A Quebec company is developing a facility for converting 30,000 diapers/year into 11,000 tonnes of diesel fuel using a process called pyrolysis:
David Bressler of the University of Alberta says pyrolysis is a "very hot area of research right now".Pyrolysis is a type of closed-loop incineration, so you just know that David Bressler is the most insufferable laugher on the University of Alberta campus right now, too.
With fingers crossed,[Amec engineer and VP Luciano] Piciacchia says a diaper diesel plant could be in operation in the Montreal area within the 18 months.And with fingers crossed, those 15 tonnes of diapers [assuming 1 diaper=0.5 kg.] will produce almost a thousand times their weight in fuel. Did someone drop a few zeros? Even 30 million diapers/year is only 15,000 tonnes.
Let's go the other way. That sweet, subsidized daycare has Quebeckers multiplying like lapins up there, around 80,000 births/year. If even the hippies' and fur trappers' kids use an average of 6 disposables/day till they're three, that's 1.44 million diapers/day, of which 30,000 is "about one-quarter of the diapers that end up in landfills in Quebec yearly." OK, fine. But 30,000 diapers/day is still only 5,400 tonnes, max. They'd better keep those fingers crossed. And hope that Quebecois exceptionalism extends to the laws of physics.
Now look what's happened. it took so much time calculating the diaper production capacity of faux-France, that I can't write much about the freaked out luxo-mutato-prototype-minivanological whatchamacallit for sale on Craigslist in Oklahoma. The Lands Precedent is one of only two examples produced by the Lands Motor Company of Elkhart, Indiana in 1986, using parts from Ford, Chevy, Citroen [!?] and who knows what else. It was designed by Alain Clenet [as inthe Clenet, I assume, from the first cover of The Robb Report] and has six seats, a rosewood interior, and a minibar and TV. And it's the closest you can get to the Popemobile while still procreating. Dude wants $35,000. I have no idea what to tell you, but follow your heart.
Company aims to turn diapers into diesel fuel [ctv.ca via jalopnik]
1986 Lands Precedent Concept Car ONLY 2 IN THE WORLD! - $35000 [la craigslist via jalopnik, where there is much discussion]
That's 30,000 tonnes of diapers. Numbers work out OK adding tonnes. Your reporter must have missed that word in the press release.
[yeah, that makes more sense, though it's Canada's reporter, not mine. but thanks, -ed.]