Comment

Comment by Josh Reno on May 29, 2009 at 1:42am

gasification and pyrolysis, along with anaerobic digestion, are being heavily promoted by the UK government as a way to solve three problems at once: 1. to divert waste going to landfill, 2. to produce energy from non-fossil fuel sources, and 3. to capture methane and carbon before it is leaked into the atmosphere through decomposition. Gasifiers heat waste - but don't burn it - which allows them to extract energy more efficiently from waste in the form of a synthetic gas (or "syngas"). This has seemingly limitless potential as a source of power or an ingredient in more sophisticated (or "second generation") biofuels like butanol.