someone is doing it .. sooo
i remember reading an article about this a while back (posted it on the BBR thread). they claimed they could make crude for $12 a barrel. but that $12 a barrel is just the conversion cost for operating the equipment (i.e., electricity, etc. to run the equipment--i didn't even include the energy consumed by the conversion equipment in my rosy calculation--this would make the net energy loss even greater). their scenario assumes the turkey guts are scrap which is for free or very cheap.
which they are, if you are just talking about waste from turkeys bred for eating. or else, you pay a fairly low price competing with whoever else would be buying turkey guts (pet-food makers?).
so maybe the system can work in such a situation, where you get the raw materials for near-free. if it really works, it'd be like recycling--actually a good thing: better to turn the turkey guts into crude than to flush them out to sea. but also like recycling, it is just a stopgap and does not address the minor issue of civilization running out of gas, so to speak.
but that just looks like a niche product, because if you wanted to produce a serious amount of oil, like millions of barrels a day, then you aren't just going to have zero-cost scrap turkeys as raw ingredients. you're going to have to raise turkeys for the purpose of turning them into oil, which is a negative net-energy enterprise, as i see it.
similar arguments have been made for vegetable oil--in fact, there are people in England right now running their diesel cars on vegetable oil. it's actually much cheaper than petrol due to high petrol taxes equal to at least several dollars a gallon. (i have been told it's only legal to run your car on vegetable oil if you go to the tax office and declare you are using it as fuel and pay the tax.) but from what i have read, costs to the end user aside, it takes more than 1000 fossil fuel calories to produce 1000 vegetable oil calories, so again it's a net loss of energy.
things like wind and solar power are probably more promising. we have a 300-year supply of coal but it causes pollution. we could build more nukes but NIMBYs won't have it. NIMBYs, environmentalists, and SUV drivers are an energy investor's best friend, imo. |
