Story link: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Supplement/article/a-final-solution-for-waste

A reader who will identify himself only as R.S. has sent information about an exciting breakthrough that has a great relevance to India.

A company in the USA, Changing World Technologies [CWT] , NY has perfected a process to transform all manner of modern waste into crude oil and other useful products. The process ‘Thermal Depolymerisation’ [TDP] is nearly self sufficient in energy, has no polluting by-products and is highly scalable. The most appealing feature is the wide variety of waste it can handle: tyres, plastics, paper, sludge, municipal waste and abattoir wastes. The products that come out are crude oil [--which can flow into refineries directly], fuel gas, absorbent carbon and fertiliser intermediates.

TDP has been known since 1960 but in a more inefficient and inconsistent version. Basically the process is about accelerating nature’s way of recycling by means of heat and pressure. While nature takes millions of years, TDP does it in hours. What CWT has done to improve on the earlier process is to use two reactors instead of the earlier one.

CWT’s patented process has been endorsed by many US authorities and academics. Now ConAgra is building a $20 million plant to process --hold your stomachs!-- 200 tonnes per day of turkey carcasses into fuel oil. [Incidentally, that should also give you an idea of American size of things] Earlier this waste was recycled into animal feed. After mad-cow disease raged in Europe and this practice was banned there, US companies now expect new laws that will ban this kind of animal feed. Hence ConAgra’s interest.

India is lucky with its waste in many ways. For one we are still in early days of urban madness and consumerism. Two, most of the waste we generate is organic and non-toxic. And India is unlikely to be processing anything like the 200 tonnes of ‘organic’ waste that ConAgra aims to. [ A scary aside: will TDP encourage raising animals --which have a quick life cycle-- to produce oil which requires millions of years to form?] And three, we have not sunk too much investment in waste management technologies.

Many hare-brained solutions are about to be sold to local governments. In Chennai for example, an Australian firm has been dangling a ‘power from waste’ project which is nothing more than pelletising garbage and burning it to produce steam. This like most technologies is about disposal of waste, never mind the macro environmental costs. TDP seems to address issues of economics, recoveries, environmental benefits. A great new opportunity awaits India. Are there other routes to the same end? Researching the idea to Indianise the process or licensing it for induction awaits a far-sighted entrepreneur.
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Further reading:
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/visualize0603.asp

http://www.ecologicinvestor.com/news/readfullnews.asp?NewsID=358,?