Alex, regarding the CO2 issue, you have to compare it against what's being done today with waste, and where our fuel is coming from today. If most of the waste is getting buried in landfills, and given that most of our fuel is extracted from underground, this just leaves the status quo of the CO2 balance mostly unchanged. However, if waste is currently disposed of by incineration, this is probably an improvement.

I too am a little dubious about some of the byproducts. One of the arguments against using sewage sludge (the solid output of sewage treatment plants, after biological breakdown and removal of most of the water) as a fertilizer is that some sludge has unacceptably high levels of toxic heavy metals. Now if this process concentrates the non-hydrocarbon components, it might make it commercially viable to recover and refine the heavy metals (and other contaminants, such as sulfer, chlorine, etc.).

Edited by author 04-16-2003 05:09 PM
1. Show me it work.

2. Take it apart in front of me and then reassemble it. Then make it work repeatedly for four hours.

Then I'll believe. Maybe. For the right price.

Sounds kind of like Mr. Fusion to me!

BTF-Mr. Fusion

Hmmm. If it works as billed, it obviously has some incredible possibilities.

I'm skeptical about two claims, tho': that all the byproducts are benign (seems unlikely) and that this is somehow an answer to global warming (that's still oil, it still produces CO2 when burned, CO2 is still altering the planet's climate - I don't see how that's anything other than a bad thing).

I dunno, tho'. Whattya y'all think?

Edited by author 04-16-2003 04:57 PM
Wasn't the May issue published on April 1 2003?

Z.

Whoops... Looks like it is legit... Dang, you'd think responsible journalists wouldn't put such obvious hoax stories into their April issues... :-)

Z.

I dunno...smells to me like bad science.