It’s times like these that people have the tendency to turn to snake oil for medicine rather than focus on true science. I’ve seen a lot of uninformed crap in the news about alternative energy sources since the recent world events have driven oil prices so high. I wonder though why some of the more radical alternatives haven’t gotten more press lately.

More than a year ago I read this article in Wired Magazine (the actual printed one) about an 80 year old, respected scientist who was losing some credibility with his most recent ventures into harvesting deep sea water energy off the coast of Hawaii. The guy’s name is John Pina Craven and he has had a long and legitimate career. He’s got a PhD in ocean engineering, a law degree, and spent time as the chief scientist for the Navy’s Special Projects Office where he worked on the Polaris missile and deep sea exploration. Now, he is convinced that the dramatic difference between water temperatures in the deep sea and the surface can be taken advantage of to produce near-limitless energy.

It’s called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion(OTEC) and it has been around for decades, but nobody has ever convinced anyone to actually build a facility, until now.

Craven made them real when he founded the state-funded Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii in 1974 on Keahole Point, near Kona. Under Craven, the lab developed the process of using cold deep-ocean water and hot surface water to produce electricity. By the 1980s the Natural Energy Lab’s demonstration plant was generating net power, the world’s first through so-called ocean thermal energy conversion.”

I don’t understand all the details, but basically you suck cold water up to the surface from more than 3000 feet below, and you suck warm water from the surface, all into the same facility. As the cold water comes up, you run it through pipes in the ground near your crops and supposedly the cold temperature cause the crops to grow faster (I think they tricked into thinking the winter is coming) and then up into radiator towers where the temperature difference cause massive amounts of condensation (that water is of course salt free, so it is used for drinking and irrigation). Somehow the warm water interacts with the cold water producing enough steam to power a turbine, and you get electricity as well.

It’s all pretty insane, but it’s all live and working at the facility Craven founded in 1974 in Kona, Hawaii, the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii. The Common Heritage Corporation is the company that sort of runs and manages the whole operation.

Now, it’s obviously expensive to set up, and syphoning water from 3000 feet below the surface must be complicated, but why aren’t we hearing more about this amazing technology? (Also, the company is privately held, but I’d be investing if I had the opportunity…) I don’t know. I guess I just soft of hope this works.

I don’t want to go on and on, but there is a another company and technology that I find equally amazing and I thought now would be a good time to share it. Since 2003, Discover Magazine has been following a company called Changing World Technologies that claims to be able to turn “anything into oil.” (Follow-up article in April 2006) No, it’s not alchemy, but before they had a facility operational (yes, they do now) it certainly sounded like it. Through an incredibly complex process, these guys can literally turn “turkey guts, old tires, used plastic bottles, and municipal sewage into fuel oil” killing at least two birds with one seemingly magical stone.

Their first facility handles only 7 tons of waste per day, took nearly twice as long to get up running as initially projected, and had some problems with Philadelphia neighbors complaining about the smell. As far as I know, they the 200 ton per day facility in Missouri is now working well, and they have very, very high hopes for the technology and the company.

…turkey slaughterhouse waste. Rotting heads, gnarled feet, slimy intestines, and lungs swollen with putrid gases have been trucked here from a local Butterball packager and dumped into an 80-foot-long hopper with a sickening glorp. In about 20 minutes, the awful mess disappears into the workings of the thermal conversion process plant.”

Yummm.

Three tanker trucks arrive here on peak production days, loading up with 500 barrels of oil made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat. Most of what cannot be converted into fuel oil becomes high-grade fertilizer; the rest is water clean enough to discharge into a municipal wastewater system.

And it’s not just for turkey guts. The thermal blahblahblah can convert most waste materials, from plastics and rubbers to biological guts into oil, gas, water, and usable minerals with virtually no waste.

The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores.

- mindfully.org

The economics are a bit tricky, but the CEO of company expects to be able to produce better than crude oil for about $40/barrel. That’s not bad at all, and combined with the added benefits of eliminating all the waste from 35,000 turkeys a day, countless old tires and plastic bottles, these guys are producing oil and water, and soon at an actual profit.

Because of various screwed up subsidies and strange economics (they originally expected to be paid to remove the waste but are currently BUYING the waste, they have been operating with a huge unexpected overhead.) they may be setting up operations in Europe where the business and political climate seems more friendly for them.

In any case, it’s another amazing company and technology, but this post is probably the first time you’ve heard about it. It’s pretty fucked up if you ask me. In my humble opinion, these are the kinds of innovations and technologies that will change the world. Not hybrid cars.

[Forgive me. It’s too late to proofread. I’ll make some edits tomorrow.]