Assuming the process really does work, there's a legal problem: in the USA, any product derived from hazardous waste is also hazardous waste, and must be treated as such. Even if that product is chemically identical to pure mountain-spring water (the law may have changed since I learned this).

1. Lock the guy in the guarded warehouse with his machine, a ton of turkey guts, and some empty barrels.

2. When he yells "Finished!" Come in with a petroleum engineer and the necessary assaying equipment.

Then I'll believe.

If we could reverse engineer petroleum into turkey guts, then that would be ideal. Eventually everything would be covered in visceral membrane, a vast network of organic Slip-N-Slides. A few months ago I backed over a flock of cornish hens while entering my car port and I can attest to the success of this brave endeavor.

There's a Rucker / Sterling story where artificial-life jellyfish get loose in Oil Country and begin turning Texas's petroleum reserves into more of themselves.

Joe:

There must be loopholes. Sewer sludge laced with heavy metals (from carelessly discarded batteries) is used as fertilizer in some states.

Does it burn? Then it's got energy to...well...burn.

--Dan

It's not so much being able to make turkey guts into oil; it's being able to do it and break even. I've read about this kinda stuff before; and it's kinda like Fusion, in that the problem to solve isn't *how* it's how to break even, energy-wise.

Kinda like this project I saw ten years ago; my dad's a mining engineer, and we were at a friend's mine where they were testing an organic gold removal process. Bascially a bactira that ate ore and pooped gold; keep the tank warm and fed (and keep other critters out, as well as flush the tank when the little bastards mutate on you), and you got gold comin' out the other side. Problem was, you couldn't make enough gold to pay for the set-up and upkeep, for they didn't make very much gold very quickly: hense why, for now, ore processing is still a very inorganic (and toxic) process.

Hey, this reminds me of a great story from the comic 'transmetropolotain': in the future, everyone's got machines that can fabricate anything out of trash or raw materials. So nobody's got any trash, because everyone feeds it into thier machine to make more stuff. So middle-class folk, who can afford the fabrication machines, but can't afford the raw materials and don't have any extra trash sneak into the slums to steal trash from the people who are too poor to afford the fabrication machines. The city hates this, because it wants the trash for *it's* fabrication machines. Oh, and the fabrication machines are AI, and as such, fabricate wierd machine drugs to get themselves all loopy.

The efficiency question is a good one. Of course, if the stuff is really petroleum-equivalent, you could still use it for plastics, lubrication, and the like that might have a great value than a mere fuel.

I'd be surprised if this process didn't result in SOME nasty byproducts. Something equivalent to the (possibly) carcinogenic stuff that forms when you fry food. Or the nitrous oxide that burning hydrogen produces. "It's always something." But you've got to compare it to the nasty stuff produced by petroleum refining.

I'd skip the turkey guts and start converting liquid pig waste.

Stefan, liquid pig waste is exactly what I thought of when I read this too.

I'm sure that says something (that I don't want to think about right now) about us!

I know Turkey voted against having the US use their country as a second front against Iraq, but liquidating them into oil is not my idea of fair play...

All we want from Turkey are their guts!

Funny side effect of this: if they really can produce Gas anywhere for less then it costs to mine-refine-transport it, and gas prices go down to what they were in the sixties, and I can afford as much gas as I want- then I'm gonna put a Hemi in my Mopar, and ditch the small-block. :D

But does that mean I'll have to eat more turkeys to contribute more carbon waste to the system to make up for my Hemi?

Was looking at the math and thinking that they will probably only produce 240 barrels of oil, instead of 600 barrels. (I'm basing calculations on turkeys having approximately same chemical composition as people.) Maybe ConAgra will be importing turkey guts so they can run the converter at capacity.

Even at capacity -- 600 barrels -- they probably will only make a half a million dollars a year. Not a great return but probably better than most mutual funds.

Then again if you otherwise had to pay to get rid of your turkey guts this would be an improvement.

It's an amazing process, but after reading the article I am more resolved than ever to go vegetarian.

I'd like to see it put to use cleaning up human waste, most of which is basically just dried out and dumped into landfills.

jleader, you're right about the high concentration of heavy metals. They used to sell an "organic" yard fertilizer made from sewage, it was called Milorganite. It was eventually withdrawn from the market when they discovered it had extremely high levels of heavy metals.
But anyway, this all reminds me of seeing articles in the original Whole Earth Catalogs about sewage-to-methane systems. I don't see the point in this guy's hightech method for making long-chain polymer oil when all you really need to make is a simple hydrocarbon like methane for fuel. Lubricating oils are a miniscule market compared to energy-rich fuels, and burning methane works about as well as burning kerosine or fuel oil, if your engines are engineered right. Methane harvesters are a simple homebrew technology that has worked efficiently for many many years, it's about as high-tech as a compost pit.