JBI’s Plastic2Oil™  can use unwashed, mixed waste plastics.  JBI developed and scaled up the original processor, then enhanced and commercialized a process that converts difficult to recycle waste plastics into separated, refined fuels.  The current model processor runs continuously, currently at 20 metric tons per day with a footprint of about 3000 square feet.

JBI's Plastic2Oil Reactor. Click image for the largest view.

There are several processes that can convert plastic and other hydrocarbon materials into products for use in the production of fuels, chemicals and recycled items. The list includes pyrolysis; catalytic conversion; depolymerization; and gasification. The Plastic2Oil conversion process is most similar to pyrolysis, and involves the cracking of plastic hydrocarbon chains at ambient pressure and low temperature using a reusable catalyst.

The processor installation uses its own off-gas as fuel from about 8% of the feedstock, making for very low operating costs: 67kWh electricity for motors and pumps, and approximately $7/hr for a cold start using natural gas is all the outside energy required.

A curious aspect of the emissions is the releases are less than a natural gas furnace, and the process releases about 14% oxygen back into the air.  For New York State installations emissions monitoring and scrubbers on the stack are not required.

JBI’s process accepts mixed sources of non-recyclable plastic. Although many sources of feedstock are available, JBI is focusing initially on post-commercial and industrial sources, since these are readily available in large supply, and present a cost-effective solution for companies who currently have to pay to dispose of this plastic waste.  It’s the sensible case of going to where the mountain already exists and gets built more each day.

The payoff is each 2.2 pounds (1kg) of plastic yields about a liter, a bit more than a quart of oil products in the form of fuels.

The raw plastic feedstock is first treated to a shredding and then granulated. A hopper is loaded with about 1,800 pounds of the plastic granules. The plastic is loaded into the processor by a continuous conveyor belt between the hopper and reactor. The plastic is then fed into the processor chamber where it is heated by burning off-gas produced from the conversion process.

In the reactor, the plastic hydrocarbons are cracked into various shorter hydrocarbon chains and exit in a gaseous state.  JBI’s proprietary catalyst and unique process engineering enables capturing nearly 90% of the hydrocarbon content from the plastic.  Any residue or non-usable substances (about 2%) remain in the processor chamber and are automatically removed while operating.

From the processor, the gasses containing gasoline and diesel are condensed and separated, then proceed into temporary fuel tanks.  All of the gaseous “light fractions” (off-gas), such as methane, ethane, butane and propane, exit the temporary fuel storage tank and are compressed and stored. Butane and propane liquefy when compressed and can be stored and sold separately.  Methane can be sold into the natural gas grid and ethane can be resold back into the chemical market.

An entire cycle for one 1800-pound load takes less than one hour to process into fuel for a little over 200 gallons of recycled fuel products.  At $2 per wholesale gallon a reactor will earn $400 – nearly $10,000 per day.

The agreement announcement follows developments made by John Bordynuik earlier this year.  Now the Plastic2Oil processor has two columns supporting 4 catalyst trays. Quality control includes two columns for control and specificity of fuel fractions, a cyclone (for particulate removal in vapor), fuel filters (for particulate removal in liquid), and a centrifuge (for additional redundant particulate trapping), as well as column enhancements to guarantee particulate free fuel.

Fuel additives are injected inline while fuel is being produced to increase their effectiveness on both heavy and light fuel condensing systems.

That 2% of residuals compounds that don’t make it into products is inert enough after processing to be simply sent to a landfill.  This makes a 50-fold reduction in waste. That in turn makes one more feature extremely attractive.  The new residue removal system works while the processor is running, so the reactor does not have to be cooled down or stopped to remove residue. Plastic recycling is now a continuous process instead of a batch operation.  That explains the attractiveness in a major way.

Mr. Bordynuik, JBI’s CEO and primary engineer, deserves great credit for coming this far.  The competitive note is the catalyst is a trade secret, and justifiably so, delivering a very short reaction time and impressive yields.

The point that consumers might note is that 2.2 pounds of many plastics are worth about $2.00.  While the demand isn’t there yet for widespread reactor installations, it will come.  It will be great to use the plastic and then use the oil within again.

Got a big pile of plastic waste?  Back in 2009 JBI engaged IsleChem, an independent chemical firm providing contract R&D, contract manufacturing and scale-up services to validate the P2O process and provide engineering support so that JBI could apply for an Air Permit for the Niagara Falls Facility.  IsleChem performed more than 60 small-scale runs of various types of multicolored, mixed plastic feedstock. After analyzing the energy consumption, residue, off-gas, and material balance, IsleChem determined that our P2O process is repeatable and scalable.

Contact info is on the JBL website. Better get in line.

In the broad sense the two reports are showing a shortfall in generating capacity coming over the rest of the decade.

The earliest report discusses the shutdown of a large number of small coal generation plants totaling 50 gigawatts.

