5-3-03 Thermal Depolymerization
As participants in the computer revolution, we often lose perspective about
how important our corner of the world is. It's not hard to do this: computers
are part of virtually everyone's life in some way or another. Although they are
more commonly in the form of "teaching machines" like video games (you may not like what
they're teaching, but they're teaching nonetheless) than they are desktop computers,
it's still become commonplace to find computers in people's houses. The web is another
example that easily leads us to think of the device itself as having the big impact.
But the computer machine itself still doesn't have as direct effect upon the
day-to-day life of the majority, as did, for example, the washing machine upon the
housewife of the first part of the 1900's. Their lives were completely changed because of it.
Or the automobile, airplane, telephone, those kinds of devices.
Long ago in grad school, a materials science professor claimed that the really dramatic
changes would be in the fields of materials, and I've been thinking about that ever since.
Simply making materials that don't break down is a big one, or ones that do (like the foam
packing peanuts that you throw in your yard and water to get rid of).
Or what if you could make a building grow itself? Imagine laying out lines on the
ground, pouring some stuff between the lines, and then the thing just grows. That would
probably change a lot of lives.
I've finally seen something that fits this kind of dramatic change. We've been pouring
offal into our landfills and ignoring the long term effects, and at the same time burning
oil like it wasn't a limited resource. But what if you could turn garbage into
natural gas (used to power the conversion process), oil (for sale), pure water, and minerals
(for sale). It turns out there's one working pilot plant that does this, and another specialty
plant to handle the output of a turkey-processing plant. Read this, it's amazing:
Discover article on thermal depolymerization
This is incredible. They can even reprocess your refrigerator! Or
your computer (and naturally, computers probably had a big hand in making the process
happen in the first place).
I have long envisioned some genetic
engineering breakthrough that would convert corn husks
into oil (actually, Patent # 5,000,000 does just that, I
believe, but I don't think it's being used). But this is
better, because it could take all the world's dumps and
convert them into oil and minerals, as well as all the
garbage that we're generating now. It changes the whole
concept of recycling. From the article, it sounds like
the Europeans and Japanese will probably be on it right
away. People will be fighting to keep their hands on their garbage,
rather than trying to dump it on someone else. And the garbage
companies may someday pay us for the privelege of carting
away our garbage.
This is the kind of thing that no futurist ever predicts -- a
revolution that comes out of left field (and yet, when you think
about it, it makes all kinds of sense, just like the Internet makes
all kinds of sense, and is even obvious. But no one saw it coming,
not this way, anyhow).
