Plastic to Oil - Is it Really This Simple?

Well this has been around a while but got a recent 'viral' boost on the web and so is everywhere at the moment (I even found a video on a bodybuilding forum).

More information can be found here (which should answer atleast some of your questions)

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/plastic-to-oil-fantastic/

The original Blest company website and datasheet (for those of you that can read Japanese)

http://www.blest.co.jp/index.htm

And the first article I personally came across covering plastic to oil recovery by Enron back in 2009.

http://www.gizmag.com/envion-plastic-waste-to-oil-generator/12902/

_{Each Envion unit is assembled on a single mobile base platform with dimensions 47ft x 13ft (14.3m x 4m) and is capable of processing up to 10,000 tons of plastic waste annually, producing three to five barrels of refined (99 percent sediment-free) petroleum product per ton of plastic waste (that's over one million gallons of oil per year per unit). Scaling up the unit merely involves adding more reactors, not whole systems.}

In short, the overall concept is interesting (from a recycling point of view) but it is a 'drop in the ocean' so to speak considering the Blest plastic to oil converters output compared to current production and usage of oil world wide in the (many millions?) of barrels per day. There really isn't that much personal plastic waste. The Enron version seems more realistic for mass recycling where vast feed stocks of raw materials can make the process more viable than a homeowner or small village throwing in the odd plastic milk bottle or toy into a small $9500 converter.

Still from a recycling point of view it beats burning or dumping, but like other household power generators/reactors, etc I don't see one of Blest plastic to oil units in every household as a way forward for distributed recycling / home petrol production.

"Envion" not "Enron" ! "Enron" is an extremely dirty word in the USA. Bankrupted, CEO's in jail.

Hi JavaHead,

This link came up elsewhere courtesy of Sue, so I'll c/p my rant of that time, for your entertainment.

p.s. at the end, I more or less ask your question.

To enlarge on the comment in brackets - toxicity depends on the material they try it on.

BPA and such like would end up it the 'tap water', or re-dissolved in the oil. Obviously you don't want urethanes, sulphones, and sim, in there to begin with.

Nor probably PVC's and polycarbonate or plasticized epoxies.

Should you try it at home?

Only if you know exactly what the plastic is.

What do you do with the water? big big question.

A bit like "what is now in the car exhaust?"

Enjoy:

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True that burning plastic as a "waste", go's straight to atmospheric CO2 increase.

An alternative is to burn it for power production. Same CO2 release - but you get power.

This is just that: as the 'end goal' is to burn the end product 'for power'.

Or the CO2 argument, as described, is moot in planetary CO2 terms. It is just another way to burn more carbon.

I.e. now what carbon might have been buried - or recycled as plastic - now becomes atmospheric CO2.

So; as every fossil dug up, was CO2 and will return to CO2 when burned - this little bit of 'green greed' stands between a portion being reburied, or reused.

But - you might argue; a reduction in total oil use is possible through this recycling...... How does that compare to plastic material reprocessing? (recycling)

The atmospheric CO2 equation?:

CO2 released by burning the plastic to make power. (as either vehicle fuel or incinerator/generator fuel).

Verses

Burying it in the sequester-able form.

-----------------------

In "saving oil" it's bloody expensive in CO2 compared with bio fuel.

PET can be made from bio oil. It's #1 recyclable. Perhaps ......

It's a bit like the idea of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere "for half the energy" as CO - then financing the process by selling it as fuel.

Or the 'greedy green' can look good - but it's usually just a delay (plus an addition) to the total climate energy gain.

Climate Energy Rant off.

I wonder what is left to dispose of in the 'distiller' and what's in the 'tap water' at process end?

