'INVENTOR USES CATS TO MAKE DIESEL!' As an attention-grabber, it's top of the red tops.
The headline appeared in Bild, the best-selling German newspaper, sending a series of similarly far-fetched echoes reverberating across the Web.
The story concerns a German inventor, Dr Christian Koch, who claims to have developed a means of converting everyday waste material into diesel fuel. His company, Alphakat Technologies, is based in Buttenheim, where - if Bild is to be believed - no tabby is safe.
For whatever reason - maybe the "kat" in the company's name? - Bild gave the impression that deceased cats were the primary raw material for Dr Koch's factory, even going so far as to speculate how many unfortunate felines might be necessary for a full tank (20 it seems). Certainly, in these austere times of fuel shortage and downsizing, it's a new take on the old advertising slogan, "Put a tiger in your tank."
Animal rights activists became involved, with the chairman of the Deutsche Tierschutzbund (German society for the protection of animals) pointing out that the use of cats - and dogs - in such a process was illegal. In the end, Koch issued a disclaimer, stating that the reports concerning him were "completely false and had no connection with reality," and that legal proceedings were being considered.
The source of the controversy is that Koch, an unlikely catnapper, claims he has patented a means to transform various kinds of waste material into fuel.
Potential raw materials include plastics, rubber, used cooking oil, old engine oil, agricultural wastes, tar, wood, straw, sludge, hospital waste, and general household rubbish.
Koch states that these materials, which he finely shreds, contain long carbon chains. He maintains that through heating and distilling the material through two stages - and introducing a special mineral catalyst - he can shorten the chains into the kind of carbons that make up diesel oil (depolymerisation).
The key, he states, is the catalyst, which has taken him many years' research to develop. This mysterious substance has the further claimed advantage of enabling this transformation to take place at relatively low temperatures.
Koch has numerous vats in his plant, into which the raw material is mixed with oil, the catalyst is introduced, and the diesel is "distilled" from this mixture. In conventional biofuel production systems, biomass is first converted into gas, then further converted into automotive fuel using a procedure known as "Fischer-Tropsh", which turns the gas into liquid fuel.
Koch says his system is more efficient, that it is cheaper and "avoids environmentally damaging emissions such as dioxins," while using little energy. He adds that "20 per cent of the power for the heating is taken from the process itself."
He told Motors that what he is doing is "no different to what nature has done over millions of years, in transforming waste organic matter into oil," and maintains that the end product can be used straight away. In fact, he claims to run his own car on the stuff.
But how does he do it? "We use so-called 'turbines' to produce the energy where the splitting (depolymerisation) takes place. The waste material [the raw materials] is heated to a temperature of 240 degrees with the exhaust gas of the generator, then dried, and converted into a hot 'mash'. In the next stage diesel is produced [when the catalyst is introduced] at a temperature of 300 degrees."
That's cleared it all up, then. It is obvious, though, that the system - if it works as claimed - has immense economic potential. Has it been independently verified? "The process was observed by technical schools and universities . . . We have run tests and obtained certificates to show that the end product is suitable for use as diesel and has a high cetane quota."
But can truly everyday waste materials be used, or must material with oil-based carbons be utilised? "The best materials are old motor oil, fat and bitumen. But we have also proven in tests that paper, straw, sludge and wood can produce high quality diesel." He does, however, concede that results from materials such as sludge yield less "due to the high water content."
So, if the transubstantiation of rubbish into diesel is an everyday - rather than a miraculous - occurrence at Dr Koch's plant, it could answer our energy and recycling problems at a, erm, stroke. Sounds, in fact, like the purr - sorry - perfect solution. While those of a more cynical bent might well smell a rat, we will keep an eager eye on developments.