From time to time, our hippie friends worry that we’re on the brink of running out of oil and plunging into the Dark Ages. I don’t worry about this at all because technology will save our bacon as it has so many times in the past. Someday we’ll have the Hydrogen Economy, with clean-burning and cheap fuel. But before we get there, we’ll manufacture more crude oil to replace the stuff we’re pumping now. We’ll do this with a process known as thermal de-polymerization or TDP:
TDP does the same thing the earth does when it turns organic matter into oil, but a lot faster, using standard refinery components and techniques. The technology is not quite competitive – barrel for barrel or ton for ton – with existing energy sources, but if all the secondary costs and benefits (transportation, waste disposal, pollution and disease control, compatibility with existing energy infrastructure, vulnerability to terrorism, etc.) were factored in, it would look more competitive than other energy alternatives
So don’t worry, be happy.
The $64,000 question, though is how much energy you have to put into the system to get the output.
They say it costs them – if they’re tallking offal- 15BTU’s per 100BTUs. If this is true, it’s possible the process is already more efficient than petroleum, as you suggest.
However, the company, Changing World Technologies, formed in 1997 is still not public yet, but is apparently still in venture mode. Does that mean anything bad? I don’t know. But it’s nice to know that biomass research is getting attention. It’d be nice to clean up those hog farms & get rid of OPEC (interesting irony there, given the religious sensibilities of OPEC members).
The issue isn’t that we are running out of oil. Collapse becomes a very real possibilty when our demand for petroleum exceeds our capacity to produce it.
Peak Oil is not a theory, it is not a conspiracy, and frankly it has nothing to do with hippies. The International Energy Agency, which is the global authority on energy statistics and suggests policy to most OECD countries, recognises that Peak Oil is inevitable.
Peak Oil is certainly coming, however there is still much debate about when it will arrive. Some very well respected geologists, republican congressmen, and investment bankers, believe that the peak is already upon us, or that it will come within the next 5 years. If that is the case, and I hope to hell it isn’t, then no technology, however effecient and impressive, is going to save us. It will take decades to build the infrastructure required to transition to an altnerative energy source. Incidentally, the EROEI of TDP is .85 – it’s a net loser, like hydrogen at the moment. The EROEI of oil is 30+. TDP will not be replacing oil.
We have some very good potential free energy technologies at the moment. Blacklight power, and Low Temperature Nuclear Reactions are very promising. Sadly, we don’t appear to have the wisdom to invest sufficiently in their development.
you say:
Mankind has never been faced with this situation before Richard.
I’ll have to agree with Bayrard, technology will not be what saves us, macroeconomics will with technology as the tool it wields. Energy producing capacity seems to have risen over the years rather than having been depleted, and should we find that oil supplies are actually running short, prices will rise and alternatives will be found.
I also recall that during the 60’s it was proven that the population explosion had doomed our planet. Those calculations are now revised and it seems that we are headed for depopulation around 2050 which will set off an aging population crisis. I guess some of those embedded assumptions were a little off…
Correction: “Human ingenuity, driven by the lust for profit, will save our bacon once again.”
mczaudua erdfcv http://tyghbngitat.com/