OK, I just remembered another partial "Solution" from several years ago that could be dusted off and implemented.
If pursued it would be a double win, we get light oil and keep tons of wast out of land-fills*.
It's a bit arcane now as even though the Tech worked the business model did not.
It was called Thermal Depolymerization, AKA "Anything into oil".
Last I looked there were still some valid links to discussion of it on the web.
Basically the process mimics the natural one, heat and pressure break down the molecular chains of whatever is put into the vats.
The earth does this by subduction, TD uses grinders, steam, and pressure.
TD is claimed to be able to recycle anything that is non-Nuclear.
A pilot plant was built and functioned as designed.
In addition to oil it produced chemically pure minerals.
And yes, it recovers the trace metals such as gold and platinum.
But as a business it failed.
Why? Simple, bad assumptions in the business plan.
It was assumed that the process would be subsidized as other energy/oil production was.
It was also assumed the major feedstock of "Turkey Offal" would be "Free" since pending legislation would have made it illegal to feed "Animal remains" to other animals such as cattle.
Neither of those happened.
Turkey offal has other markets so Tyson wanted to be paid for it.
"Big Oil" was not interested in competition and has plenty of lobbyist.
To put this into context the time frame was pre-Fracking, and the "Mad Cow" scare was in full swing.
Now here is where I begin to risk offense to the overly sensitive. I am not a PC supplicant, you might have already guessed that.
If the Greenies/Eco-Nuts REALLY want to "Save the earth" as they so stridently claim, they would be demanding TD plants near every moderate or large sized city.
Old tires, trashed computers, plastics, animal offal, and even the mountains of currently useless oil production residue (Cannot bring the name to mind at the moment, sorry.) plus thousand more items could all be recycled using TD.
But the Greenies are abhorrent of the mere thought, as OMG, some amount of
Oil would be produced!
So here we have a proven technology that produces sulphur-free oil that is almost ready to pump into a diesel engine as it comes out of the pipe.
It takes a lot of Waste to produce each gallon of Oil so is really more of a clean-up process than oil production facility under current economics.
We subsidize all sorts of industries with less clear dividends. Municipalities spend millions to dispose of waste with no return expected.
With TD they might at least fuel some of their vehicle fleet.
For the record, I have no stocks or other financial interest in TD and have written this from memory.
This is not a definitive treatise on the subject so please do your own research if I have piqued your interest.
*Of course keeping waste out of land-fills would annoy the land-fill operators.
