What waste is easiest to recycle into fuel?

plastics, Rubber, anything petroleum based requires alot of heat and pressure to get it to break down into something you can use as a fuel and not release some really nasty stuff into the air. Planet matter is best can be converted to ethenol or bio diesel. Some paper and household garbage can be converted to methane also.

What waste product we bury, would be the easiest to convert to fuel?

Generally speaking - all Agro Waste : Garbage + saw dust, saw dust, tobacoo dust, baggase waste, bamboo saplings, paper waste, wood chips, rice husk, seed husks, cotton ginning waste etc. etc.

You've to convert them into brequettes and burn them in a solid fuel fired boilers (the big water-tube drum-type boilers) to generate high pressure steam to drive steam turbine to generate electricity. Not mobile units.

Okey should have asked for clarity on this my fault. First how much electricity are you trying to generate and for what purpose. That will dictate the type of engine or motor required to run it. By mobile do you mean off the back of a truck or moved by a person with a cart? IS this going to be in a city or in the outback some where? By waste product something that can be readly used imediately or something that con go through a distilation process and then shiped out the sight where the energy is being generated?

The local Electric Membership Corporation dumps a mountain of wood cuttings in the local landfill. I want to find a small boiler to couple with a generator, to burn this waste and tie it back into the local grid. It needs to fit on a flat bed trailer. Yes I left out a thousand mechanical details, work with me. You have the general picture now.

James

Ok well there are a number of ways to go. Just burning the wood is the easiest but it would throw alot of CO2 in the air and if you have neighbors near by the wood smoke is going to get them mad because it will start to coat everyone's property in that case you would be better off converting it to an ethanol and then burning it that way. You mite also want to consider a bio mass reactor which basically means put the stuff in the ground wait for it to start to decompose and then siphon off the heat and methane gas that is produced and burn that. If you wanted something none conventional. There are other routes requiring exotic motors and saline to power generators but location and the speed by which you would want to start it up would be the deciding factor

Mine is only for big Power Plants 2MW & up. Go to Ali Baba site and you will find a swarm of Chinese takeing over the whole site with wood pellets machines. This wood chips/cuttings then become green fuel ideal for environment. Maybe you will find something you are looking for.

Remember on reusable fuel small applications are not viable and worthwhile the expense. Mobile units - never since you require a huge storage areas and conveyors system to bring the wood cuttings into chippers to driers to pellet making machine to bagging and/or burners of boilers, the ash disposal units, the feed water distribution system of the boiler, the dual fuel firing system of gas/ furnace oil in event you run out of reusable fuel and so on.

Tires may be the easiest since there is already developed technology for burning these as fuel. The only problem with this is its large scale. Power generation, cement kilns, etc. are typical applications. There is also the problem of the sulfurous air pollutants which is why they no longer build cement factories that use tires as the fuel source in the US. (Now they use the recycled oil from cars.)

Cow and horse manure. And you can get it in abundance from any dairy or horse stable in abundance. It already comes giving off methane gas.

Dont pigs generate manure too? I know there are a lot of foul smelling pig farms in the Midwest.

It's chicken houses in Georgia. Disposal is a future industry.

James

I think people are more cow and horse manure friendly as opposed to pig manure. I've visited a pig farm once and once is really enough.

Hog lagoons are one of the biggest environmental problems we have here in eastern, NC. Pigs make some of the most awful smelling stuff you can imagine, and in abundance. Chickens run a close second and cows are a far distant third.

Yes I agree.

I have passed by hog farms and can smell them every time. I live near dairies and only sometimes do they give off the offensive odors.

I have never had any issues with offensive odors from stables or horse ranch. I have even been to a stables and shoveled a trailer full of horse manure and it didn't really smell.

So if you want to go for an alternate fuel, go horse manure.

What if we talk up a generic design, small in scale, using off the shelf parts, to capture methane. ?

James

Well you can start with a metal five gallon can with a lid and burn a pilot lamp under it for a little heat to accelerate the process and a tube going from the lid to bleed off the gas.

Will that work?

It's pretty basic.

here's something to look into - car fluff.

This is the non-metallic material left over from auto recycling, mainly upholstery material and foam rubber.

There are mountains of it everywhere, and currently, no one really knows what to do with it.

If you could find a way to turn this stuff into fuel or energy (plasma furnace?) in an environmentally acceptable way, it would be huge. And promoting/demonstrating it in travelling road show fashion might just be a great way to "spread the word".

Environmental advances mean jobs too. I agree. It would be part of the process. Perhaps in twenty years people will smile at our primitive environmental technology. A need always drives someone for answers.

James

Recycling plastic is expensive.

Recycling outfits work on a break-even basis, many have to be subsidized by the government to remain in operation.

I would guess that the reason why foam rubber isn't recycled is because of the cost of recycling it is too high.

I know it over in Visalia, but how's Mooney's Grove doing?

It's still there, that weary Indian is still standing.

The optimum method for processing any carbon matter is by slow pyrolysis; not the industrial fluidized bed or other "fast" applications. This is a technology that is sorely underestimated in its ability to provide smaller scale and localized clean, efficient fuel/electricity production. It is very suited to being mobile/skid mounted. Some of the better companies striving to commercialize their interpretations of this technology are Sutter Pacific Industries, Epidra and Enval. Google them to learn more about these processes. I have researched this technology for years and have seen so many companies come and go, so much scrutiny needed in evaluating companies. There are a few that I knew of that made it to commercialization but their applications are very specialized....have to dig in memory banks for the names....

Emissions are relatively benign (a small amount of CO2 which can be trapped) since the quench towers or other apparatus built into the system essentially harvests the volatiles/non-volatiles for re-use or conversion to syngas. Attach a micro turbine to generate electricity. Leftover char residue is great to recarbonize soil, a superior approach to nitrification in order to recharge soil.

Is the CO2 that is reclaimed sold again as a by-product?

Yes, could be as designing capture into the componentry has been discussed.

Just found another company that offers really small scale units and a variety of configs/apps that are interesting.

http://www.3tsinternational.com/products/products.htm

Whatever happened to that guy that claimed he had a process for breaking down any organic material into light crude; water, and minerals? He received quite a bit of press about five years ago, and one of the first things he was going to tackle was turkey entrails. Seems as though the turkey business has become so large that the industry is going nuts trying to find some way of disposing of all the bird innards.

This seemed to be a very promising process and an industry that would run off the leavings of other industries... Once again, "Poof!" It just disappeared and nothing more was heard.

Does anyone remember this?!

If someone has a really good idea that could be a replacement for fuel, I can imagine the oil companies buying them off.