RE: Researchers discover how to turn plastic trash into electricity
Good idea to use for Pacific Gyre. It would not be self-sustaining commercially, at least not initally, but in the very least it would be inexpensive to skim all the plastic crap off the surface and burn it (cleanly of course).
It's one of those things like global warming and asteroid impacts... it might not be free to avoid a global catastrophe, but if we could convince Fox news watchers that the "free market" doesn't account for these sort of things perhaps we could prevent disasters.
Anyway, the actual technology for this is not new, and in the early 2000's the US army was looking into using this to avoid burning waste in uncontrolled incinerators (which they currently do, or should i say KBR does?).
They had a working prototype that would not only combust all camp waste but also provide up to 40 KW of electricity (based on an average camp size).
That said, this is probably an incremental improvement on gasification technology, and all improvements are welcome!
Currently the US is the only well-developed country in the world which does NOT utilize waste as a source of energy, but continues to bury it in landfills!