The later report is showing new natural gas generation plant increases to be 40 gigawatts.

That’s a 10 gigawatt difference.  10 gigawatts is a lot of wind turbines.

Coal Generation Plants in the US. Click image for the largest view.

The earlier study highlights the near-term impacts of global economic recovery on U.S. energy markets and examines the implications of lower CO2 prices on the long-term energy outlook.  Add to that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released proposals for the Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR), the Air Toxics Rule, coal combustion residuals, and cooling water intake structure standards.  Those are the big motivators.

This isn’t all bad – much of the coal generation is going to be small, less efficient and older plants.  The closings will clean things up.

Yet the costs from generation in old, long since paid for plants using cheap coal is going to be replaced by new facilities, with more costly natural gas fuel.  One can expect that rate increases are going to come, and the increases could be quite substantial.

The later study cuts the suggested coal generation losses back to match the new natural gas generation.

ICF suggests there are differences, which should be expected, about contrary projections indicating environmental regulations will severely impact U.S. coal production, ICF projects that U.S. coal production will be maintained at more than 1 billion tons per year in the long-term despite the projected retirement of nearly 40 GWs of coal-fired electric generation in response to new environmental regulations and relatively low natural gas prices.

The ICF study also finds that increasing demand for renewable energy credits along with the loss of key federal incentives will cause renewable energy credit prices in eastern states to rise sharply over the next 15 years. Similarly, California will fall short of the state’s bundled interim requirements through 2016, maintaining upward pressure on delivered renewable energy credit prices.  For folks and businesses in these areas this isn’t good budgetary news.  But an early warning can make quite a difference on being ready.

The un addressed segment is the cost of natural gas.  Its popular, and quite short sighted to expect that natural gas is going to stay cheap.  Comparing the experience of natural gas to coal pricing is very revealing.  The highs and lows of natural gas prices swing over a much larger range than coal prices.  Granted, power companies can bargain, and will contract for long terms, but those huge power company contracts are going to pull product out of the rest of the natural gas market – particularly affecting home heating and industrial process heat.  Home heating will be the last “marginal unit” priced product in the future.

The impact could well be a double hit, electrical power and heating.

With the economy in slow mode there could be a strong case made that long-term capital investment in conservation and efficiency would be lower cost now than when the economy heats up again.  The time to get a deal might be now.  For larger electric and gas users this might be a prime time to build in future savings.

There are no hard numbers for projections into the future for electricity and gas rates.  But one can go far in cutting and eliminating one’s risk.  From ground source heat pumps to LED lights the potential to see expenses go down has never looked better.

All one needs is a sense of surety about future income – that might be the main problem holding folks back.  But to keep energy costs as a small share of ones’ budget, one is going to have to invest, and the timing looks good, now.

Tentzeris explains, “There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it. We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability.”

Ultra Wideband Electromagnetic Antennas. Professor Tentzeris holds a sensor (left) and an ultra-broadband spiral antenna for wearable energy-scavenging applications. Both were printed on paper using inkjet technology. Click image for the largest view. Image credit: Gary Meek

Not only is the team harvesting enough electromagnetic radiation to make it worthwhile, the team is using inkjet printers to print combined sensors, antennas and the energy-scavenging capabilities on paper or flexible polymers.  It’s the energy harvested, the tool printed, self-powered and ready for use – all on a sheet of paper.  That brings a gasp for the implications. Times are changing.

The sensor field is ideal – self-powered wireless sensors could be used for chemical, biological, heat and stress sensing for defense and industry; radio-frequency identification (RFID) tagging for manufacturing and shipping, and monitoring tasks in many fields including communications and power usage.

There are lots of sources transmitting electromagnetic energy in the universe.  Proximity to a transmitter is going to help, but there is no place in the open where there is no power at all.  Electromagnetic energy is transmitted in many different frequency ranges, or bands.  The team’s scavenging devices can capture this energy, convert it from AC to DC, and then store it in capacitors and batteries. The scavenging technology can take advantage presently of frequencies from FM radio to radar, a range spanning 100 megahertz (MHz) to 15 gigahertz (GHz) or higher.

Ultra Wideband Electromagnetic Antennas and Energy Scavenging Device. Rushi Vyas (front) holds a prototype energy-scavenging device, Professor Tentzeris displays a miniaturized flexible antenna that was inkjet-printed on paper and could be used for broadband energy scavenging. Click image for the largest view. Image credit: Gary Meek.

The team’s experiments of gathering in the TV bands have already yielded power amounting to hundreds of microwatts, and multi-band systems are expected to generate one milliwatt or more. At a milliwatt, the power is enough to operate many small electronic devices, including a variety of sensors and microprocessors.

Note that storage isn’t explained so far.  That’s because combining energy-scavenging technology with super-capacitors and cycling the operation to match power built up, the Georgia Tech team expects to power devices requiring above 50 milliwatts.  This method builds up energy in a battery-like supercapacitor and when the required power level is reached a burst is used to work for a brief work period.

