Can microwaved junk tires zap the fuel crunch?

At least one answer to the fuel crunch may be microwaving the dregs of the earth: old tires and tar-based sludge that ruins rivers.  

At least that’s the plan according to Global Resource Corp.  (GRC) of West Berlin, N.J. which has a patent pending microwave process that allows for removal of oil and other petroleum products from various resources including tires, shale deposits, tar sands and waste oil.

The company is in the process of building a plant with specialized microwave ovens it says could dispose of approximately 6,000,000 tires per year.  In a recent 10-k filing the company also said it was designing a plant to apply its microwave technology to the processing of municipal solid waste. The Company expects have a plant online by February for use as a pilot project for military use. The plant is intended to remove the moisture and extract the hydrocarbons, reducing the weight by 50% to 60% and reducing the volume by 70% to 80%, so that the residue can be put in landfills.  

The microwave process, invented by Frank Pringle, CEO of the company, is indeed gaining lots of attention.  For example, Pennsylvania State University's Microwave Processing and Engineering Center, recently signed a contract with Pringle's company, to help him get funding and develop large-scale applications.  Popular Science and Time magazines have in recent week also noted that company with awards for innovative inventions. And over the summer, the US Department of Energy included the company in a report on alternative fuel technologies that could impact the US in the coming years.  “The technology could one day unearth billions of barrels of energy from U.S. oil shale, tar sands, coal, and other deposits, resulting in a new cleaner, source of domestic energy,” the report stated. 

 Specifically, the company’s process uses highly efficient and economical radio frequency (RF) energy with a specific microwave frequency in a vacuum environment to extract hydrocarbons from their original and natural source and crack it into fuels without environmental issues. According to the GRC Web site:  

•   The vacuum creates uniform gasification.

•   The process is dry - It requires neither water, nor any type of liquid injections.

•   The company has patents pending for a wide range of frequencies.

According to GRC, all current patented microwave solutions use a single common frequency (2.45 GHZ). The GRC process offers Software Controlled Frequencies that are adaptable to the energy source target. Pringle has specified over 8,700 RF microwave frequencies intrinsic to hydrocarbon elements/materials. These frequencies are protected by patent pending filings. 

According to an article on the Philadelphia Inquirer today, Pringle is no university scientist. In the early 1960s, he dropped out of Hiram College in Northeast Ohio to play professional baseball. After three weeks on a Cleveland Indians farm team in Arizona, he injured his rotator cuff. He never got a college degree. But he kept learning, he told the newspaper, and has run an engineering and recycling company, and patented four materials-handling inventions. 

According to the article, one of Pringle’s larger inspirations was the humongous Philadelphia tire fire in 1996.  The fire was so enormous and burned so long and hot, it caused damage that closed Interstate 95 for eight days, sparking news stories about the growing problem of getting rid of old tires. 

For the Inquirer, Pringle demonstrated the microwave process: He turned a single 14-inch car tire, one small piece at a time, into 1.2 gallons of diesel fuel, 7.5 pounds of carbon black, 50 cubic feet of combustible gas, and two pounds of high-strength steel (from the steel belts in most tires).