Pure Energy Systems News
Copyright © 2010


In a little more than a week from now, on November 29, Green Power Inc. (GPI) of Pasco, Washington, who has a technology to turn municipal solid waste (MSW) into synthetic liquid fuel and electricity, plans to begin the manufacturing of plants in fulfillment of orders from around the world. The photo on the right shows their 100 ton/day pilot plant.

This fuel would be of higher quality and cheaper than fuel derived from crude oil -- and it comes from local feedstock, while turning waste into energy. Green Power claims it manufactures equipment that can convert 100 tons of garbage into 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel at 78 cents a gallon. So not only would the fuel be cheaper, but it doesn't come from countries who aren't always so friendly, mitigating these unsavory international dependencies. It addresses the pollution problem, and the energy problem, and the political tension problem. "We would not need to import any foreign oil if we could turn our municipal waste stream into fuel," GPI's CEO, Michael Spitzauer has told me.

I classify waste-to-energy as a form of "free energy" because as long as there are humans on this planet there will be waste, and often in the case of waste there is actually a tipping fee for the feedstock, providing revenue on that end as well. And if we ever get to the point of using all our waste as feedstock for such processes, we will still have plenty of landfills to clean up, not to mention the huge gyres of plastic waste the size of Texas in the oceans.

Spitzauer, says that GPI has over $2 billion dollars in signed contracts for GPI plants, including in Vietnam, Spain, France, Yugoslavia, and a very large installation in South America to be launched in April. He said GPI has money in the bank from the S. American contract, for example, ready to finance immediate construction. The civil work has been done locally. Ground has been graded, concrete poured, foundations laid.

On September 17, a Bosnian newspaper reported (original url) that the director of the Slovenian company 'Green power', Zoran Petrovic, told reporters that the company will employ 50 workers (in its construction), and that the plant should become operational in the second half of next year.

In August of 2009, GPI was shut down by Washington state's Ecology Department who said GPI had "not provided adequate compliance with the environmental air quality regulations." This was cleared on September 8, 2010 by an EPA ruling that support's GPI's claim and reverses Washington state's Ecology Department's claim that placed the GPI process in the class of incinerators, which it is not. According to the EPA ruling:

    "Green Power describes its process as a proprietary catalytic pressure-less depolymerization process (CDP) where municipal solid waste or a wide variety of organic wastes are 'cracked' at the molecular level and the long-chain polymers (plastic, organic material such as wood, etc.) are chemically altered to become short-chain hydrocarbons with no combustion. Combustion requires oxygen or a similar compound, but according to Green Power the CDP occurs in an anaerobic environment, exposed only to inert gases like nitrogen...".