NEWS: An end to Landfills?

Each household in London produced around 1.1 tonnes of waste on average in 2000/01. This is a frightening statistic in these days of our take-make-waste society. What if there was a different way to transform this waste into a product that could be reused to produce further energy while the transformation process itself can generate other fuels.


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Suppose we had a technology that could take any type of waste -- automobile tires, landfill waste, hazardous PCBs, harbor sludge, steel scrap, and more. And it could transform the garbage into a glassy, obsidian-like stone a fraction of the size, which could be recovered and re-used. Plus, the process also results in carbon and hydrogen-rich gases that can burn like natural gas. Or the gases can be processed further, refined through a membrane to make pure hydrogen for fuel cells, the cornerstone of a future 'hydrogen economy.'

Interesting to note that this is already being trialled in places like China, Italy, Hawaii and Japan. Could this be the future of waste processing? In my view any processing plant that can become self-sufficient should be supported even if the initial running cost are prohibitive.

[Edited on 3-3-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

I think that such a process would be likley to take much more energy to complete than would be released. (edit: after reading the link, yes that is exactly the case.) Furthermore, there are a lot of metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, etc. used iny many common products. These metals would have to be extracted to a very low level if you don't want to contaminate your 'reusable' by-products.

It sounds nice, but I'm not convinced that it is a truly viable alternative. At best you might wind up with a bunch of landfills filled with a "glassy, obsidian-like stone."

Dolorean was plutonium powered in first back to the future, in the 2nd one the doc used garbage.

Originally posted by boombye
Dolorean was plutonium powered in first back to the future, in the 2nd one the doc used garbage.

That's right! You can produce 1.21 jig-a-watts with garbage.