Conserving Oil

[Guest]

OK, I know that recycling has come up in different general/political threads over time.  But I hope that this potentially blatant self promotion won;t be dismissed in that type of discussion.

There is a company that operates in the US, Canada, and Europe, that does a phenomenal job of recovering Used Oil and not just finding some place to “dump it” like into incinerators or an asphault plant, but re-refines it and turns it BACK into motor oil.

In the UNited States last year alone, more than 180,000,000 gallons of waste oil were re-refined and turned back into usable motor oil that was sold to consumers and to the Department of Defense.

That company?  Safety Kleen Systems of Plano, TX…

So, if you REALLY want to reduce demand for foreign oil… if you REALLY want to conserve resources… if you REALLY want to reduce oil costs and increase availablility…

ASK you local auto shop to use Safety Kleen for their Used Oil disposal so that it is re-refined and not burned.

Sorry for the shameles plug of my own employer.  But the recycling topic came up again recently, as has the whole imported oil, gas prices thing… but Safety Kleen is the largest re-refiner of oil on two continents, and that is one of those “recylcing” methods that IS cost effective for the consumer, the merchant, the processor, and the re-purchaser.

http://www.safety-kleen.com/skcda/views/pages/channel/home.do?channel=d529b592

[Zooey72]

180 mil is a drop in the bucket, but every little bit helps I suppose.

An idea I came up with would be an expansion on the hybrid car.  I am no mechanic, but this seems feasable to me.

When the engine gets hot the radiator cools it down, which in turn is cooled down from by a fan.  Wasted heat energy right?  Couldn’t you make it to where this incredibly hot water goes through a conducter to produce more electricity rather than simply being wasted?

It makes sense to me, but like I said, I know very little about cars.

[balungaloaf]

not a bad idea.

[Nix]

well Zoey, that is kinda sophisticated think to make work.

You would need to first make the water vaiporize to become steam, then you need the steam to go thrue a turbine, and the turbine is plugged into a generator that in turn creates electricity, so as you see it will be kinda big, adn expensive and would reqire a lot of water……

[cystic crypt]

consider too - water can be no hotter than 100 degrees C.

[Guerrilla Guy]

CC, it “can” it just converts into a gaseous state… which can be used as an “energy” source… You would have to have to take the hot water and convert it to steam in order for it to be usable…

am I wrong?

GG

[cystic crypt]

@Guerrilla:

CC, it “can” it just converts into a gaseous state… which can be used as an “energy” source… You would have to have to take the hot water and convert it to steam in order for it to be usable…

am I wrong?

GG

no - you’re right.
I was referring to trying to the use of “incredibly hot water” moving through a radiator.

[Guest]

A few other things to consider…

#1, Hybrids do not run their engine constantly, so they produce little engine heat.
#2, high temp vaporized coolant no longer functions as a coolant, so in order to not have the engine overheat and seize, you would need to make the engine able to handle temperatures way above what are normal in a liquid cooled engine… elliminating the need for a coolant system in the first place.
#3, a steam turbine requires a steady flow of very high pressure steam.  To upgrade a collant system to handle this kind of pressure whould add so much weight to a car that the “extra” energy would be more than countered by the reduced efficiency of moving all that extra weight with the engine.

[Guest]

And just to put that 160,000,000 gallons into perspective…

A barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons.  So this re-refining is 3,809,520 barrels, give or take a few (since we are dealing with post-refining oil volumes and additional additives to the re-refined oil, the figure is not exact).

The US consumes 13.08 million barrels per day.

So, the re-refining of these lubricants represents 3% of 1 days consumption.

Or approximately 1/10th of 1 % of out oil usage.

May not sound huge, but that is 1/1000th of the problem that is NOT a problem.

Our answer is NOT a silver bullet, but a thousand small steps.

Re-refining instead of burning as waste; a little conservation, a little ethanol mixed in to current gasoline, a little synthetic oil, a little bio diesel… each one making a small dent, but added together a rather nice decline in usage :-)

[cystic crypt]

nc - i do think this is cool . . . .

[critmonster]

i read about a company that was useing chicken guts, is that bio-diesel? i agree it will take MANY small steps to move beyond the dependance on new sources of oil, but oil itself is such a fantastic gift to us that it is a shame how it is always getting picked on

go for the guts! (chicken that is)

[Guest]

Bio-diesel is a Soy based product.

Chicken Guts sounds like it would be a methane source, the same as landfills.

[critmonster]

this was a pressurized process (i think) that yielded a liquid product.  methane may have also been produced, i don’t remember it was a couple of years ago

[Guest]

Found some links on this…

Here is one…
http://www.alternet.org/story/18871/

Interesting… :-)  Thanks for the heads up on this one!

[critmonster]

From Turkey Guts to Fuel Oil
Posted by michael on Tue Apr 01, ‘03 04:42 PM
from the every-part-except-the-gobble dept.
Untimely Ripp’d writes "The latest issue of Discover Magazine reports that any day now a plant will go online in Carthage, Missouri that processes turkey guts into high grade oil, natural gas, some minerals, and water. Unfortunately, the Discover article isn’t online yet, but here’s a newspaper article. The system, developed by Changing World Technologies uses thermal depolymerization and apparently works on almost any and every kind of organic waste. They assert that applying it to 100% of the US’ agricultural waste would produce about 4 billion barrels of oil per year – about the amount we currently import. It sounds too good to be true, it sounds like one of those fly-by-night-in-the-face-of-the-second-law deals, but it isn’t happening in somebody’s basement – it’s happening in a multi-million dollar facility developed with Con-Agra."

my only question is : why in the &U#@!!  is it taking so long?!?

[Guest]

Well, for one thing, realize that we just don’t eat that many turkeys (or chickens)

This is one of those small steps… but WAY smaller than many of the others.

This is tens of thousands of gallons…

[critmonster]

did you see the quote where if we could convert ALL of the agricultural waste it would be 4 BILL BBL’s/year!

[Guest]

But that is figuring perfect conversion, and excludes allowing for the various materials that need to be added to create a complete product….

[critmonster]

and if we manage HALF that? 2 billion barrels! big initial investment for sure but i see it as a no brainer