Wow, What an opportunity. I have been away from synthetic chemistry for a while, but if I had access to a ship and loading equipment, that mass of what is essentially purified industrial feedstock would be quite valuable in this time of high priced oil.
262,000 square miles is about the size of Texas 524,000 square miles of trash at 80% is about 419,000 square miles, for the plastic, which if we assume is one foot thick is also about 79 cubic miles of plastic. So if we assume it can be compressed in volume to just the plastic is about 5 cubic miles of plastic. 5.61 cubic feet of oil is a barrel, if I've done the math right. A cubic mile is 147,197,952,000 cubic feet. So, 26238,494,117 barrels of oil in a cubic mile. at 5 cubic miles, that's 131,192,470,588 barrels of oil or at a price of $100 per barrel I would earn $ 1.3 trillion just by mining that plastic as industrial feedstock. SO, who is with me for a little ocean voyage? This sounds just a little like an urban myth, this mass of trash, even with my figures off by a bit it's one of the greatest fortunes in the world. thanks--mel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Heather Perella" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 11:42 PM Subject: [MD] Trashing the Earth > A patch of floating trash in the Pacific Ocean is two times larger than Texas. 80% of this trash patch is plastic. Just another problem gathering on this earth. > > http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/19/SS6JS8RH0.DTL&hw =pacific+patch&sn=001&sc=1000 > > > woods, > SA > > > > Moq_Discuss mailing list > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org > Archives: > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
