"It seems like a good time to be on the side of the pragmatists," pronounced Deputy Police Chief Brenda Lee Johnson on TNT's "The Closer" in a recent two-hour episode. It turns out, that unbeknownst to us viewers, Brenda Lee was at one time associated with some folks at the CIA, and has skills we never dreamt of for our blushing Southern flower, transported to the LAPD. Brenda Lee's character, as portrayed by superlative actress Kyra Sedgwick has a whole new set of tricks up her sleeve, and I am glad my "ReplayTV" (a TIVO-type DVR) caught it for me automatically.

But what was not caught automatically was some comsumate stupidity when Katie Couric, who, it seems may just not be ready for primetime, introduced a story under the teaser, "Life imitates Art." When life imitates art, as it appeared to do almost immediately after "The China Syndrome" predicted a nuclear reactor meltdown and we had the near meltdown of Three Mile Island nuclear facility, it really is news. Good science fiction is supposed to do that. It points to the future to make a point about society and life and the human condition as we understand it today. And The China Syndrome was one occasion when the timing was ripe for the future to merge with the present in an eerie and scary way. But poor Katie, alas, meant that art imitates life; and didn't seem to know the difference. The underlying story in this case was that the book (and recenly release movie) "Blood Diamonds" appears to reflect the reality of the civil war in Sierra Leone, in which diamonds were being traded for weapons to support a war that was really more of a smoke screen to get the diamonds for the price of some cheap but deadly weapons that fueled the fighting. Well, "duh" Katie, where do you think the author got the story idea?

A little closer to "life imitates art" (though not exactly) was the fact that former CIA director Robert Woolsey showed up at the Alternative Car Show in (not-quite Hollywood, but close) Santa Monica recently. I found an interesting condensation of some of his thoughts compiled on a blog that concerns itself with biomass, and particularly biomassconversion. C. Scott Miller's BioConversion.Blogspot.com blog points out that the former CIA chief is now on the stump for energy independence as a matter of national security, and is very hot on plug-in hybrids at this time. But he also had this to say, which is central to my opinion of the great advantage and value of sewage repurposing via thermal depolymerization:

"Two things I think are the most interesting and promising in the short term." First is biomass and/or waste conversion, to ethanol or other biofuels. Diesel fuels can also be made from agricultural waste. These are essentially carbon-neutral. "You are not digging up the carbon from beneath the ground." You are recycling carbon that is already a part of the above ground carbon cycle. We are not talking about a single process. We are talking about moving away from hydrocarbon and moving to carbohydrates. This would help national security in several ways including helping the rural areas of the country.

"In addition, if we use cheap feedstock like municipal solid wastes for these biorefineries, we make it extremely hard for OPEC to undercut our cost of manufacturing fuels - which enhances national security."

Just saying "thermal depolymerization" is more than a mouthful for most Americans, sadly. I've been having an email conversation with a reader who insists he "feels" that Fahrenheit temperature is more accurate because we (Americans) have not gotten used to dealing in decimal points, not even to a single decimal place of accuracy, on the issue of temperature. Of course the fact that the rest of the world deals in metric system of measurement for almost everything except jewelers weights for gems and gold cuts no ice with most Americans. But we had better not fall behind on the language scale too. We need to get over our fear of polysyllabic technical terminology.

Okay, if you lasted past the final sentence of the previous paragraph, presumably you are with me on that point.

Actually pyrolytic decomposition of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates has been with us for a very long time. As one EERE (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy) (div. of the US Dept. of Energy) web site says, various pyrolytic techniques include: bubbling fluid beds, circulating and transported beds, cyclonic reactors, and ablative reactors. All these have had varying degrees of success in producing "pyrolytic oils" that are useful for chemical production, and "can" be upgraded to higher grade efficiency fuels but have not yet proved economically viable for that upgrade process. Of course, when we start talking about sewage, manure and sawdust, materials costs drop considerably if the plants are co-located with the source materials.

Thermal hydroconversion, or hydrothermal pyrolysis, like that used by Changing World Technologies is certainly showing that it can be done, and with the right feedstocks, it can be economically viable too. Or so it appears.

And this specific form, according to the EERE www1.eere.energy.gov web site: Hydrothermal treatment is based on early work performed by the Bureau of

Mines Albany Laboratory in the 1970s.

Isn't it about time we started commercial use of this technology?

love

Stafford "Doc" Williamson