DARPA LOVES TRASH

U.S. bases of the future are sup­posed to be self-​​sustaining. But, right now, they pro­duce too much junk — more than 7 pounds per day, per sol­dier. And a whole heap of “per­son­nel, fuel, and crit­i­cal trans­port equip­ment are needed to sup­port the removal and dis­posal” of that waste, the Pentagon notes.
That’s why the Defense Department’s far-​​out research arm, Darpa, has just given a Menlo Park, California “gene syn­the­sis” com­pany a grant to give the junk a sec­ond life, by turn­ing the plas­tic waste into fuel.
“Plastic pack­ag­ing waste has energy con­tent that can approach that of diesel fuel, Darpa notes. “Diesel fuel has lower heat­ing value of 43.9MJ/kg and hydro­gen con­tent of 12.5 weight per­cent. Plastic heat­ing val­ues can range from 26-​​43MJ/​kg with a hydro­gen con­tent of 5–14 per­cent. If energy con­tent of the waste is opti­mized for sec­ondary use as a fuel source, at today’s level of pack­ag­ing being dis­carded, a mil­i­tary unit could achieve well over 100 per­cent self-​​sufficiency for their gen­er­a­tor fuel needs.“
Professor Richard Gross, at Polytechnic University, New York, thinks he has a poly­mer that can get the job done. It’ll have “prop­er­ties sim­i­lar to poly­eth­yl­ene and will be pre­pared from renew­able resources with a cost com­pa­ra­ble to cur­rent com­mer­cially man­u­fac­tured plas­tics,” he claims. DNA 2.0, Inc., out of Menlo Park, will pro­duce the enzymes needed to make the designer mate­r­ial for Darpa’s MISER (Mobile Integrated Sustainable Energy Recovery) project.

September 28th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.