80’s TECH LYRICS
THE OLD-SCHOOL RECYCLING SONG PLAYING
When talking about the trash humans produce, we don’t have to go beyond daily accounts to find alarming numbers. On average we each toss out about 0.75 kilograms, or more than a pound and a half on a daily basis. The average American? About five pounds. Not per household, per person, every day.
Don’t get us started on plastics.
Let’s go to the big, global, annual number for municipal solid waste – more than 2 billion tonnes. That gives us context for this statistic; about a third of it is not managed in an environmentally safe manner.
While we mull that over, companies like SoMax, featured in the OwlVoices magazine Water issue, and Wildfire Energy, in Earth, have developed and successfully implemented low-profile add-ons for waste facilities that are loaders full of garbage in, energy, biofuel and biochar out.
The White Hydrogen Coalition is working to accelerate mainstream adoption of these kinds of solutions, using a two-pronged approach of a platform and native currency to boost the investment side. At the same time, it launches a real-life demonstration of the Low-Temperature Conversion (LTC) process to process our massive amounts of plastic and other waste. If you haven’t heard, recycling simply is not working.
LTC is a pyrolytic process, where substances are changed chemically using the heat of around 400ºC (752 F) that initially results in liquid, rather than gas. It’s been around since the 1980s, developed and successfully tested. Yet, there’s not much to be found on it, except for research papers and a smattering of use at municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants. Perhaps the issue has been a lack of earlier innovation into uses for its end products.
WHC’s demonstration plant is designed to produce syngas, electricity and white hydrogen.
Of course, the process itself needs to be energy-efficient, which is the case. That means applications are numerous. Reactors that process raw waste from landfills, agriculture and most industries can use LTC to process right on-site, avoiding the impacts of shipping waste. The setup can become an auxiliary energy plant, producing at least enough to power its own operation, and probably offset at least a portion of other energy needs.
They can use tech like Wildfire’s MIHG gasification, designed for a continuous flow of garbage in/syngas out. SoMax uses a hydrothermal carbonization reactor (HTC) that turns sewage into great things like fuel and fertilizers that are free from all the nasties in biowaste.
Both are focusing on making their reactors add-ons to garbage dumps and wastewater treatment plants. It’s a no-brainer for municipalities that want to reduce their waste effectively while reducing their carbon footprint.
And by recycling waste into usable products, a new revenue stream is created.
Anyone who cares about the planet is now thinking, why aren’t we doing this everywhere? The OwlVoices community, in particular, is asking, “What can we do to push it forward? Start with awareness. Share our information. Who needs to hear it? That’s not rhetorical. The answer is primarily municipal and industry decision-makers who have little or no reason not to adopt these technologies.
