Mark Holtzapple is a professor at Texas A&M University in the Mcferrin Department of Chemical Engineering. He’s spent most of his life creating a method to turn waste into essential fuels and chemicals.
In about a month, Holtzapple can turn things like waste paper, sewage sludge, animal manure and crops into fossil fuels. He first adds the mass into a tank, then inoculates the mass with soil, which decomposes the biomass into organic acids that can then be turned into fuel.
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According to Holtzapple for every dry ton of waste, they get anywhere from 70 to 80 gallons of fuel. Now you might think that this process may be expensive to do, making the price of the product rise but that isn’t the case.
“One of the questions that comes up a lot is What do these fuels cost? The answer is it depends on what the raw material is,” Holtzapple said. “In the case of municipal solid waste and sewage sludge, we can make gasoline for around $1.25 per gallon.”
