This is just not alternative at the time of rising fuel prices. It is also a way to “green”. To lessen our reliance on costly, polluting fossil fuels, a lot of new energy sources are being explored. Wind energy, hybrid cars, electric cars, hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel and ethanol. You would find the world of alternative energy bizarre and erratic. That’s why we (Chemical Reaction Engineering Group) have been doing the research on developing new alternative and renewable energy over the past few years. The past decade, we have been focusing on transforming natural gas to gasoline using catalytic reaction process with the aid of zeolite base catalyst. Now our focus have shifted and we are looking at utilizing the waste produced around us…

Wood Waste, Sawdust and Empty Palm Fruit Bunch (EPFB)

This idea of generating enough sawdust to produce a useful amount of energy might sound weird. All the trash from industrial wood processing is generally redundant and thrown away. Some of it is reprocessed into particle board or into wood pellets for stoves, but there’s still a lot of unused waste wood out there. EPFB in the other hand is left just like that while small fraction of it is utilized for running boilers in mills. When left for a long time, the wood and EPFB will rotten, and this waste can be a potential hazard to the environment as methane is formed. Methane, as we know, is a harmful greenhouse gas.

With proper waste management, the sawdust and EPFB can be systematically collected and burned at a power plant designed for this purpose. The heat is used to generate electricity which can be used to run cars. The idea is more than feasible, it’s already in practice — a 14-megawatt wood waste power plant is being built in Nigeria.

Dirty Diapers

Dirty diapers sound disgusting. But used diapers are an excellent fuel source. The garbage can be transformed into fuel gas and fuel oil by using a process called pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is the chemical decomposition of condensed substances by heating that occurs spontaneously at high enough temperatures with catalyst and without oxygen.

The world has a lot of disposable diapers and babies constantly generate more. And it would be relatively easy to use special recycling bins to separate them from other garbage. Pyrolysis is best when it has been fine-tuned to the material being heated. Mixed garbage is full of all kinds of random materials, and you never know what sort of mix you’re going to get each day. We know what kind of the plastics and fabrics are used in their manufacture, and what is the waste material.

Conclusion

As conclusion, proper waste management is imperative and it can be integrated with process such as pyrolysis. From pyrolysis, fuel and energy can be obtained and this is indeed an alternative to the present fossil fuel which will last soon.