I'm not sure; they didn't directly address that but they did say this:
The energy input includes the energy in the dry feed, the electric power used, and any purchased natural gas that must be fired.
Energy efficiency for this design of the CWT-TP process is about 85%.
Some of the CWT-TP fuel-gas must be used to operate the plant and, of course, pumps, motors, and some heaters require electric power. The energy efficiency of the CWT-TP process is generally fairly high because most of the water that enters the plant leaves as a liquid rather than as water vapor.
This is because the CWT-TP process is designed to use the steam that is generated internally to heat the incoming feedstock. Energy efficiency is only one measure of the performance of the plant.
For the CWT-TP plant shown in Figure 6, “economic” efficiency is more important. To achieve this, additional equipment is incorporated in the design to produce a saleable dry mineral product and a glycerol plus (NH4)2SO4 product.
A plant designed for a different feedstock, such as tires or plastics, would have less equipment, and even higher energy efficiency.
It's 85% efficient including the feedstock energy.
So, if you're pumping worthless waste "energy" in.. like cornstalks... and you are creating diesel fuel from that, it may well be that it becomes very competitive or even advantageous with respect to pumping oil out of the ground.
Same with the gazillions of worn out tires laying around. Lots and lots of energy in those and they are basically an intrinsically worthless item (priot to this technology).
There's some cost to pumping oil out of the ground. I wonder if 15% of the cost of a barrel of oil is energy used to "get it into the barrel."
This is going to be very interesting, I think. I'm sure they'll come out with a better economic analysis after that plant runs a while.
