Instead of wasting billions each money in corruption and death in Iraq the government should be mostly wasting billions on altenative energy in the hopes that out of the wasted efforts a single, or several, major discoveries could be made. The benefits to our future as a nation will be enormous, but it seems special interests do not want this to happen

Are we talking petroleum based waste? Like the plastic packaging for all those made in China gadgets? If so, the waste stream feedstock for this could go away as all petroleum products become more expensive, and we see fewer junk gadgets packaged better.

Or are we talking biomass waste? Like table scraps, paper bags, etc. Then this might be good for the long run.

gimme a break - this had GOT to be a scam. like the engine that runs on water that the oil companies have been hiding.

Check out this site... this company has been refining (pun intended) their process for several years now, and they seem to be getting it really straight. I think I first heard about them in Wired a couple years ago... their process seems similar to Clean Energy Products/Green Power Inc. Take a peep.

http://www.changingworldtech.com/index.asp

Just imagine how quickly we could have real energy independence, if the government would actually fund some of this research.

I'm still waiting for cold fusion. It's just as cool and about as likely to ever make it.

According to the patent application that is linked in the article, this process works at over 300 Celcius using a zeolite catalyst. The innovation seems to be in the heat management of the reactor, not in a novel catalyst. Zeolite catalysis of cracking or depolymerization reactions is not new, and it's not a particularly clean process. So I'm having some trouble figuring out what all the fuss is about. Which is not to say that it wouldn't be great -- I just don't see anything on the Green Power website, or in their patent application, to get excited about.

As always, wikipedia has more information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

As one reader commented, changing world technologies (www.changingworldtech.com) is already doing exactly this. Their initial plant in Carthage MO currently converts Turkey carcasses into oil, biosolids (used as fertilizer), and water. It's not cold fusion. It already works.

I admit, I was a little confused by the patent filing myself, which seemed to indicated that this was a form of thermal polymerization similar to Changing World's process, rather than something different. I may have been hasty with my link to that filing, which was one of the few things I could find with Christian Koch's name on it. I'll keep looking.

A magic act. Right... a plastic bag of trash in just minutes yields perhaps more than the weight of the trash in "diesel fuel". Reminds me of the monorail episode on "The Simpsons". I think a town and its' money are about to be parted.

Catalytic depolymerization technology was extensively covered by Discover magazine as early as May, 2003. Their latest followup article, July, 2004 (Vol 25, No 07) titled "Anything into Oil" describes a working industrial-scale pilot plant in Philadelphia started by Changing Technologies (www.changingworldtech.com).

This is a serious alternative fuel source, and the flippant attitude of your article doesn't do it justice. I suggest you do more research. Discover magazine had a tremendous enthusiastic response from its readers, and I imagine your readership might be just as interested.

My previous letter located the newest industrial scale waste-into-oil plant by Changing Technologies in the wrong place. Their pilot plant was in Philadelphia, but the newer, larger plant is in Carthage, Missouri. They call the process "thermal" depolymerization, rather than "catalytic" depolymerization, but the process descriptions are similar.

As cited in previous letters - this is a high temperature thermal depolymerization reaction of which a similar process was documented in a Discovery Magazine article earlier this year. The main point is that the cost of processing the waste was almost $70 a barrel! The company in Missouri was looking to set up a facility in the EU because they could get almost $100 bbl in subsidies to get rid of the waste.

It is a great idea to reuse waste - and maybe the idea of converting lots of organic wastes (from animal processing plants which generate enermous volumes of the stuff) into fuel is better than just burying it or converting it into feed. But one has also to be hard headed in asking the question - am I willing to pay the additional disposal premium for converting? - because if you are not in terms of taxes, you will end up paying on the other end - in the cost of items you purchase.

You do not get something for nothing - the laws of economics and thermodynamics place limits on the percentage of gain you get in reuse of an item. There is no question that there is a lot of potential energy in trash - through incineration, through gas production or perhaps through this conversion process. But none of them work really well alone - I would love to see someone (in the Department of Energy?) look at combining the waste heat from a power plant (especially a nuclear one) with the heat requirements of a process like this to try to actually accomplish some environmental gains. But please do not think that this will ever be an economic success as a stand alone enterprise without massive subsidies.