Portable generator converts waste into energy

Although developing alternate fuel sources is most certainly a worthwhile effort, a group of Purdue scientists are looking to demolish two birds with a single, um, bag of refuse, as its portable generator not only creates useful electricity, but it disposes of worthless garbage while it's at it. The aptly-named "tactical biorefinery" processes several kinds of wastes at once, which it then converts into fuel via two parallel processes before burning the results in a diesel engine to power a generator. The device, which comes in just a hair smaller than a "small moving man," can crunch through multiple kinds of garbage at once, creating energy completely without discrimination towards certain kinds of gunk, and is already being eyed by the US Army for future battlefield usage. Interestingly, initial prototypes are showing that it can produce "approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumes," and considering that it pulverizes everything inserted into it, soldiers won't have to worry about leaving behind remnants of their stay. Ideally, the backers would love to see the unit available in commercial settings as well as in the military, but we think this thing will be a real winner when it can compress gobs of garbage into vicious (smelling) pellets and launch grotesque projectiles while keeping our planet green.

[Via CNET]

[Gil @ Feb 5th 2007 2:34AM]

It burns the garbage. There's nothing green about it.

[tekdroid @ Feb 5th 2007 2:35AM]

it may promote war efforts, so the warmakers owning stakes in armarment companies can make more green. I see the connection.

[Andir3.0 @ Feb 5th 2007 2:46AM]

"approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumes"

What the hell does this mean? You can't create more energy than is consumed in anything. If you could, we would not have an energy problem.

What they meant, I'm guessing, is that it's 90% efficient at turning whatever energy is in the waste into usable energy.

[Passarinhuu @ Feb 5th 2007 7:42AM]

It means that the energy produced from the garbage is 90% superior to the energy consumed to process it. Imagine the machine consumes 100Wh to process the garbage, and produces a total of 190Wh (Don't know if those are the real units for energy... i'm not really into physics, sorry). This value is not directly related to the efficiency.
To calculate the efficiency you would have to know the theoretical energy that the garbage could produce if the processing conditions were 'ideal' (which would always be < 100%).
So, 90% is a perfectly normal number, as far as i'm concerned.

Sorry for the bad english =D

[Judd @ Feb 5th 2007 2:50AM]

Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future 2 anyone?

[Ben @ Feb 5th 2007 3:15AM]

No, the 90% bit makes sense. It just means that the fuel it makes from a certain amount of garbage is more than the fuel it needs to process that same garbage. But you still need the garbage, so it's not creating energy from nothing.

[Nick @ Feb 5th 2007 3:40AM]

To Andir3.0, continuation of what Ben said...

...and there's no way they could achieve anywhere near %90 efficiency at converting waste to energy.

[Jose A @ Feb 5th 2007 3:44AM]

"portable" lol

[darookee @ Feb 5th 2007 3:49AM]

Is the guy who invented this called 'doc brown'?

[Xander @ Feb 5th 2007 4:13AM]

I think they mean 'small moving van'

[zeekeorage @ Feb 5th 2007 6:01AM]

"is already being eyed by the US Army for future battlefield usage - and considering that it pulverizes everything inserted into it, soldiers won't have to worry about leaving behind remnants of their stay"

- i get a creepy feeling 'bout KIAs meant to be secret , God my brain's ruined for sure....

[Wacky @ Feb 5th 2007 8:30AM]

Mr BioDiesel! Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!

[Ben Swain @ Feb 5th 2007 9:12AM]

My dad works in the building where this was created. There's been a lot of talk and curiosity about it. It's an early form of the technology.

Passarinhuu has the right idea about it. It takes energy to process it into a usable form, but then it'll generate more power.

This could have a lot of useful civilian uses too. For example, remote research stations (think Antartica) where they have a problem with disposing of garbage and have to generate power.

[nodnetni @ Feb 5th 2007 10:21AM]

Nice work Judd.

I was going to say with 2015 getting much closer maybe this is the precursor to the Mr. Fusion.

BTTF FTW!

[Tom @ Feb 5th 2007 10:30AM]

I can't wait to hook a smaller version up to my car. My God I would never need Gas again.

[James @ Feb 5th 2007 10:32AM]

I am waiting to mod my car with this. and my house. throwing all my trash in a bin that generates power for my home seems like a pretty great idea, wouldnt that be the ultimate form of recycling? and would that mean no more garbage trucks?

[wellsed @ Feb 5th 2007 10:51AM]

Sounds like a more portable version of this:

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

It converts input waste into a stratified (for easy separation) mixture of minerals, metals, water (can be pumped into sewage system), gasses (reused in its own heating elements), and light sweet crude oil (used to make gasoline).

They have a full-scale working plant in Carthage, MI next to a Butterball turkey processing plant.

[Matt @ Feb 5th 2007 11:44AM]

Sweet! Now our government can invade countries that don't even have an infrastructure for us to destroy! Good thing the generator is on wheels, we can take it with us once the mission is accomplished!

[Dimitri @ Feb 5th 2007 12:10PM]

It also makes Everlasting Gobstoppers.

[joe @ Feb 5th 2007 6:27PM]

I thought this was called a Flux Capacitor?

[jesus @ Feb 5th 2007 11:00PM]

Reminds me of Mr.Fusion from Back To The Future.
Innovative.

[mark @ Feb 6th 2007 12:31AM]

just the thing that motorola needs for their mobile phones

[P Schmidt-Pathmann @ Feb 6th 2007 9:19AM]

Now let's think about this without "wanting" the miracle solution. To vaporize anything takes a lot of energy, a lot! I can't see how it would produce any energy that it does not consume, possibly more.

In general I recommend to look at the German Federal Ministry of Environment (www.bmu.de/english/aktuell/4152.php) for information about sustainability and how waste incineration plays a big role in it (in any case waste incineration with proper flu-gas cleaning equipment and recovery of as many materials as possible - it's better any day than landfilling).

Another reference check out: www.wrsi.info and on opening page there is a paper from the German Green Party. The German Greens fully support proper waste incineration, well, and Germany checks out with the highest recycling rate for a country in the world at over 65%! There is lot’s more good info and links to other sites including the Federal Ministry of Environment under “related resources”.

We need to wake up in the US and stop opposing everything. If you consider last weeks findings of the world's scientist environmental council - we in the USA still produce 1/4 to 1/3 of the world’s pollution! So isn't it time that we do something constructive and learn from other countries?

Or is it because we are so special that we need no help to destroy ourselves?

Research first, and then speak...
P.

[Mark @ Feb 6th 2007 9:05PM]

We all know that big oil will purchase the rights and blueprints to this, and bury it...

[Patrick @ Feb 11th 2007 6:32AM]

Attach a bulb to that, and you’ve got yourself a pretty cool lamp

[Dave @ Apr 17th 2007 6:38PM]

There is a much bigger project already well underway that has the potential to turn landfills full of garbage into energy and valuable raw materials. The process is called Thermal Depolymerization, or TD and you can read all about it at

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/86676542/

One thing I found interesting. When the TD project first began, they were able to obtain their raw materials (turkey guts) for free from the turkey processing plants. With free raw materials, the TD plant was turning out barrels of oil cheaper that we can presently import them. Well we just couldn’t have that, so the government reversed a previous decision that made feeding turkey guts back to turkeys illegal. Suddenly the guys running the TD had to pay for their raw materials, which means that the oil they produce now costs more than the imported oil......... who's side is the government on anyway? Do we really need to be overseas defending a supply of oil that we could be producing for ourselves for free?