Eventually we will run out of oil. There is no doubt about that. The earth is of a fixed size, and the amount of oil stored in the ground is not infinite. We take it out of the ground and do not replenish it. Therefore we will run out. It’s just a question of when. When people think of the uses of oil, they think of course of gasoline, heating oil and aircraft fuel. But you have to remember that the raw materials we need to make plastics, cleaning agents, many medications, cosmetics, fibres and a myriad of other consumer items are also sourced from oil. Indeed, when we run out we will be in big trouble. Unless of course we find alternate sources of energy and raw materials. And now an American company called Changing World Technologies may have done just that.
The oil we pump out of the ground had its origins in plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. Over the millennia heat and pressure slowly broke down their component fats, proteins and starches to molecules composed essentially of carbon and hydrogen, appropriately called hydrocarbons. Crude oil is a mixture of literally hundreds of different hydrocarbons which can be separated through a refining process into fractions which serve as natural gas, gasoline, lubricating oil, heating oil and even asphalt. Changing World Technologies’ idea is not a novel one. The notion is to reproduce the process that generates oil in the ground, but do it on a much quicker time scale. If heat and pressure can accomplish this in the bowels of the earth, why not in a machine? After all, modern technology exists whereby the required high temperatures and pressures can be achieved. What is new about the current attempt is that it works. Others have tried to replicate the earth’s geochemistry in the lab, but Changing World Technologies is the first company to make it work. Not only have they built a pilot plant that can convert almost any material into oil, they have built an industrial facility in Missouri that will soon begin to make oil on a commercial basis. What raw material will it use? Believe it or not, turkey waste.
Turkey processing plants produce huge amounts of waste in the form of guts, heads, feathers, beaks and feet. The amounts are unbelievable. In the US it amounts to some 600 million tons of turkey guts. If all goes well, this could yield about four billion barrels of light Texas crude every year. That’s comparable to the amount of oil the US imports every year. And the beauty of the technology is that it can handle almost any waste. Ground up computers, refrigerators, plastics and human sewage can all be converted into usable oil. Humans are an interesting species, aren’t they? They put themselves in a hole, create problems, but when pressed come up with a solution. Changing World Technologies may indeed change the world.
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