So far the team has successfully operated a temperature sensor using electromagnetic energy captured from a television station that was half a kilometer distant.  That’s a start, so now they’re preparing another demonstration in which a microprocessor-based microcontroller would be activated simply by holding it in the air.

What makes the team’s work exemplary is exploiting a range of electromagnetic bands.  Harvesting across the widest possible spectrum increases the dependability of energy-scavenging devices.  The antenna-harvesting device could be used by itself or in tandem with other generating technologies.  For example, scavenged energy could assist a solar element to charge a battery during the day.  At night, when solar cells don’t provide power, scavenged energy would continue to increase the battery charge or would prevent discharging.

But the marvel is in utilizing inkjet technology to print the full energy scavenging devices on paper or flexible paper-like polymers.  The technique is already used to produce sensors and antennas separately. Combined the technology offers paper-based wireless sensors that are self-powered, low-cost and able to function independently almost anywhere, now.

They should be quite low cost.   To print electrical components and circuits, the Georgia Tech team uses a standard materials inkjet printer.  But they add what Tentzeris calls “a unique in-house recipe” containing silver nanoparticles and/or other nanoparticles in an emulsion.  This approach enables the team to print not only RF components and circuits, but also novel sensing devices based on such nanomaterials as carbon nanotubes.

It’s been a long road.  Rushi Vyas, a graduate student who is working with Tentzeris and graduate student Vasileios Lakafosis, remembers Tentzeris began his research group for inkjet printing of antennas in 2006 when the paper-based circuits only functioned at frequencies of 100 or 200 MHz.

They’ve come a long way, “We can now print circuits that are capable of functioning at up to 15 GHz — 60 GHz if we print on a polymer,” Vyas said. “So we have seen a frequency operation improvement of two orders of magnitude.”

The Georgia Tech University web page devoted to the team and its results offers several immediately adoptable uses.  Most make great sense and may see commercial products soon.

As power needs decrease and tool designs reach further into optimizing efficiency more sensors and other devices that self-power are going to be a boon.  Not just from the expected low cost, but the nearly no cost to install and use.  This is great work that will make a big difference.

Laser Igniter and Spark Plug Comparison. Click image for more info.

So far lasers strong enough to ignite an engine’s air-fuel mixtures were too large to fit under an automobile’s hood.  At the upcoming Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics in Baltimore on May 1-6, researchers from Japan will describe the first multibeam laser system small enough to screw into an engine’s cylinder head.

Takunori Taira of Japan’s National Institutes of Natural Sciences, one of the presentation’s authors expects the new laser system will be made from ceramics, and could be produced inexpensively in large volumes.

One problem Taira points out with conventional spark plugs is they present a barrier to improving fuel economy and reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a key component of smog.

Spark plugs get the engine ignition job done by sending high-voltage electrical sparks across a small gap between two metal electrodes. The hot spark ignites the air-fuel mixture in the engine’s cylinder producing a controlled air fuel burn that forces the piston down to the bottom of the cylinder, generating the power needed to move the vehicle.

Engines make NOx as a byproduct of combustion burns. If engines ran leaner by burning more air and less fuel, they would produce significantly smaller NOx emissions.

Spark plugs can ignite leaner fuel mixtures, but only by increasing the spark’s energy with more volts and amps, but those high voltages erode spark plug electrodes so fast, the solution is not economical.

Lasers on the other hand ignite the air-fuel mixture with concentrated optical energy, have no electrodes and don’t introduce high voltage and amperage across electrodes inside the cylinder.

Lasers also improve efficiency. Conventional spark plugs sit in or near the top of the cylinder chamber and only ignite the air-fuel mixture right up close to them. The comparatively cold metal of the nearby electrodes and the cylinder walls absorbs heat from the air fuel burn, quenching the flame front just as it starts to expand.  (The why behind the hard cold start explained.)

Taira explains lasers can focus their beams directly into the center of the air fuel mixture. Without being quenched, the flame front expands more symmetrically and up to three times faster than those produced by spark plugs.

Equally important, Taira points out, lasers inject their energy within nanoseconds, compared with milliseconds for spark plugs. “Timing – quick combustion – is very important. The more precise the timing, the more efficient the combustion and the better the fuel economy.”

Laser ignition offers less pollution, greater fuel efficiency, and may not wear out.

Hold on to your seat – making small, powerful lasers has, until now, proven difficult. To ignite combustion, a laser must focus light to approximately 100 gigawatts per square centimeter with short pulses of more than 10 millijoules each.  That multiplied perhaps 3000 times per cylinder and perhaps six or eight cylinders comes to quite a bit of energy.

“In the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were limited to basic research because they were big, inefficient, and unstable,” Taira says. Nor could they be located away from the engine, because their powerful beams would destroy any optical fibers that delivered light to the cylinders.

