Sludge Watch ==> New Technology - Sewage goes in - diesal comes out

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15055123.htm


Posted on Mon, Jul. 17, 2006

With new technology, it's garbage in, diesel ouPETER DURANTINE
Special to the Daily News
If oil is our road to perdition, then turkeys may be our road to salvation.

Changing World Technologies Chairman and CEO Brian Appel's vision says he 
can turn almost any waste into oil - landfills could empty; tire piles and 
junkyards disappear; sewage sludge recycled.

America would no longer need to contend with the byproduct of its 
consumption - pollution.

>From his company headquarters in Manhattan, Appel can't understand why more 
people, particularly policymakers, don't understand what he has to offer - a 
process that mimics what Earth spends thousands of years doing: applying 
intensive pressure and heat to organic matter to produce oil.

Thermal conversion operates at hyper-speed, transforming into diesel oil 
anything that is carbon-based, which, except for metal and nuclear, accounts 
for most of the waste mankind generates - sewage, tires, plastics, 
batteries, food, even animal renderings from meat and poultry slaughter 
houses.

"Come on, we're getting rid of the waste," he says, noting the perils and 
problems landfills present. "We got to get rid of this stuff."

Seven years ago, when a gallon of regular gas cost less than half what it is 
today, then-Mayor Ed Rendell enticed Appel to the old Navy Yard, where the 
former Hofstra University basketball player built a small experimental 
plant.

That's still operating and since then Appel has built a plant in Carthage, 
Mo., adjacent to a Butterball turkey rendering plant. Tons of feathers, 
skin, meat, blood and bones go into the Carthage plant and come out as heavy 
oil, distilled water, and minerals in wet-cake form used as fertilizer.

In May, the plant produced 440,000 gallons of renewable diesel fuel, 
representing 50 percent of its capacity, and shipped it off to local 
purchasers.

To an ardent supporter like state Rep. Thomas Caltagirone, D-Berks, Appel's 
technology is the answer to Pennsylvania's sewage and landfill worries.

Caltagirone sponsored legislation, passed overwhelmingly by the House 
earlier this year, to give the firm a 75 percent tax credit to build a 
similar plant here. The measure is pending in the Senate.

"I don't know how we can go wrong," the lawmaker says. "You are cleaning up 
the environment on one hand; on the other, you're creating a new industry 
with jobs."

Caltagirone has met resistance in trying to convince municipalities to 
consider a venture where Changing World would process sewage.

Appel and Caltagirone believe it's a combination of special interest 
opposition and bureaucratic politics.

"It's too much of the old boys' network that won't allow new technologies," 
Appel says, nodding at such biofuels as ethanol that seem to garner all the 
attention and federal grant money. "The problem is waste doesn't get much 
attention."

In Philadelphia, Appel is trying to negotiate a deal to process all the 
sewage sludge from the city's Southwestern Water Pollution Control Plant. 
The water department did not immediately return a call about this venture.

The technology has sparked interest in the scientific and engineering 
fields.

"Even if the idea contributes only a smidgen to our energy needs, it will 
certainly help get rid of burgeoning waste," Scientific American magazine 
stated in 2003.

Discover magazine is tracking Appel's progress. In its latest report in 
April, the magazine gushed over the Carthage plant: "Turkey guts, junked car 
parts, and even raw sewage go in one end of this plant, and black gold comes 
out the other end."

Appel's turkey operations ran into a bump this year when Missouri's attorney 
general briefly shut the plant down for violating state air quality 
standards. After making technical fixes to address the odor and paying a 
$100,000 fine, the plant was back in operation.

It costs about 20 cents per gallon more to produce oil through thermal 
conversion than through oil drilling, but Appel expects demand and expanded 
production will reduce costs to at least 20 cents a gallon less.

Appel receives some federal subsidies to help the company toward 
profitability - he and his partners have invested more than $100 million of 
their own money - but he is talking to Europeans about building plants in 
places like Germany.