(Green Hobbit feces and urine, I suspect)

Any chemical process can be reversed, at least in theory, and depolymerization is already in use in specific applications. The problem is making the numbers come out right. Plastics are stable compounds, for the most part - that's one of the reasons they are so widely used - which means a lot of energy is needed to break their internal chemical bonds. One technology that I am trying to follow and understand better is microwave depolymerization. It's not clear to me whether this is simply a matter of using microwaves to heat the plastic, or the microwaves are "tuned" to a particular bond energy level so as to selectively and efficiently break that type of bond.

The reason I'm interested is that I am in a region of Mindanao with hydropower resources, but highly variable demand such that large amounts of usable energy go through the sluicegates during periods of high rainfall and low demand. We have a terrible plastic trash problem and a lot of marginally employed people. If surplus electrical power could be used for depolymerization, this would give plastic trash a market value - a very small one, but enough to motivate collection and transportation. Poof! Trash problem solved, hydro plant load leveled, employment created, revenue enhanced...

Were I you, and talking installation - as opposed to 'home brew' - I would be thinking sorting and processing by type, so you do know what byproducts will be produced.

Another option is to shred and re-pelletize plastics for sale as 'non-virgin' fill.

So maybe a bit of both - but if you can separate the nastier plasticizers and UV stabilizers out in the process - you can possibly resell those to.

Sounds reasonable.

The microwave trash vaporizers I have heard of take basically run-of-the-mill rubbish, including any glass, metal, PVC plastic, along with other plastics, paper, wood waste, and what-not, including garbage, and turn it into power using a direct conversion to fuel, and a gas turbine. The vapor is clean, washed of any chlorine, etc. Metals and glass come off as a black glass similar to obsidian. Overall, the process produces more energy than is consumed by about 1/3. The big plus is that in areas such as NYC, it can vastly reduce the number of garbage barges heading out to sea to dump this fetid trash on marine life.

In the Pacific island nations, it can be a boon, as trash is in plentiful supply, whereas fuel is not.

You should also have a look at Plastoline www.plastoline.com which was awarded the recognition of one of the top ten technologies in 2010 by Pollution Engineering. No sorting basically and obviously no sulphur.

And a competitive process with oil at 35 USD per barril !

OK - How many barrels per day are they producing now. Oil has been well over 35 USD for years now.

When some scheme or process is "competitive when" this-or-that energy cost rises, I find it not a bad idea to look at how the scheme has costed that price rise into it's energy input requirements.

More often than not, "when" is "never" and investors are perpetually told a sob story about the rising cost of "unforeseen" inputs canceling promised returns.

There is a lot of this about, preying on the reality that few folk have "full system energy costing skills".

In this OP's context, even a 'step costing skill' asks; "why would you invest any energy to retro engineering a material into something worth less than half the price per kilo?"

Never mind that the energy required to 'retro' is roughly equivalent to the 'value adding' energy of original material creation'.

There are a lot of "energy value subtracting" ideas about.

One can go for these schemes, or, as alluded to above, find out the market price of re-ground PET and polycarbonate (per kg compared to the 'oil' actual market value per kg) and ask which energy input involved is "viable".

The process I have some familiarity with is microwave heating and converting the gas and condensing it back to something useful. Global Resource Corporation supposedly has a one ton machine working. They are on the internet and two offices one on east coast and one in Michigan or Illinois I think. Been working on their system for at least ten years developing the proper microwave frequencies to do the best job. They claim there is 1/2 or 3/4 gallon of diesel fuel in a 14 inch tire. They recover everything. Oil , carbon black, metal etc. Check them out on yahoo finance or other symbol is something like GBRC-?? I had shares of this company once but dumped them due to lack of movement. Who knows someday they might take off. Good reading any way and they have had a lot of press and tv exposure.

Dear Roy hammy

I am Dr. Sridhar and I am interested in the subject "Plastic to oil" I request you to kindly get me the contact details of Global Resource Corporation

Sincerely

Dr.Sridhar

Email: srid60@hotmail.com

It appears a web search identified that they have a very large web presence.

Looks like http://www.globalresourcecorp.com/ is a good starting point.

JavaHead