by  KYW's John Ostapkovich

A South Jersey company hopes to have developed a solution to our shared pain at the gasoline pump, with its technology to extract energy from all sorts of things.

You can't get blood from a stone, but if that stone is coal or oil shale, you can get energy. The trouble is, current processes are either too polluting or too expensive.
 
Enter Frank Pringle and Global Resource Corporation of West Berlin, NJ, using a unique microwave oven (above) which smashes hydrocarbon chains with specific frequencies and separates them into different fuels.
 
He points to the microwave emitter:

"They're coming in right here, hitting the subject material. The gases come out right now, about over here. This is cold, this is warm, and we just separate them. Nothing goes to the environment. At the end of the test we'll see the methane gas light up and burn like a son of a gun."

Demonstration materials also included shredded tires. Pringle says the secret is finding what microwave frequency does the trick:

"I couldn't get the combination for coal -- the right frequency, the right environment -- and then finally it gasified in 25 seconds and I said, 'My God, we did it! We found it!' "

Bituminous coal is rendered into methane, hydrogen, coal tar, and industrial coke. If this process becomes widespread, Pringle says, America's huge coal reserves can provide centuries of power. The technology could also be used to make capped oil wells productive again.

Pringle is now looking for major-league backers for his company.

(Photos: John Ostapkovich)