Taira’s research team overcame this problem by making composite lasers from ceramic powders. The team heats the powders to fuse them into optically transparent solids and embeds metal ions in them to tune their properties, a very clever design.

The ceramic designs are easier to tune optically than conventional crystals. They are also much stronger, more durable, and thermally conductive, so they can dissipate the heat from an engine without breaking down.

It gets better:

Taira’s team built its laser from two yttrium-aluminum-gallium (YAG) segments, one doped with neodymium, the other with chromium. They bonded the two sections together to form a powerful laser only 9 millimeters in diameter and 11 millimeters long (a bit less than half an inch).

The composite generates two laser beams that can ignite fuel in two separate locations at the same time. This would produce a flame wall that grows faster and more uniformly than one lit by a single laser.

This is because one laser is not strong enough to light the leanest fuel mixtures with a single pulse. By using several 800-picosecond-long pulses, however, they can inject enough energy to ignite the mixture completely.

Taira’s research also shows a commercial automotive engine will require 60 Hz (or pulse trains per second). The team has already tested the new dual-beam laser at 100 Hz. The team is also at work on a three-beam laser that will enable even faster and more uniform combustion.

The highly promising laser-ignition system is not yet being installed into actual automobiles made in a factory. Taira’s team is, however, working with a large spark-plug company and with DENSO Corporation, a member of the Toyota Group.  You might note that DENSO broke the ground on the iridium spark plug to rave reviews and tests a few years ago.
Here’s the team: Nicolaie Pavel of Romania’s National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics; Takunore Taira and Masaki Tsunekane of Japan’s Institute for Molecular Science; and Kenji Kanehara of Nippon Soken, Inc., Japan.

Lean burn, a dear goal for gasoline engines for decades may well be on its way.  Cheap enough, and with perhaps kits to apply to older vehicles, spark plug installs could make a big dent in gasoline consumption.  Real payoffs will come when computer controls can exploit the new air fuel mix versatility.  It should offer alternative fuels and mixes better usefulness as well.

This is great news.

Fly Ash at 2000x Magnification. Click image for the largest view. Image credit Wikipedia.

Charles Carraher, Ph.D., explained at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society last week that the more than 450 coal-burning electric power plants in the United States produce about 130 million tons of “fly ash” each year. Before air pollution laws, those fine particles of soot and dust flew up smokestacks and into the air. Power plants now collect the ash.  What to do with all that?

Example of a Fly Ash Mound. Click image for the largest view.

Coating concrete destined to be rebuilt of America’s crumbling bridges and roadways with some of the millions of tons of ash left over from burning coal could extend the life of those structures by decades, saving billions of dollars of taxpayer money.  The report on a new coating material for concrete made from fly ash is hundreds of times more durable than existing coatings and costs only half as much as some alternatives.

Getting use from that fly ash is a very good idea, and extending the life of the world’s infrastructure is a timely and valuable idea.  If things last hundreds of times longer a lot less infrastructure will need rebuilt permitting a lot of new needs to be funded.  This is good.

Fly ash Spill From The Kingston Fossil Plant. Click image for the largest view. Image credit Wikipedia.

Carraher explains from the pollution view saying, “Fly ash poses enormous waste disposal problems. Some of it does get recycled and reused. But almost 70 percent winds up in landfills every year, where space is increasingly scarce and expensive. Our research indicates that this waste could become a valuable resource as a shield-like coating to keep concrete from deteriorating and crumbling as it ages.”  That would be 91 million tons, quite a pile.  And when it gets a way, quite a mess.

Rebar Corroding Before Concrete Pour. Click image for the largest view. Image credit RebarCap.com

The idea is better than the headline suggests.  The new material can be used to coat and protect from corrosion the steel reinforcing bar, or “rebar,” rods embedded in concrete to reinforce and strengthen it. The coating also is suitable for repairing damaged concrete. Those two uses have great merit.  Many sound contractors will order epoxy painted rebar at great expense to insure that structures won’t come apart from the pressure of unprotected rebar corroding and pressuring its way out of the concrete, cracking and undermining the strength.

Epoxy Coated Rebar. Click image for the largest view. Image credit Midvalley Rebar.

The ACS press release isn’t specific on the repairing suggestion.  Repairing can mean a very wide range of things.  But even if the repair limit is just stopping degradation and/or water infiltration the usefulness is striking in the magnitude.  Wear resistance, such as on a roadway isn’t mentioned,  but if the idea can get to concrete surface reconstruction at less cost than asphalt, the idea has legs that might use up a bunch of the fly ash in inventory over time.

