Imagine a process whereby carbon based waste materials, such as petcoke, rubber tires, used plastics, wood fibre, livestock manure, municipal effluent, and municipal solid waste, could be transformed into valuable products; without creating CO2, and without creating air, water, odour or noise pollution. And what if these products could also reduce our dependency on fossil fuels?

Well, what you have just imagined is a process called Pyrolysis. Simply put, in Pyrolysis carbon based material, is subjected to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. As there is no oxygen to feed combustion, there is no burning, no incineration. Rather, what takes place is a deconstructing of the waste material into its chemical constituents, which renders valuable carbon based products.

These products, take the form of a synthetic gas, a light diesel or oil and a granulated carbon. The diesel/oil can be burned as-is in a power turbine, or further refined into a green diesel fuel. The carbon products will range from bio-char to a high quality activated carbon.

So, if pyrolysis is so great why is it not in widespread use? Well, although the pyrolysis process has been understood and utilized for thousands of years, it has faced a couple of serious technical challenges which have prevented it from achieving its potential. Namely, challenges with the purity of the products due to cross-contamination, which make them less valuable than the fossil fuel derived products they seek to replace, and soot or tar fouling of the systems that process the products.

Emergent Waste Solutions has leapfrogged current technology and solved these outstanding technical obstacles. Our Advanced Pyrolysis System (APS©) technology achieves product purity that actually compares favorably with fossil fuel derived products and eliminates system fouling.

The significance of these claims cannot be overstated; a truly effective and profitable pyrolysis technology will bring about a significant paradigm shift. With APS© technology landfills may largely become a thing of the past; tire-dumps will become raw materials; pollution from farm animal waste will be eliminated and municipalities that cannot afford effective sewage treatment will have the means to clean up their act.