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Tech-Op-ed June, 2013


SOUNDING OFF


By Walter Salm Editor


Garbage Needed. L


ast month, we talked about a plethora of discarded CRTs from old com- puters and TV sets. Unfortunately, there did not appear to be a reason- able answer to this dilemma. Now we’re looking at another trash cate-


gory but with a very different kind of back story: ordinary household garbage. There’s been an interesting ecological shift in recent years that involves


converting garbage into electrical energy. There are two ways to do this: burn the garbage in an incinerator that heats water to run a steam turbine. Or there’s the more ecologically acceptable practice of amassing garbage piles that decompose, feeding armies of bacteria, which release huge amounts of methane, which in turn can be reclaimed to produce electricity. The methane can be burned to produce steam, it can fuel internal-combustion engines to turn generators, or it can be piped directly into a fuel cell stack that will strip the hydrogen atoms and combine them with oxygen atoms to produce electric- ity, along with water vapor as a waste product. There are a couple of problems with the fuel cell versions of this type:


first, there are no readily commercially available hi-temp fuel cells. These fu- el cells also produce a waste byproduct of carbon dioxide, which we already have in super abundance, and there’s the high cost of purchasing and imple- menting the system, when they are in production. But this is followed by a huge payback in free, mostly green energy. And the carbon footprint is very small indeed, and can often be handled by planting a few trees nearby. But for now, feeding the methane to internal combustion engines that run electric generators is a highly favored solution in many parts of the world. The garbage-to-electricity formula is nowhere more appreciated than in


Scandinavia, where numerous conversion plants are currently operating, but with a strange side effect: they’re running out of garbage to burn! In fact the city of Stockholm has been advertising wherever there’s a “garbage wanted” category, and have managed to glean a few barge loads from the U.K. But not nearly enough. Most of the British want to burn their own trash. Some trash comes from Germany, but much of this is sidetracked to burn sites in Den- mark. Now Italy has entered the equation, with its willingness to export large amounts of garbage to Scandinavia. Barges full of garbage are not a new idea; such a barge originated in Is-


lip, Long Island (NY) in 1987, when local landfills had been filled to capacity. A barge loaded with 3168 tons of garbage was sent on a fruitless voyage, first to Morehead City, North Carolina where it was expected to be deposited in a landfill so it could be mined for its methane gas. But before it could be un- loaded, local news media in North Carolina got hold of the story, playing it up in such a way that the local politicians ordered the barge to leave and take its garbage with it. Next the barge tried Mexico, then Belize, and then back to a Brooklyn, NY incinerator. The ashes returned to Islip, where the garbage barge had started its journey. There was a lot of fuel burned on that tugboat that provided the barge’s motive power. But that boondoggle is history, and illuminates there has been a huge shift in public opinion since then. Today, as more and more municipalities in the U.S. start to get with the


program, more garbage will become energy instead of permanent landfill. It’s really a win-win situation, especially since it’s so difficult to obtain the need- ed land, permits and funding for conventional landfills. Because of today’s emphasis on recycling, garbage is now largely free of metal cans and plastic containers, making it easier and safer to burn. When I was in the US Army during the Korean War, such garbage went


into large metal garbage pails labeled “Edible” and was used to feed pigs, which in turn were slaughtered to became food for the mess halls. Naturally, there were half-serious jokes about the Edible Garbage being recycled direct- ly through the mess hall and becoming the next day’s mystery meal; army food was not held in very high esteem by those who had to eat it. Other con- tainers were for cans and bottles. The military was the first organization I can recall that did its own recycling. It also fell upon some hapless souls (sometimes including me) to scrub out those “Edible” garbage pails with “hot sudsy water”; they were big and they were dirty. This was the era before dumpsters became popular. The burning in incinerators and/or the decomposition into methane in-


cludes not only “edible” garbage, but also papers and wrappers. And that burn- ing will be used to generate electricity, a commodity that has become increasing- ly precious as energy and fossil fuel prices continue to escalate. Today’s society uses more and more energy, and apparently is producing a declining amount of “edible” or otherwise usable garbage. But it is good to know that this garbage will no longer go to waste. Today’s garbage is tomorrow’s electricity. r


PUBLISHER’S NOTE


By Jacob Fattal Publisher


What Is Your USA Percentage?


A


Tech were the SMT/Hybrid in Nuremberg, and Nepcon Shanghai, and at both shows there were lots of happy exhibitors and happy visitors. This reflects to a great degree the positive signs in the world’s financial


fter circling the globe to go to trade shows in Germany and China, we have returned worn out, suffering from jet lag, and convinced that the world economy is definitely on the upswing. The shows attended by U.S.


markets. In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 15,000 for the first time ever, a sure sign of the impending uptick in the world mar- ketplace. This happened in spite of Sequestration cutback of Federal funding and the sluggish growth in the Euro zone, being dragged down by ongoing fi- nancial crises in some of its smaller member countries. In Japan, the government finally made an important move to help its


flagging economy; the Yen has been devalued by government decree, and this move is expected to breathe new life into that country’s exports. Sony Corpo- ration, in the meantime, has marked a profitable fiscal year for the first time in five years — a profit of $435 million vs. last year’s loss of $4.6 billion. In the U.S., old-line companies like Eastman Kodak are re-inventing


themselves as smaller, highly specialized entities, while the onshoring trend continues (see feature article: “A Contract Manufacturing Guide to Reshoring” page 20).


While we applaud this trend, the days of a complex product like a refrig-


erator or an automobile made entirely in one country are long gone. Today, smart shoppers look for the percentage of made in U.S.A. content of major purchases. Many cutting-edge components in a new car, for example, are im- possible to obtain in the U.S.; they must be imported from China, Japan, Malaysia or where ever they are made. An examination of U.S. content for new cars is very revealing. Of all the Cadillac models, the one with the high- est U.S. content is the DTS which is rated at 76 percent U.S.-made. The Hon- da Accord, by contrast, is 80 percent made in U.S.A. That 80 percent figure is surpassed by the Ford Explorer at 85 percent, the Dodge Dakota at 84 percent and the Dodge Grand Caravan at 82 percent. The bottom line? Everything we do or buy


today in our global economy has international ties and implications. Even domestic Florida or- ange juice is at least partly from Brazil. r


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