Carraher, who is with Florida Atlantic University is part of a joint project between industry with Felix Achille, of Blue World Crete and colleagues including Charles E. Carraher, Ph.D., Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Madasamy Arockiasamy, Ph.D., Dept. of Civil Engineering; and Perambur Neelakantaswamy, Ph.D., Dept. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The laboratory tests report that the coating has excellent strength and durability when exposed to heat, cold, rain, and other simulated environmental conditions harsher than any that would occur in the real world. The coating protected concrete from deterioration, for instance, that involved exposure to the acids in air pollution that were 100,000 times more concentrated than typical outdoor levels environment. Coated concrete remained strong and intact for more than a year of observation, while ordinary concrete often began to crumble within days.  This has powerful implications, particularly in China where building is at a furious pace and flyash accumulates even faster. Perhaps the winds won’t blow so much all around the world someday.

Carraher cited U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates for the cost for repair, restoration, and replacement of concrete in domestic wastewater and drinking water systems. They range up to $1.3 trillion, and by some accounts must be completed by 2020 to avoid environmental and public health crisis problems. Crumbling concrete roads and bridges will require hundreds of billions more.  Those numbers are huge and imply a huge use of energy and taxpayer cash – saving any part with a net cash benefit is worth pursuing.

Carraher’s presentation at the ACS meeting keys that use of the coating could extend the lifespan of those structures, with enormous savings, while helping to solve the fly ash disposal problem.  Actually let’s just save all the money we can and make our structures last longer.  More info please, sirs.

The study also points up another matter, the energy used to treat wastewater now is quite significant, and any energy recovered for a gain would offset operating expense and the drainage system costs.  The estimate is the United States uses about 1.3 percent of the nation’s electrical energy to treat 12.5 trillion gallons of wastewater each year.

There is one other important point overlooked – wastewater holds a huge repository of organic phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen compounds that should be returned to the soil.

On with the numbers – the research team learned the mixed wastewater examined using freeze-dried of samples to minimize loss of volatiles, had 16.8 kilo joules per liter, while the domestic home type wastewater tested had 7.6 kJ/L, nearly 20% higher than previously estimated.  This compares with previous published measurements of the internal chemical energy of wastewater measured at 6.3 kJ/L.  Domestic is up 20%, the mixed example is up 260%.  That’s getting into a serious attention getting energy density plus the other resources.  It’s also a lot of easy raw material to be overlooked.

How this came to be is from mental inertia.  Wastewater isn’t something folks want to spend a lot of time thinking about.  Aside from the monthly bill or a clogged up drain wastewater is pretty much out of mind.  But wastewater contains many largely uncharacterized and undefined mixtures of compounds, including many organics, likely to range from small, simple chains through to more complex molecules. All organic compounds contain energy stored within their bonds.

The energy that can be obtained from wastewater by different processes varies, methane gas from anaerobic digestion, electricity from microbial fuel cells, or hydrogen in the case of microbial electrolysis cells, or a fermentation process. Large amounts of research are being undertaken in all of these areas, but there has been very little work conducted to quantify the amount of energy held in wastewater to start with.

Chemical Oxygen Demand or COD is the current metric used to assess the energy of wastewater. But there is no standard relationship between COD and energy content – the metric is an inference of the energy contained within the sample.  Amazing this has been overlooked for so long.

As the paper explains, there is quite a difference between boiling off the water to get to the solids vs. a freeze dry and holding the volatiles for measurement.

This brings us to the point, recovering the whole energy value of the wastewater stream isn’t going to be easy.  Even with far better numbers of what’s there, coming up with a recovery technique that’s efficient and cost effective is a whole new field ripe for the taking.  But if you’re interested, this paper is a must read – its likely the new baseline metric for establishing the energy in wastewater.

When one considers the 56.8 trillion liters of U.S. wastewater are worth something on the order of 954.681 trillion kilo joules (954.681 quadrillion joules) and its already conveniently piped to each municipality’s treatment plant, the mind suddenly refocuses – even when the basic contents are briefly considered.  There’s gold at the end of the sewage lines.  The raw material production, transport and delivery to a central location are already in place.  Can it get any better than this?  But . . .

Can that energy be recovered economically?  That’s a nearly new question.  With the new numbers, a metric based in energy instead of a chemical reaction draw, the foundation is much better, stronger and economically promising.  Extraction likely can work to great profit when the ingenuity, innovation and profit potential are used and applied.

Still one wonders now, what potential exists beyond the municipal resource in industry, agriculture and river flows?

Plastic is one of the most versatile synthetically produced materials in the world and is also one of the environmentally unfriendly substances produced by man.  Considering its utility in myriad of industries and life spheres, it seems impossible to give up plastic entirely.

Consider this – a single plastic bottle takes about 1,000 years to break down completely.  Plastics pose a difficult problem from the manner in which it is disposed.  The fact is plastic unlike some other materials cannot be recycled easily. Typically manufactured from petroleum, its estimated that about 7 percent of the entire world’s oil production in a year is used for plastic manufacturing. That’s higher than the oil consumption of Africa. Plastic’s recycle rate around the globe is dismally low; its carbon footprint includes incineration and land filling. Plastic trash is also causing major litter and pollution on beaches and oceans around the world. Tons of plastic from Japan and U.S. are floating in the Pacific Ocean, which significantly endangers marine life.

