Portable Refinery Makes Fuel from Food Scraps and Trash

Portable Refinery Makes Fuel from Food Scraps and Trash
2007 05 02

The tactical biorefinery is a portable machine that can convert food waste and inorganic trash into electricity. Purdue University researchers created a unique hybrid design for the U.S. Army. It uses three distinct technologies to perform its magic:

A bioreactor that uses enzymes and micro-organisms to turn food waste into ethanol

A gasification unit that turns plastics, paper, and other residual waste into methane and low-grade propane and

A modified diesel engine that can burn gas, ethanol, and diesel fuel in variable proportions.

Diesel fuel is used during the first few hours of operation; then mess tent garbage is fed in. The resulting ethanol and gas displaces the diesel fuel (which continues in a very low quantity "drip").

The Purdue project initially studied the typical waste streams that soldiers produce in the field to select the best energy-conversion technologies. A biocatalytic process was chosen to deal with the food portion of the waste. The trick was to get the pH balance and temperature right for the mixture of enzymes and microorganisms the researchers selected. For plastics, wood, and other nonfood waste that can't be broken down in a bioreactor, a gasifier was developed that exposes the material to extreme heat in a low-oxygen environment.

It is hoped that the system can be shrunk down to the size of a Humvee trailer; it would be an ideal system for use in disaster-relief efforts as well as in the field by the military.

There is an interesting precursor in science fiction, if you are willing to stretch your view of what constitutes 'sf.' In his wonderful 1726 social satire Gulliver's Travels, author Jonathan Swift actually writes about a project to extract energy from vegetation:

He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.

(Read more about Jonathan Swift's bio-energy)

I also can't resist this other reference. Okay, it's not Mr. Fusion (see photo), the mass to energy converter of Back to the Future fame, but maybe it's more practical.

Now, thanks to this tactical biorefinery that uses garbage from the mess tent to create electricity, an army not only "marches on its stomach," it also runs its camp on it. (You know what I mean.)

Check out these other bio-energy articles:

VolksVegan - Biodiesel Powered Vehicles

Russian Power Boots Use Bio Fuels

From A Portable Refinery Powered by Garbage.

Article from: http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/070408_biorefinery.html

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves
2013 06 18
The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer ...

Atacama Humanoid: Stanford-Geneticist Says Specimen "not worth scrutiny"
2013 06 18
The documentary SIRIUS has intrigued and shocked many, and has stirred debate about the scientific findings regarding the ’Atacama Humanoid’. Recently, daily German science news site GreWi.de followed up with Dr. Garry Nolan, the Stanford geneticist that headed the investigation into the mummified remains. grenz|wissenschaft-aktuell reports: Since the documentary movie "Sirius" showed the first results of an investigation of a just 15 ...

The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda
2013 06 18
While the global elite construct underground bunkers, eat organic and hoard seeds in Arctic vaults; the global poor are being slowly starved thanks to high commodity prices and poisoned with genetically modified (GMO) food. Austerity measures aimed largely at the poor are being imposed on all the nations of the world. Weather events grow more deadly and brushfire wars more ...

Ron Paul on Syria: This Is How Vietnam and Iraq Started
2013 06 18
President Barack Obama’s pledge to initiate a limited operation in Syria will likely escalate into a full-blown war, with Americans supporting a rebel cause that is backed by al-Qaida, retired Texas Rep. Ron Paul is arguing. "The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multibillion dollar war has begun," Paul ...

Google’s deep CIA and NSA connections
2013 06 18
The Western media is currently full of articles reporting Google’s denial that it cooperated in a government program to massively spy on American and foreign citizens by accessing data from Googles servers and those of other U.S. software companies. The mainstream media has, however, almost completely failed to report that Google’s denial, and its surface concern over ’human ...

More News »