steve.clarke.weblog

According to this article on Discover.com, a company called Changing World Technologies has invented a process to convert just about anything into oil. From the article:

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. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.

The article further states that this system could completely reduce U.S. dependency on imported oil. Another quote:

Just converting all the U.S. agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil annually. In 2001 the United States imported 4.2 billion barrels of oil.

Sounds too good to be true. I'm going to have to see what the scientific community is saying about this. If it is true, it could be a very significant breakthrough.