According to the data released by Plastic Waste Management Institute – effective utilization doesn’t just take into account the 20 percent of currently recycled plastic. But it also considers the incinerated 52 percent used for energy recovery like generating electric power or heat.

Akinori Ito, CEO of Blest said, “If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we prohibit CO2 production and at the same time, increase people’s awareness about the value of plastic garbage”.

The Blest machine employs an electric heater that controls temperature instead of flame making the conversion technology is quite safe.  The machines are capable of recycling polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene of numbers 2 to 4. PET bottles that fall under number 1 polypropylene, however, won’t work and cannot be processed.

The process result is crude gas is that can be effectively used to fuel stoves or generators. Processed with more refinement, the gas products can be upgraded to a gasoline substitute.

One kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of plastic using 1 kilowatt of electricity is capable of producing 1 liter (a little more than a quart) of oil. This costs approximately 20 cents or less than 80¢ per gallon at Japan’s electric rates.

Blest manufactures these machines in different sizes and so far had installed them at 60 places including fisheries, farms, small factories of Japan and abroad. “To make a machine that anyone can use is my dream,” says Ito. “The home is the oil field of the future.” Considering the fact that 30 percent of household waste in is plastic — majority of it coming from packaging — Ito’s statement is definitely not as crazy as it seems. At present, the smallest version of the machine is priced at $9,500US. The company is constantly honing its technology and looking forward to achieve a product that can be made available in poorest nations of the world.  These prices don’t involve mass production.

Ito is a bit of a campaigner.  He seems passionate about the educational aspect of the machine.  Ito has taken the model on many trips by plane to the Marshall Islands. There, he worked in conjunction with the schools and local government to educate people about the culture of recycling and the great value of useless plastic. Ito did it as a part of a project he took up a few years back. The program succeeded and it also offered a practical solution to get rid of plastics left by tourists. The oil manufactured is used for running boats and tourist buses.

For Ito, introducing the recycling concept to school children, their parents and teachers is his most important work. In Japan he demonstrates to them how drinking straws and packaging left over after lunch could be recycled. He also adds that if we were to use oil from the plastic rather than crude oil, the world’s CO2 emission could be dramatically slashed. He sarcastically questions the world “Its waste, isn’t it? This plastic is everywhere in the world and everyone throws it away.”

The problem with plastic is that when you through it away it doesn’t reform anytime soon.  Ito’s Blest offers at a remarkable low cost a way for communities to get some value for a problem that if left unanswered will get very large as more time and consumption goes by.  Some say there is a mountain of plastic out there and the mountains so far over much of the world aren’t getting any smaller.

The info offered doesn’t discuss that the process remains are, an ash, tar or other substance.  With a short list of plastics that work, perhaps the conversion nears 100%.  For those in search of a solution to cleaning up the plastics, be it the scenery or a landfill, a look at Blest is worthwhile, one might actually make some money for the trouble.

Not all plastic has a short useful life.  Of the 7% of crude going to plastic some stays in place years or decades.  But if recycling were customary another 7% of supply would gradually appear for the transport fuel market driving another demand wedge into crude oil’s price.

Known as carbon capture and storage or CCS the new pilot plant might be able to reduce CO2 emissions resulting from the employment of fossil fuels for power generation and other uses in industry to near zero and make available a product for reuse and sales.

During the combustion of fossil fuels reaction, such as coal, fuel oil, or natural gas, large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas that powers life on earth, could become a recyclable material.

Previous approaches to CO2 capture required expending significantly more energy and entail greatly increased operating costs, which raises questions regarding their efficiency and acceptance.  An experiment of immense cost as the U.S. government has shown.

The TU D Institute’s director, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Epple, and his 26 coworkers will be investigating the “carbonate looping” and “chemical looping” methods for CO2 capture over the next two years.  Both methods employ natural substances and reduce the energy presently required for CO2 capture by more than half. As Epple puts it, “These methods represent milestones on the way to CO2 free power plants. They might allow coal-fired, oil-fired, and natural-gas-fired power plants to reliably and cost-effectively generate power without polluting the environment.”

The carbonate looping method involves utilizing naturally occurring limestone to initially bind CO2 from the stream of flue gases transiting power plants’ stacks in a first-stage reactor. The resultant pure CO2 is then liberated in a second reactor and can then be stored. The advantage of the carbonate-looping method is that even existing power plants can be retrofitted with this new method.

TUD's Carbonate Looping Block Diagram. Click image for the largest view.

