Interesting story about creating petroleum products from agricultural waste - http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19786825&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id=639295&rfi=6



The story claims that the inventor is able to take regular farm waste - cracked soy beans, cotton, etc. - and turn it into crude oil. The most interesting part is that the oil then burns at 100% efficiency - i.e. there are no discernible waste products after burning.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about a number of things. If this oil can truly burn at 100% efficiency, I will have to revise my view of chemical reactions or retake some science courses. I can admit that my science background is a bit dated. I haven't taken any kind of chemistry class since my first year of college 17 years ago. I do have a more recent background in physics - 4 hours short of a minor - but again I haven't studied that in 6 years. I mention this because I recall vaguely that nothing burns at 100% efficiency - there is always something lost to waste and heat even if it's a very small amount.

That said, I find this inventor's experiment intriguing. What it appears he has done is speed up the process of decomposition for specific forms of organic material. Crude oil as pumped from the ground is generally made up of organic material that has decomposed. Wikipedia's article gives a good basic synopsis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

So if what this inventor has done can be independently repeated, we could have a partial solution to our current energy woes. However, I think this leads to an additional problem - we haven't weaned our dependency on oil. What good will it do if suddenly we're using all this "farm waste" to create fuel? Will we suddenly be facing a shortage of food as farmers grow "waste crops" to produce petroleum? What kinds of new pollution will result as a part of the refining process to create this petroleum and what new by-products will start to appear?

The other think I'm pondering is this: Could this experiment not be a modern day successor to the early 1900s "automobiles that run on water" demonstration - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car and http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/car-runs-on-water-inventor-to-be-kidnapped-by-exxon-177716.php

The reason I wonder is that I live by one simple rule: If it's too good to be true it probably isn't.