Big Hairy Ian shares this report from New Atlas: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has found a way to potentially produce 30 million barrels of biocrude oil per year from the 34 billion gallons of raw sewage that Americans create every day… [T]he raw sewage is placed in a reactor that’s basically a tube pressurized to 3, 000 pounds per square inch and heated to 660 degrees Fahrenheit, which mimics the same geological process that turned prehistoric organic matter into crude oil by breaking it down into simple compounds, only…it takes minutes instead of epochs… The end product is very similar to fossil crude oil with a bit of oxygen and water mixed in and can be refined like crude oil using conventional fractionating plants. After six years of development, they’ve licensed the process for a $6 million pilot plant that’s expected to launch in 2018. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See the original article here:
A New Process Turns Sewage Into Crude Oil