On new power plants, the chemical looping method can allow capturing CO2 with hardly any loss of energy efficiency. Under this method, a dual-stage, flameless, combustion yields a stream of exhaust gases containing only CO2 and water vapor. The CO2 can then be captured and stored.

TUD's Chemical Looping Block Diagram. Click image for the largest view.

Due to the pilot plant’s height, the TU Darmstadt has built a new, twenty-meter high experimentation hall on its “Lichtwiese” campus to house it. Construction of the new hall and pilot plant took twenty months. The plant has already demonstrated its ability to bind CO2 in conjunction with initial trial runs.

The investigations of these new methods are being supported with grants totaling seven million Euros from the European Union, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs, and various industrial partners supporting the initial trial runs.
It all sounds really good.  As one peruses the block diagrams, even though in German, the temperatures are significant.  900ºC + is quite hot and offers s significant source of recoverable heat as well.  The idea that the process will be so economical begs testing, which is just what is in store.  The “industrial partners” and the rest of us want to know.

Lets suppose the process is a great success.  There will be new demand for limestone, and the market for CO2 would get a huge new supply.

If very cheap, the CO2 supply would go far for supplying recycling organisms.  Its possible that a significant portion of the plants fuel demand could someday be met by recycled CO2 fuel products.

The global warming alarmists have given one golden nugget – the pressure to capture CO2 for reuse.  If the TU D Institute’s ideas come to economical fruition, then a quicker cheaper source of fuel production and a multiple use of the fossil fuel’s carbon could get started.  As either a global warming alarmist or denier that would be a very good thing.  CO2 is a pretty precious commodity, its the fuel of life after all.

The popular idea is build more roads, or encourage more people to ride bikes or share their cars with others, and improve buses and other forms of public transport.  BUT!  How about another way – organize the signals!

Stefan Lämmer at the Institute of Transport & Economics of TU Dresden and Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich have recently shown organization could reduce traffic congestion markedly by re-thinking the way we try to control how traffic flows.  Three Cheers for the Innovators!

The idea today is that lights should cycle on and off in a regular and predictable way, but this idea, the pair says is unnecessarily restrictive. And less orderly patterns could be far more efficient, reducing travel times for all, and making traffic jams far less frequent.

Currently traffic engineers normally tailor the cyclic operation of signal lights to match known traffic patterns from the recent past. Lights on main roads stay green longer during peak hours, for example. But so far it requires supercomputers or engineers to do the tuning.

Lämmer and Helbing wondered if traffic lights might devise better solutions on their own, if given some simple traffic-responsive operating rules and left to organize their own on-off schedules. To find out, they modeled the flow of traffic as if it were a fluid, and explored what happens at road intersections, where traffic leaving one road has to enter another, much like fluid moving through a network of pipes.

Traffic Signal Flows Compared. From the working paper. Click the image for the largest view.

In principle, if traffic entering a road overloads its capacity jams obviously arise. To avoid this, Helbing and Lämmer gave each set of lights sensors that feed information about the traffic conditions at a given moment into a computer chip, which then calculates the flow of vehicles expected in the near future. It also works out how long the lights should stay green in order to clear the road and thereby relieve the pressure. In this way, each set of lights can estimate for itself how best to adapt to the conditions expected at the next moment.

Lämmer and Helbing found this simple rule isn’t enough: the lights sometimes adapt too much. If they are only adapting to conditions locally, they might stay green for too long and cause trouble further away. To avoid this the pair modified things so that what happens at one set of traffic lights would affect how the others respond. By working together and monitoring the lengths of queues along a long stretch of road, the self-organized lights prevent long jams from forming.

As simple as they seem these rules seem to work remarkably well. Computer simulations demonstrate that lights operating this way would achieve a significant reduction in overall travel times and keep no one waiting at a light too long. One of the biggest surprises, however, is that all this improvement comes with the lights going on and off in a seemingly chaotic way, not following a regular pattern as one might expect.  Try that with a supercomputer or as an engineer working in real time.

The key is that this kind of control does not fight the natural fluctuations in the traffic flow by trying to impose a certain flow rhythm from regular signal cycling.

Instead the rules exploit randomly appearing gaps in the flow to serve other traffic streams. According to the simulations, this strategy can reduce average delay times by 10% to 30%. Remarkably, the variation in travel times goes down as well, although the signal operation tends to be non-periodic and, therefore, less predictable. You can’t say precisely how the lights will go on and off, but you can be sure your drive will be shorter.

Sign my city up.

Helbing points out, the scheme eliminates other irritating problems, such as drivers having to wait a long time at empty intersections because the signal schedules are determined by the traffic flow at busier times, or lights cycling even in the middle of the night when there is no need. The self-organizing traffic scheme eliminates these problems because the lights remain responsive to local demands, for instance sensing an approaching car and changing to green to let it through.

Please sign my city up!

