Friday, June 19, 2009

Sparking it up on Ethanol in SWVA

Kilo from Spark it up has a few posts on turning garbage into fuel.
See them here and here
Anything that contains cellulose, from paper to cardboard to food waste, can be turned into ethanol, Ted Cox of Reclaimed Resources Inc. says. And that doesn’t just include trash — animal waste, sewage sludge, wood and yard trimmings also would work.
In the plant, trash would be run through a series of washing systems that would separate out plastics, metals, glass and other materials that can’t be turned into ethanol while the material that can be used is ground up and broken down into a pulp that’s pushed into a pipe.
The pipe would go very deep into the earth — about 2,000 feet or so — and would harness the powers of gravity, pressure and friction to generate high temperatures, which break down the trash pulp into sugars and nutrients, which can then be fermented into ethanol.
Any impurities that make it into the pipe are turned into inert, harmless material that can be used as daily cover at the landfill, Cox claimed.

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