Effect of Thermal Depolymerization of Wasted Food Extracts on Alternate Fuel Production

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Herndon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Organic Matter ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Corn Starch ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
High Standard ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Thermal Depolymerization

Human activities like fossil fuel retrieval, biomass burning, waste disposal, and residential and commercial use of energy are continuing to effect the Earth’s energy budget by changing the emissions and resulting atmospheric concentrations of radioactively important gases, aerosols, and by changing land surface properties. These activities negatively contribute to Earth’s greenhouse gases including water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3). Approximately 82% of greenhouse gases are developed from the United States, Asia, and Europe alone. Food and their extraction processes, including transportation of those extracts, account for about 35% of those greenhouse gases. This includes wasted, rotten, and uneaten food. About 40% of food in the United States today goes uneaten, resulting in more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out upwards of $165 billion each year, amounting to $1,350 to more than $2,275 annually in waste per family of four, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land. Moreover, almost all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfills. This number has increased, in regards to organic matter, from approximately 16 percent of U.S. methane emissions in 2010 upwards to 25 percent in 2012. With the increase in supply and demand of food, in addition to the lower consumer cost, the statistics of wasted feedstocks are rapidly increasing. The purpose of this research is to utilize wasted food to extract natural hydrocarbon oils through thermal depolymerization in order to develop an alternative fuel. Thermal depolymerization is a hydrous pyrolysis process that breaks down long chained polymers into simpler compounds and light hydrocarbons, much of which can be separated and used for fuel. Polymers include essentially all organic matter i.e. matter made of living or once-living things, which include petroleum products like plastic, styro-foam, and nylon, as well as plant and animal material, and manure. Potatoes and corn starch were used as feedstocks for this research and thermal depolymerization was conducted on the feedstocks for analysis and fuel collection. With optimum use and a mature thermal depolymerization technology, the Earth might comfortably support 10 times its current population at a high standard of living. There is enough biomass existing now accessible on the surface of the earth to provide 100 years of human energy use.

Dilemmas and Prospects of Writing a Bahá’í Encyclopedia

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Will C. Van Den Hoonaard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Status ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
High Standard ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Encyclopedic Dictionary ◽  
Current Stage

This paper addresses the need for a Bahá’í encyclopedia and describes the nature, organization, and editing of the multi-volume Bahá’í encyclopedic dictionary project endorsed in 1984 by the United States Bahá’í community. The encyclopedia will serve both Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í researchers arid scholars, the general reader; and university and public libraries. This paper considers the significance of the encyclopedia in terms of other Bahá’í encyclopedic works and in terms of the current stage in the development of the Bahá’í community. However desirable such a project may be, a number of dilemmas accompany its undertaking. These dilemmas relate to the present status of Bahá’í scholarship, the embryonic nature of primary sources, the high standard of scholarship exemplified by the works of Shoghi Effendi, and the relative newness of the Bahá’í religion. The prospects of the encyclopedic undertaking are expected to generate considerable scholarship and to provide intellectual vigor to issues raised by Bahá’ís and their critics.

scholarly journals Supply and Demand for Radiation Oncology in the United States: Updated Projections for 2015 to 2025

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. E394-E395
Author(s):  
H.Y. Pan ◽  
B.G. Haffty ◽  
B. Falit ◽  
T.A. Buchholz ◽  
L.D. Wilson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Radiation Oncology ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The United States

II. The United States of Lyncherdom

Prospects ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 139-150
Author(s):  
Mark Twain
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Single Sample ◽  
Chinese Christians ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

And so Missouri has fallen, that great State! Certain of her children have joined the lynchers, and the smirch is upon the rest of us. That handful of her children have given us a character and labeled us with a name; and to the dwellers in the four quarters of the earth we are “lynchers,” now, and ever shall be. For the world will not stop and think – it never does, it is not its way; its way is to generalize from a single sample. It will not say “Those Missourians have been busy eighty years in building an honorable good name for themselves; these hundred lynchers down in the corner of the State are not real Missourians, they are bastards.” No, that truth will not enter its mind; it will generalize from the one or two misleading samples and say “The Missourians are lynchers.” It has no reflection, no logic, no sense of proportion. With it, figures go for nothing; to it, figures reveal nothing, it cannot reason upon them rationally; it is Brother J. J. infinitely multiplied; it would say, with him, that China is being swiftly and surely Christianized, since 9 Chinese Christians are being made every day; and it would fail, with him, to notice that the fact that 33,000 pagans are born there every day, damages the argument. It would J-J Missouri, and say “There are a hundred lynchers there, therefore the Missourians are lynchers;” the considerable fact that there are two and a half million Missourians who are not lynchers would not affect their verdict any more than it would affect Bro. J. J.'s.

