this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
255 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
59693 readers
4413 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Based on the (almost no) data available here, this does seem likely to be a lot of steps and a lot of energy required just to turn the poop into the substitute for crude oil, and then do all the standard further refining of that into jet fuel. I'd be very dubious about the actual real-world value until some magical further data is shared, because this innovation surely won't help anyone if the fuel it makes is more expensive than regular jet fuel.
I'd be completely unsurprised to learn they were using thermal depolymerization. The process was patented about 30 years ago and can take just about any organic material and turn it into essentially light oil. When there was a plant testing it with turkey carcasses in the US, way back in 2003, it was competitive with oil production costs, provided that turkey guts cost less than $20/ton and oil cost more than $80/barrel.
I have been saying we should use this for waste treatment plants since they first started testing this. The water we get at the end is more pure; drugs, most chemicals, and germs are broken down; and we get a saleable product at the end. Depending on the cost to build and run, we could get a better result for less money.
Now, let's talk about the efficacy of converting human remains and the price of cemetery plots...
I mean seriously but yes crematoriums should be hooked up to district heating, apparently they don't even use much energy if you operate them right. There's a slow-burning trend in Germany to move from traditional cemeteries to dedicated forest plots: First you get cremated, then put in a biodegradable urn, then buried under a specific tree. Unmarked, but it's in a register somewhere so next of kin can find it.
I'm thinking a step past cremation, where oil and solid fertilizer is produced. So harvest the oil and fill that urn with the non-hydrocarbon solids, and go from there.