TDP Links Discover magazine did a rather extensive article on TDP in its May 2003 issue. You can read it here or you can view or download the PDF version here. MIT's Technology Review covered TDP in its June 2003 issue. It's only a one-page overview, but it's clean and simple. View the PDF here. The Wikipedia has a short entry on the process with a few links. If you'd like a long, detailed report on the process and how it was tested, check out "Thermochemical Conversion of Swine Manure to Produce Fuel and Reduce Waste" by Zhang, Riskowski, and Funk, as submitted to the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research in 1999. As I said, it's long -- but it's understandable for most educated laypeople. Many, many blogs cover or cover the topic. The discussion at Blogcritics.org seems relatively down to earth. A Google search on "thermal depolymerization" will bring up a lot of interesting discussions by people with more extensive science backgrounds that mine. A discussion at the BioDieselNow Forums also appears to have good commentary by a knowledgeable community (although you have to wade through the text of the Discover article first). CBS News did a short piece on TDP called "Trash Talk Sparks Powerful Idea" on Aug. 19, 2003.

Notes Thermodepolymerization -- or "thermal depolymerization" -- is a process that converts stuff into oil. And by "stuff" I mean just about anything: garbage, medical waste, animals and animal parts (e.g., cows with mad-cow disease, or offal from chickens that have been made into McNuggets), used computer parts, tires, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum. This is not just a theoretical process. It is real, out-of-the-lab stuff happening on an industrial scale. It's being done by ConAgra Foods in Carthage, Missouri -- at one of the company's Butterball Turkey plants, where up to 200 tons of turkeys are being turned into oil every day. Once more: This is real stuff. Garbage is being turned into oil by a process that's safe, clean, and in use today. Essentially, thermal depolymerization or TDP mimics a process the earth itself uses to 'process' what gets buried and break it down. Over millions of years, heat and pressure break the bonds that hold these waste products together. TDP accelerates the process. The leading company doing TDP is Changing World Technologies of West Hempstead, N.Y. More to come...