One man's trash is enough to power another
man's home… and a bunch of it can power
20,000 homes…
So what are we waiting for??
You guys, a company called GreenSky is taking
in sorted municipal and commercial waste and
outputting JET FUEL.
Yep.
Trash to airplane fuel.
Boeing flew a 787 using biofuel last year
to prove it could be done, but GreenSky wants
to make enough fuel from trash to supply ALL
the needs for London City Airport.
British Airways has pledged to purchase ALL
50,000 metric tons of fuel from GreenSky!
They're going to fly all over using your TRASH
for fuel and also charge you to put a bag
into the bin… not the trash bin, Brits,
the OVERHEAD bin.
Look, trash is everywhere.
We throw away 4.3 pounds (2kg) of waste every
day and 55% of all the trash generated in
the United States goes into landfills.
But, according to Scientific American, if
we converted the 460 million tons of trash
produced in North America properly, we could
make 12.4 billion gallons (47B liters) of
ethanol.
That's a lotta hooch -- roughly the same amount
as produced from all ethanol-bound corn.
And the process is REALLY easy; all you need
is to unleash some sulfuric acid to break
down the cellulose, and some select enzymes
and microbes to ferment the resulting slurry
into fuel.
Done, you're flying.
Biofuel from trash is great, but we need to
separate the trash BEFORE we can do that.
So while we use that in the future, we can
ALSO burn grandpa's trash too!
In 1986 there were over 7,600 small dumps,
today there are around 1900 mega-dumps which
should have enough capacity for centuries
of garbage.
In 2008, power from landfills exceeded solar
power production in New York and New Jersey,
and it's expanded significantly in the last
seven years.
Of the 1900 landfills over 640 have added
the technology to harness the power of landfill
gases (LFGs) and converting them to energy.
LFG is produced by anaerobic bacteria (bacteria
that doesn't need oxygen) buried deep within
landfills.
The anaerobic bacteria munch on our trash
and poop out methane which would NORMALLY
be real bad.
Methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse
gas than CO2, and according to the EPA, municipal
solid waste is the third-largest source of
human-related methane emissions in the US.
But, if we capture it before it floats up
and makes climate change worse, we can use
it for good AND chillax with some oil burning
too.
Methane is an odorless, colorless hydrocarbon
(CH4), and because the bacteria are trapped
underground, companies can find pockets and
suck it out with high-vacuum pipes.
Once collected, the methane is cooled, cleaned,
and mixed with mercaptan to give it a detectable
odor before they send it out to natural gas
plants to be burned for fuel.
Yep, natural gas can come from rock, or oil
deposits but that's a "dirty" natural gas,
a mix of 99 percent methane with some propane,
ethane and sulfur and helium mixed in.
The biomass methane is pretty much just CH4.
Bacteria are good like that.
The EPA's Landfill Methane Outreach Program
is hoping to encourage companies to set up
on top of landfills and suck in as much methane
as possible, because otherwise we're just
letting dollars float away.
As of 2013, LFG captured energy was powering
1.8 million homes.
So just to recap, we throw away a lot of stuff
and just let it sit there, but thanks to these
technologies getting trashy could clean up
the world.
