[Gasification] Baffling, a question of sanity

Bob Stuart bobstuart at sasktel.net
Wed Feb 25 11:19:21 CST 2015


The study of money and how it flows can shut out a great deal of  
common sense, but there are supposed to be "due diligence"  
specialists to find prior disasters. Corruption can keep them from  
doing their job, and somebody gets to build their dream.  A few  
people gamble with their own money.  J. Paul Getty put a pulp mill in  
a tropical forest that didn't have a hope of producing steadily. The  
enthusiasm for the repetition of history is probably most often due  
to the Dunning-Kruger syndrome.  One has to have a small talent for a  
topic in order to be able to judge one's own performance.  Every  
field seems to have a few people who seem to have just wandered in,  
and never add more than noise to the conversation, but remain  
delighted to be involved.  Unfortunately, some of them are also  
excellent at sales.

An example from the world of literature is appended below.

Bob Stuart

On 25-Feb-15, at 9:36 AM, linvent at aol.com wrote:

> 	There was recently announced a 1000 ton/day MSW to RDF  
> gasification facility to be built in the UK. The UK has a  
> significant number of waste to energy facilities as do other parts  
> of EU.
> 	However, the announcement said that the MSW would be sorted into  
> combustible (RDF) and non-combustible fractions with the RDF being  
> fed into a gasifier, presumably a fluidized bed reactor. The gas  
> from the reactor would exit at 1200C and then go into a plasma tar  
> destructor.
> 	Now, for the life of me, I do not know how anyone familiar with  
> the business and technology can seriously entertain such a process  
> as there is an inherent thermodynamic energy problem doing this and  
> the prior failures in the field are quite significant, one group  
> spending $128 mm on a 3 ton/hour system. The US Air Forces' attempt  
> at plasma waste conversion resulted in the system being scrapped  
> and a paper titled "Lessons Learned".
> 	One definition of insanity is doing the same  thing over and over  
> again hoping for a different outcome. It also applies to those who  
> use the typical gas cleaning system such as water sprays, or baths,  
> or sawdust, bark or whatever trying to clean the aerosols from a  
> reactor gas stream.
> Sincerely,
> Leland T. "Tom" Taylor
> Thermogenics Inc.
>


William Topaz McGonagall  lived for years in the shadows of the Tay  
River bridge, and celebrated its completion with an epic poem which  
began thusly:
Beautiful railway bridge on the River Tay!
And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe,
The famous engineers of the present day
Who succeeded in erecting the Railway
Bridge on the River Tay,
Which stands to be seen
Near Dundee and the Magdalen Green.

The poem, and the bridge were very long, but the bridge collapsed one  
dark and stormy night, eliciting an even greater epic, which concluded:
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world without delay
That your central girders should not have given way
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported by buttresses -
At least many sensible men confess.
For the stronger we our houses build
The less chance we have of being killed.

   I must not leave out the fairer sex, pluckily represented by  
Amanda McKittrick Ros, an Irish woman who memorialized her visit to  
Westminster Abbey with these impressions:
Holy Moses! Have a look
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here,
Mortal loads of beef and beer.
Some of them are turned to dust,
Every one bids lost to lust:
Royal flesh so tinged with "Blue"
Undergoes the same as you.

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