Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Diesel Waste

By Randy Roedl

The United States government is constantly working hand in hand with interested citizens in coming up with capital ideas to decimate waste. There are many waste-related problems such as landfills and the pollution they cause on ground water; nuclear waste that need to be transported away (as far away as possible so as not to cause damage); and even industrial wastes that always pollute the waters and kill marine life.

These problems, when looked at on a different angle, might be used to solve the concerns themselves. There are now studies and researches (that are being supported by the United.States. government which aim to put a stop to waste disposal problems plus add the benefit of having good sources of clean gasoline!)-all it takes is a little innovation from pioneering minds.

One of the departments that consume much fuel reserve is the Department of Defense. Five billion gallons of fuel have been used up by the U.S. military in 2007 alone. Of course, to be able to use these barrels upon barrels of fuels, they have to be transported even to hot spots like Iraq or Afghanistan; and fuel is something that terrorists badly need. With this issue on hand, the Department of Defense decided to do something about it and the result was such a breakthrough!

Velocys and Diversified Energy are two parties that have worked on a system that might acquire the involved jet and diesel engine gasoline by the military. Their answer was very simple-all that they had to do was change all the waste material* at the base camps into gasoline. This garbage could comprise mere bits of paper, food or even wood.

The process begins with the collection of the required waste products and then placing them in gasifiers (produced by various Energy). The gasifier transforms any material that has carbon into a mixture of hydrogen and CO2 (also known as syngas). Velocys' fuel synthesizer then converts this gas into fuel (in hydrocarbon liquid form).

The invention of this waste gasoline solves two United.States. military problems: the minor problem on how to dispose waste from the bases and the major problem on transporting gasoline. In the long run, this might even stop gasoline 'hijacks' by terrorists. The synthesizer and the gasifier are small enough and so far, the two companies have shown promising demonstrations that these two equipments would be able to deliver what they are promising.

Although this is hardly off of the planning room, military forces trash conversion might spell fuel independence for the department in the years to come. Looking at this invention initiated by solving military forces troubles, the country, in general might actually benefit from it. The source of fuel comes cheap (in fact, it is far from being costly as it comes from waste materials) and the end-product is highly useful. If all types of wastes that are being produced by tons each year are to be converted into sources of energy, The United States of America would be able to compete in the production of fuels; and when this happens, it might be economically healthy for the country, too. - 2368

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