Can garbage be refined into fuel?

Question

There are a lot of garbage dumps. Can the degraded materials be used for power plants or cars?

Answer 1

There are machines that can convert any organic material into fuel.  I don't think they are close to ready for large scale use.

Answer 2

yes. The microorganism that  decomposed the organic materials at land fills produce a methane gas. and there's a company that converts big dampsites to a methane power plant.

Answer 3

ya but it takes more fuel than u get out of it

Answer 4

Yes. Plant based green trash can be press for oil for bio diesel,Dried plants,paper,wood ect..,can be stilled into alcohols.

why they don't get off their *** and do it with oil hitting $130.They cry about landfill space,well make fuel.

Answer 5

Yeah, but it's basically not worth it. Processing garbage into fuel costs about $90/ton and dumping garbage at a landfill costs about $40/ton. Surprisingly, the rising cost of fuel doesn't really make the process more cost-effective, as it takes a lot of energy to convert garbage into fuel, to get the garbage to the processing plant, to take the waste material from the reprocessing plant, and so on.

Many landfills do basically this in a very efficient way that doesn't involve hauling anything. They allow the garbage to decompose, trapping the resulting methane gas. They can then use the methane gas right on-site to produce electricity.