Comments on: Don’t Truck Your Waste to a Landfill: Truck A Gasification Plant To Your Waste

By: The Less Interesting Times » Blog Archive » 23/01/2K9 והרי החדשות…

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:01:39 +0000

[...] מעבר לגידול זנים שמחזירים יותר אור של צמחים קיימים. תסיע את המחזור אל הפסולת. יש דרכים למחזר כל מיני סוגים של פסולת. יש דרכים להוציא [...]

By: jim mason

jim mason — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:32:34 +0000

$800,000 for a small gasification unit is an undeployable price point. and the solving of the chunk fuel requirements of typical gasifiers by a brute force combination of shredding, drying and pelleting machines, is not a terribly creative engineering solution.

many of us believe the gasification problem can be solved from the bottom up, using cheap digitally based manufacturing techniques, open source engineering, and online information sharing.

a gasifier is ultimately a very low tech machine. it is basically some well configured steel tanks, and some electric smarts. it does not need to be an exotic endeavor requiring DOE support or other forms of govt dole. suggesting that we need such before we can deploy only reveals a lack of creativity.

we’ve shipped 45 gasifier units in the last 8 months, without one penny of govt help or tolerance. see here: http://www.allpowerlabs.org/gasification/gek/index.html

no, they are not turnkey industrial systems, but i’ll bet the house that we will get to such, and with price points that are actually tolerable to the market, without precarious govt subsidies, far faster than the above referenced strategies.

and yes, of course in the end it makes sense to put the whole rig in a shipping container. this is a very old idea. lots of things make sense in shipping containers. see http://www.theshipyard.org

jim mason
http://www.whatiamupto.com

By: Alice Allen

Alice Allen — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:29:44 +0000

Sounds good: particularly that part about shredding trash. I have a ton or so just waiting for a shredder. How long do I have to wait?

By: Chase Ingersoll

Chase Ingersoll — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:21:09 +0000

I thought this would be worthy of contributing to the gasifier discussion.

http://www.allpowerlabs.org/gasification/gek/

By: Mathew

Mathew — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:28:07 +0000

Truly green technologies keep resources in closed cycles of use. Gasification is a wonderful technology, but burning and landfilling still interrupts a resource cycle.

Real innovation? how about a truck-sized hot composter with methane capture. Stick the organic matter back in the ground!

By: Michael Pope

Michael Pope — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:01:46 +0000

Unfortunately, the Z-Gen (IST) approach here is neither new, innovative, nor the latest in cargo container gasification systems.

I have participated in the development of this same gasification processor format since 1988 under the companies – Entech Inc., Entech Corp., IET, Inc and SENREQ LLC. These corporations have produced 15 different commercial systems with cargo containers as the basic package, both fixed and mobile. And, these organizations have pitched this program to the US military on no less than three occasions.

Three obstacles prohibit the real transition of legitimate new, effective and economical technologies from R&D to industrial/commercial use:

(1) Grossly inadequate funding to support the post-R&D to market phase.
(2) Environmental regulatory bureaucracy delays and lack of cooperation of state and local agencies.
(3) Tangible political support and real assistance in endorsing and assisting new, green technologies.

For want of those three factors many really good technologies over the years could have had all of us enjoying cheaper transportation, massive reduction (if not elimination) of landfills, and cheaper energy through better non-incineration waste-to-power.

Tough sledding.

Good luck to Z-Gen/IST