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October 25, 2005
Garbage in, energy out
Poor nations are being inundated by unusable electronics, as a result of well-intentioned but misguided efforts to donate old computers to people who need them (and get a tax write-off). These broken and ancient machines end up in toxic landfill.
This looks like a job for thermal depolymerization!
The technicians here have spent three years feeding different kinds of waste into their machinery to formulate recipes. In a little trailer next to the plant, Appel picks up a handful of one-gallon plastic bags sent by a potential customer in Japan. The first is full of ground-up appliances, each piece no larger than a pea. "Put a computer and a refrigerator into a grinder, and that's what you get," he says, shaking the bag. "It's PVC, wood, fiberglass, metal, just a mess of different things. This process handles mixed waste beautifully."
. . . different waste streams require different cooking and coking times and yield different finished products . . . The oil-to-mineral ratios vary too. Plastic bottles, for example, yield copious amounts of oil, while tires yield more minerals and other solids.
UPDATE: Another job for thermal depolymerization: severe plummeting of oil production
Judith | 10/25/05 at 01:21 PM | Categories: Tikkun olam
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