City planners in Germany are beginning to look at self-organizing lights as a practical solution to looming traffic congestion. Lämmer and Helbing are working with a German traffic agency to implement the idea. In previous tests based on Dresden’s road layout, they’ve had encouraging results.

These scientists have their working paper available in a pdf file available for download.  Its something you might want to look over and pass along to your local officials.

Argh.  One can hope these two fine innovators get a call from a commercial venture that would promote the system worldwide.  This writer hasn’t been in any area, urban or suburban that can’t use a massive improvement on signal operation.  After all, how much could it cost?  The first rule would work well in less dense areas negating the need for a full organization effort and the communication needs as density increases might be quite low cost with the available systems today.

Meanwhile, as you gnash those teeth, keep in mind the solution is out there.  That’s enough to really upset a time pressured driver.

US Grid Interconnection Map with the New Superstation Location. Click image for the largest view. Image Credit: Tres Amigas.

The proposed transmission station called the Tres Amigas SuperStation would allow power to be transmitted as needed among the three independently operating U.S. electricity grids: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection, and the Texas Interconnection.  These three grid systems supply power throughout the U.S. as well as to people in Canada and Mexico.  It’s a major tool to rationalize power production and consumption demands.

Tres Amigas got approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in March of 2010 to offer transmission services at negotiated rates across the three main arteries of the U.S. electrical grid. The agency is now considering allowing it to build and connect the mega-hub based in Clovis, N.M.  With the approval for services in hand, the likelihood that physically offering the service is quite high.  For many, there is a sense of relief and for others alarm as one company has the handle on the rationalization of the grid.  But the company isn’t named Enron.

FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff’s comments from March are being said to signal that the agency will ultimately support the project.  There remain several aspects are pending approval.

Wellinghoff said in a statement during a hearing, “This project, which is the first of its kind, will allow customers to trade power across the interconnections and to take advantage of opportunities to buy lower cost power from other regions. It may also open a new transmission path for customers interested in tapping the vast renewable energy potential in many parts of the country – Texas, the Southwest, the West and Northwest, the Southeast and the offshore Atlantic.”

Tres Amigas claims its super hub and storage facility would be able to move substantial amounts of power among the three systems. The facility will use Xtreme Power’s grid storage and management technology in an attempt to decrease brown-outs by offering more reliability and stability across the U.S., and enable renewable-energy sources like wind and solar to be better utilized.

Tres Amigas CEO Phil Harris said in part from his statement, “The role of the SuperStation is multi-faceted, but one of the most critical aspects will be ensuring that the input from renewable energy sources is incorporated smoothly into the span of the three grids, while providing reliable, flexible storage.”  Harris is the former head of PJM Interconnection, one of the largest grid operators in the U.S.

TresAmigas Superstation SuperConductor Map. Click image for the largest view. Image Credit: American Superconductor.

The major new technology going to work is using American Superconductor’s direct current superconductor power cables buried underground that will be powered by the company’s high-temperature superconductor wire and high-powered voltage-source AC/DC power converters. American Superconductor has said, obviously, that using underground superconductor cables greatly reduces the loss of energy during transmission compared to existing overhead power lines.  Somewhere the calculation of the energy loss from resistance is more than the power needed to run the superconductor system.

The new station will answer some of the issues of using wind power from the Midwest and solar in the southwest.  Having a fully interconnected national grid can bring much of the renewable energy potential into more complete utilization.  The lowest cost producers get to stay up much longer because the grid covers all four time zones.  Those four hours are a huge opportunity.  Early in the day the low cost west excess power can go east and late in the day low cost east production can flow west.  More complete base utilization should take some pressure off consumers if the savings pass through without being pocketed along the way.

The Tres Amigas plan calls for building a substation with three high-voltage converters able to connect up to five gigawatts, or 5,000 megawatts, worth of electricity from one grid to the others. Underground superconducting power cables would link the three terminals using direct current, rather than alternating current. Tres Amigas would act a broker, distributing and selling power among the three grids.  Just what that pricing power will do to consumers is yet to be seen.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Tres Amigas would burn about $1 billion for the station and startup.  It will have to payoff.

While there is no clear regulatory information on the results to consumers, the capital return for $1 billion would be 10 to 15% charged against the total savings.  One would hope the regulators figured that out and will bring a bit lower billings to consumers – but don’t bet on that.

The other opportunity of a full national grid is it helps make those production ideas for renewable shifting and leveling possible.  Much renewable power is still competitively expensive so getting the power off and used for payment and the investment amortized is in everyone’s long term interest.

This writer isn’t expecting an impact on the electricity bill either more or less.  Even if the new station was to earn 30% or $300 million that would only come to a dollar per citizen per year, less any savings.

The payoff will be in investments for new power plants that will be based on a bigger database, many brownouts and rolling blackouts should be stopped because of generating capacity and the local utilities should be able to look more to distribution upgrades.

It’s a good thing – finally getting very close.