 Synthetic gasoline? Syndiesel from coal? Oil-based fuels from algae, grasses or waste grease? Single alcohols like ethanol? What about higher mixed alcohol fuel?
Which fuel is the best and why? |
By Rick Miller The 423-acre parcel in the town of Farmersville [New York] was once on its way to becoming a regional landfill. Now, it’s on the county’s list of properties that will be auctioned off at the end of the month – with the caveat that it can never be used for landfill purposes. Who cares about pollution, solid waste, and landfills? One young man in Texas clearly does. Josh Zoppoth is an 18-year-old college student at Collin County Community College, studying Fire Science/EMT. He cared enough to write a letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper opposing the creation of a new landfill, and he articulated several good reasons why it’s a really bad idea. Better still, he pointed out that there are alternatives such as plasma gasification that can do a better job of taking care of his county’s trash. Link to Josh’s letter to the Editor, Jacksboro Gazette News/The Jack County Herald Think this level of concern about landfills is an isolated phenomenon fueled by a few environmental whackos?
Read about the landfill nightmare a Canadian province is facing, and what public company is at the bottom of it all: http://www.thewhig.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2046197 Ask a smart person what we should do with America’s trash and you’ll probably get a blank stare. Followed by a “what do you mean?” When you find the smart person momentarily at a loss for words, it’s a good opportunity to share Bioroot Energy’s vision for helping Americans build new businesses to monetize trash and biomass, and clean up their local environments. Almost nobody on the street knows about plasma gasification or its massive potential to change the way we manage solid waste. But word is getting out and interest is increasing. Meanwhile, major magazines such as Newsweek run articles such as How Our Purchases Affect The Environment with nary a mention of how we dispose of trash, or how we create energy, or its impact on the environment. This morning a Digg user sent us the article linked above, and there’s a discussion here, where the Digg user even pointed to this site: http://digg.com/environment/How_Our_Purchases_Affect_the_Environment? America has its focus on the marketplace for buying and selling stuff. We don’t yet focus on developing a marketplace for converting all that used up stuff to energy after it has served its useful life. If you don’t think all the stuff around you will end up in a landfill, burned, buried or get carried out to sea, you need to learn more about archaeology. Most Americans probably don’t yet see trash disposal as a problem to be solved, much less as a magnificent opportunity to develop localized green energy businesses that will fundamentally improve the way we manage and dispose of our solid waste and excess non-crop, non-food biomass. Think about it from the marketer’s perspective. How to solve a national problem that isn’t widely viewed as a problem? Taking out the trash is so deeply entrenched in the American way of life that the thought of anyone using your area’s solid waste and excess biomass to generate biofuels and getting paid for their effort might seem like science fiction. Or wishful thinking. How about neither of the above? The technology to create biofuel from trash and other stuff nobody wants is ready to go and set to be deployed widely in municipal settings in coming years. It’s only a matter of money, time, and place. So the question is, exactly who will plan, develop and own these facilities, and reap the rewards? America needs all the clean alternative energy it can make. And America needs to become more efficient with lifecycle management of trash or get buried or poisoned by it eventually as well. Why not combine the two to form a whole waste to energy solution that actually works for the good of everybody and not just somebody? When America’s waste makers (that’s all of us) learn to clean up after ourselves in a sustainable, non-polluting, carbon-negative way and, better still, get paid for it, our children will have a brighter future. Not until. If you don’t think this topic is important, do some reading and find out why improving waste management might be one of the most important undertakings of our time. Humanity’s future and the condition of our environment rests on our ability to innovate a baseline clean energy solution from trash that is non-polluting, carbon-negative, and viable. Think about what turning your town’s trash and garbage into clean energy could mean, eventually:
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