Patent ID: 6855254

Claim:
A process for recovering useful material from waste material, comprising the steps of: providing a quantity of waste material wherein said waste material comprises a mixture of oil, metal and organic compounds; placing the waste material into a slurry tank and adding water to the waste material to produce a mixable slurry; mixing the slurry produced in the previous step to evenly distribute the waste material throughout the slurry; recovering the metal from the waste material slurry using a magnetic separator; transferring the remaining waste material to an anaerobic reactor; adding sludge seed to the waste material in the anaerobic reactor, the sludge seed providing anaerobic organisms for reacting with the organic compounds of the waste material to produce recoverable inorganic gases; and transferring the recoverable inorganic gases to a storage vessel and compressing the inorganic gases leaving a residual waste material in the anaerobic reactor; whereby useful metal and gas are separated and recovered from the quantity of waste material.