

Energy was a topic of the state of the union adress, and I have heard alot of buzz about it lately. Less talk about Hydrogen Fuel Cells, a R&D wastland, and more about Ethanol, windfarming, solar cells and batteries.

From what I understand, Ethanol production processes are still below the 1:1 ratio, meaning it is still an energy "carrier"

Unfortunatly no-one has been talking about Thermal Depolymerization, which I think is the most exiting energy tech on the market. In a nutshell, waste goes in, is heated and subjected to high pressure, and turns into lite crude oil, minerals, and sterilized water.

Wiki on Thermal Depolymerization

"If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water..."

The flagship plant was around Phillidelphia, we have one here in Carthage, MO. I read it was barely returning a profit, due to
-having to pay for the turkey waste, which it did not expect.
-not benifiting from tax cuts geared to the biodeisel industry on a technicality
-having to install a exhaust scrubber due to odor complaints from the town (may have been bogus complaints.)

I read about a Japanese scientist recently who had 'invented' this same process. Hopefully the japanese jump on this, but I was curious if this tech has been in various stages for the past 25 years, why has a japanese man just recently stumbled onto a parallel discovery?


ADM, the Exxon of corn?

Archer Daniels Midland's corn proccessing division's profits jumped 74% last year. By the way, they make HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and Ethanol. I had heard that Cheney has financial interest in the Ethanol industry, but in any case ADM was a huge campaign contributer to the Bush Cheney administration. Corn syrup may be a major contributor to obesity in america. The government subsidises corn syrup and ethanol, otherwise neither one would be a viable product.

People always point at cars when they talk about petrolium, but agriculture is another huge abuser of the resource.

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