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Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Israelis inventing alternatives to oil

I don't know how much of this is strictly accurate and how much is wishful thinking, but one can only hope that serious alternatives to oil come soon - from both the environmental and terror-defense perspectives.


An Israeli inventor and company are trying to use garbage and leftover olive pulp from olive-oil factories, respectively, to replace oil in providing fuel and electricity to the Jewish State.

From one ton of garbage, half a ton of oil, 300 kg of gas or 150 kg of green coal, from which electricity is produced, can be extracted, according to inventor Dr. Sergei Rosenberg.

Dr. Rosenberg spoke with Arutz-7 about the development of his invention that turns garbage into oil. "I turned to the Ministry of Infrastructure with my invention and they told me to build such a machine outside Israel and they would consider bringing it here," Rosenberg described. "I built the machine in Moldova and demonstrated there that it works – with the oil undergoing tests demonstrating that the process is not toxic."

Asked by Arutz-7's Yigal Schok why Israel is not pursuing the invention to wean the Jewish State off of Arab-controlled oil, Dr. Rosenberg said that the state was afraid of implementing the changeover due to concern of taking away the monopoly of the oil tycoons. "To my surprise much of the interest actually came from Arab parties because they have a lot of refuse they want to get rid of in an efficient manner," Rosenberg said.

Dr. Rosenberg gained the experience necessary to come up with his invention from



working in Russia before he immigrated to Israel. "In Russia I helped with the building of an artificial reservoir, a number of power stations and I designed the water system for the nuclear core in Chernobyl, but Israel did not hire me for similar work since I don't have any connections. I have other ideas, such as wind turbines that operate on air and exploiting the power of the ocean's waves to produce power."

Another company, Genova Ltd., is also working on alternatives to Arab oil. The company has signed an agreement, according to Globes, with an olive press in the village of Julis, in the Galilee to establish a small facility to produce electricity from the waste from olive pressing.



The facility is slated to produce an estimated 200 kilowatts of power, enough to provide 70 homes with power. It will also provide for the disposing of olive waste formed during oil production, which has until now posed an environmental hazard.

Genova’s method heats the waste to temperatures abover 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, transforming it into a flammable gas. Burning that gas is environmentally-friendly, releases no greenhouse gases and causes no damage to the earth’s ozone layer. The gas operates an electricity-generating turbine.

The company hopes to market the product, which will be small enough to fit on a countertop, to other olive-oil producing countries such as Spain and Italy.