Regional and Gender Differences and Trends in the Anesthesiologist Workforce

2015 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 997-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Baird ◽  
Lindsay Daugherty ◽  
Krishna B. Kumar ◽  
Aziza Arifkhanova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Work Hours ◽  
Seemingly Unrelated Regression ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Unrelated Regression ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Society ◽  
American Society Of Anesthesiologists

Abstract Background Concerns have long existed about potential shortages in the anesthesiologist workforce. In addition, many changes have occurred in the economy, demographics, and the healthcare sector in the last few years, which may impact the workforce. The authors documented workforce trends by region of the United States and gender, trends that may have implications for the supply and demand of anesthesiologists. Methods The authors conducted a national survey of American Society of Anesthesiologists members (accounting for >80% of all practicing anesthesiologists in the United States) in 2007 and repeated it in 2013. The authors used logistic regression analysis and Seemingly Unrelated Regression to test across several indicators under an overarching hypothesis. Results Anesthesiologists in Western states had markedly different patterns of practice relative to anesthesiologists in other regions in 2007 and 2013, including differences in employer type, the composition of anesthesia teams, and the time spent on monitored anesthesia care. The number and proportion of female anesthesiologists in the workforce increased between 2007 and 2013, and females differed from males in employment arrangements, compensation, and work hours. Conclusions Regional differences remained stable during this time period although the reasons for these differences are speculative. Similarly, how and whether the gender difference in work hours and shift to younger anesthesiologists during this period will impact workforce needs is uncertain.

The Neo/Bio/Colonial Hot Zone

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Lynch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Origin ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Future Role ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Hot Zone

This article explores the proliferation of nonfiction narratives which warn of an impending global pandemic of African origin. Through a reading of four texts — Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, Richard Kaplan's The Ends of the Earth, and Jeffrey Goldberg's ‘Our Africa Problem’ — the author argues that such pandemic narratives reflect unease about the United States' current and future role in Africa or other non-Western places, after a half-century of largely unsuccessful ‘development’. Second, plague tales reflect anxieties about environmental devastation in Africa and elsewhere. The article concludes that the most frightening aspect of these contemporary ‘plague tales' is the solutions they suggest to the ‘problem’ of a coming plague.

Guest Editorial: How To Meet Declining Oil Demand

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (06) ◽  
pp. 10-11
Author(s):  
Dwayne Purvis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Oil Supply ◽  
Demand Growth ◽  
The World ◽  
Oil Demand ◽  
Percentage Basis

As the world reaches a tipping point in its will to address climate change, the industry must find a new way forward, especially in the United States. Many are right to say that oil and gas are not going away; the transition is planned to take 30 years or more and will not decline to zero production. This fact, though, obscures the reality that peaking, then declining, demand for oil—gas is another story—will structurally change and globally redistribute the industry’s exploration and employment. The story of oil supply and demand began its race to the top 150 years ago. “Shortage” and “glut” have meant that paired growth got out of sync, not that there was a real loss of production. For many decades the world has needed about 1 million B/D more each year than the previous year, but on a percentage basis growth has slowed. At the same time supply from previous years declines about 5 to 6% per year, arguably higher in recent years. The treadmill for new supply has been running hot for decades. All major public forecasts in the past year call for oil demand to plateau between now and about 2030 when accounting for ongoing changes to policy. (To be clear, some show a peak in the 2030s in “business as usual” cases, but they also show even sooner peaks if policy and demand changes accelerate). BP’s Energy Outlook 2020 from last fall took the bold—and well-argued—position that peak oil demand is today and that it is only a question of how fast demand declines. “Peak” demand isn’t really a peak like the Matterhorn; it is flatter like a weathered jebel. We know this from the example of the peak oil demand experienced by the developed world. We also know from that experience that forecasting agencies failed to predict the peak OECD oil demand in 2005 literally by decades even as demand turned down. Reversal of demand growth presents a figurative and mathematical inflection point. Though existing production continues, growth becomes negative, and the pace of the new-supply treadmill plummets. When the need for new supply approximately halves, the Pareto principle tells us that the number of new projects required will fall more than half. Thus, the need for those industry professionals preferentially tasked with finding new oil supply—geophysicists, exploration geologists, drillers, reservoir engineers, landmen—may fall quickly. Other disciplines like operations that service existing production will face only the headwinds of cost reductions and then the long, slow slide toward mid-century targets. The United States via its swarm of large and small companies has dominated the global supply story for more than a decade with its unique shale revolution, but it had previously shriveled to a second-tier producer. Fig. 1 shows 55 years of oil production history. Fig. 1a shows the US supply deconstructed to its functional parts while Fig. 1b shows ascendent producers on the same scales.

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