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DEAR EDITOR:
I am forever confused by the "awards" people are granted. Mayor Tito Brown was awarded Energy Justice Champion award for fighting the SOBE pyrolysis plant.
Youngstown (and all cities) spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year picking up illegally discarded tires. They pay companies to shred and possibly recycle the tires into some products, but the majority of used tires end up as landfill.
SOBE wants to shred the tires and super heat them in an oven until they turn into a gas and carbon black...The carbon has a ton of uses and the gas can be burned to heat more tires, make steam heat for Youngstown buildings, and generate electricity. This is the epitome of clean recycling; yet we fight them. We would rather burn wood chips and scraps to make that same heat and electricity with far higher emissions.
Hmmm, PYROLYSIS BAD! BURN WOOD GOOD! 99% of the people have no idea what pyrolysis is and what products have and will be made by pyrolysis right here in the valley, yet we fight it.
For over 100 years the coke plant just south of Warren has super heated coal (Pyrolysis) and then used the coke gas to generate electricity...when they can't use all the coke gas, they burn it off. Go there today and see the flame coming out of the stack...look next door at the powerhouse. This is SOBE in Warren! A truly efficient use would be using that excess heat in a building, but we don't have a central steam heating system like Youngstown.
That bag of charcoal for your grill is pyrolyzed wood. YUP, that wonderful pile of briquettes glowing under your steak was a tree once; but before it cleanly cooks your steak, dogs, and burgers it was put through a pyrolysis oven.
Smart money would have Youngstown welcoming SOBE and make a deal to GET $$ per discarded tire from SOBE instead of paying hundreds of thousands per year to discard them. This is recycling at its best. SOBE can easily become a profit center for Youngstown and an example of being a real Energy Justice Champion.
DAN CROUSE
Warren