A Nascar fuel specialist claims he has invented a way to make high-end gasoline from animal waste. Dean Gokel says he can produce 110 octane “pigoline”–gasoline made from hog waste–that is indistinguishable on a molecular level from petroleum-based additives. If other scientists confirm his technology–which they have yet to do–and can scale it up to industrial levels, Gokel hopes he can address two problems at once: addiction to foreign oil and biological pollution from commercial hog and poultry farming. Says Frank Bell, the president of the Waste Elimination Biostill Systems (WEBS), Gokel’s fledgling company: “This guy can take a gallon of piss, shit and water and turn it into a gallon of gasoline.”
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, the saying goes. Gokel has set out this week to prove his technology to investors and regulators. Reluctance to spill his proprietary secrets to all comers tempers universal excitement with healthy skepticism.
Retrieving energy stored in biological waste is a growing field. In fact, this morning, waste engineers and urban officials from around the country announced the creation of a coalition to promote the practice. Their plans generally involve the combustion of biomass or waste to free the energy stored inside. Gokel’s technology works through chemical reactivity, not combustion: Nothing has to burn. His apparatus makes the conversion below 100 degrees Celsius and 100 pounds-per-square-inch pressure.
Gokel spent 20 years running an environmental clean-up business, after graduating from college with degrees in both geology and chemistry. In the 1990s, he says the Charlotte Speedway retained him to clean up gasoline contamination found during a track expansion. When track officials learned how easy it is to identify foreign materials, according to Gokel, NASCAR tracks and teams hired him to test drivers’ fuel and tires for illegal, performance-enhancing chemicals–the automotive equivalent of doping.
The wealthier Nascar drivers began hiring Gokel to consult for them, including Nascar team-owner and Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and the late Ricky Hendrick. Neil Castle and Dale Earnhardt, Sr, taught him to race, at Hickory Speedway and Tri-County, says Gokel, who also attended Buck Baker Winston Cup School. He proudly carries around in his wallet a 2003 Nascar driver’s license.
Gokel says he was perfectly happy with that world, working for Nascar and
boating half the time, until his wife kicked him to do something more for the world than just live his life. For many years, Gokel tinkered on the side, trying to convert animal waste into useful products. After deciding to become an inventor-entrepreneur in 2001, he ploughed all of his time and savings into his private lab. In 2001, he believes he struck paydirt. “The very first time I tried the system it worked. It was an instantaneous breakthrough. I have never been able to improve it from that breakthrough.”
On July 31, Gokel and other WEBS executives hosted about 30 state and federal officials and other interested parties at Sarem Farms in Gates, NC, to watch him turn a five-gallon bucket of hog manure into gasoline. Here’s how it is supposed to work: First, he prepares the waste, turning it “into the consistency of a milkshake,” and then pumps it into the reactor. The hogs, kindly, do much of the hard work, breaking food into the big carbon-based molecules found in manure. Gokel’s process fractures long carbon chains and ring structures into chemicals closer to gasoline, such as C10 or better yet, C8 (basically, octane). Those smaller molecules are distilled off as a vapor, which is collected and eventually used as a fuel additive. The amines–nitrogen products–left behind can then be packed off and sold as commercial chemicals. Gokel is only running five-gallon batches, but there is no significant waste from it. The process takes about three hours.
Gokel has lifted the proprietary curtain for John Calcagni, director of the EPA’s waste reduction resource center in North Carolina and an MIT-trained chemist. “He’s found a way of breaking bonds with low heat and pressure, and no [added] catalysts,” Calcagni says. “Most university guys aren’t going to think of this. But what he did is neat. I can see why no one else has done it. I was skeptical until I saw what he was doing.”
The proprietary technology remains a secret–which halts scientists and investors so far from writing Gokel blank checks. On July 31, the guests to Sarem Farms watched the manure go in, and the fuel come out, but the apparatus was cloaked. “If he’s doing what he says he’s doing it’ll be quite impressive,” says one scientist who has seen the reactor work. “I have no reason to doubt him.” That said, even if Gokel’s breathless claims are true, there are unknowns–Is the technology scalable? There is no discernible waste in five-gallon batches, but what about 500 gallons? People are listening to Gokel for at least one reason, expressed by the same observer: “This may be the next Bill Gates in his garage. You don’t want to blow him off.”
WEBS has big plans, but remains an elaborate garage chemistry experiment without proven technology and investment. That doesn’t prevent them from making claims like this: “Savings can be in the hundreds of millions per year in operational cost reductions for petrochemical companies.”
Gokel claims his technology can also cut operating costs at ethanol plants in half by eliminating the capital and time intensive production steps. Chemicals derived from current ethanol waste, he says, might be sold commercially–for prices much higher than those of gasoline. He has plans to spend all the money from licensing his technology on community programs for local children and revitalizing rural America — if WEBS ever makes it.
miki blog 