Diesel Fuel from Fiberglass Pyrolosis

First, some clarification.

"Fiber glass" is either structural or electrical/electronic grade glass. So, it's mostly Sodium.

The resin used to bind fibergalss cloth, or mat, or strands could be a number of types.

You should do more research.

I was in particular thinking of the material used for printed circuit boards.

'..."Fiber glass" is either structural or electrical/electronic grade glass. So, it's mostly Sodium...'

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Sodium? How do you figure? I'd say it is mainly oxygen, followed closely by silicon since glass is mainly silica.

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As for the resin, this probably has carbon, some hydrogen and maybe some oxygen and an odd assortment of other elements. This would be the place theoretically that the attempts to derive diesel would be aimed. As such, knowing the specifics of the resin composition would be critical.

Sorry, I misspoke.

Although there is Na in glass, Si makes up a higher % of most glass.

Good catch.

I guess my point was I don't think glass will yield much usable fuel.

Most FR-4 boards are 20-30% epoxy, and the rest is copper and mostly glass.

Could be viable, I don't know.

'...I guess my point was I don't think glass will yield much usable fuel....'

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My feelings exactly. And what fuel is able to be produced will probably not come easily and will likely be highly contaminated.

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There has to be some significant variations in the chemical compositions from one batch of recycled PCB boards to the next. Also, all the low melting point solder along with the occasional smashed electrolytic capacitor or disk battery will make an interesting mix with the resin an glass at elevated temperatures.

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But maybe someone has a great system worked out. They certainly shouldn't have much competition for the feedstock....at least for a while.

I was thinking the "fiberglass" used in pcb's was going to be polyester based but it is quite often yielding a much different set of byproducts during pyrolosis. I had found that Polyester resin, when put through pyrolosis yields a type of diesel oil and some gas but from what I can find on epoxy, it is much different. My mistake. No, sodium would be somewhat negligible. I am not sure how that was arrived at. Thank you all.

Pwb's will almost always be epoxy.

Boats, shower stalls, car bodies, anything made by the "wet layup" or "chopper gun" process will probably be polyester.

Thank you lyn. Epoxy doesnt look to promising. I was thinking of the possibility of pyrolizing the board material first and then melting down the metals (after crushing) but there is not much promise of generating fuels with epoxy as there is with polyester. Btw, i have worked on projects (Dinamation) where we used wet layup with epoxy resin. So it is used from time to time instead of polyester.

Epoxy has better mechanical properties, among other things.

I prefer working with it as it generally gives you more time to work the glass.

Ok. Thanks. Seems like Polyester is so much more readily available. I dont come across the epoxy resin. I know a few plastics places where I am sure I could order it but they are 30-100 miles away. Thanks though.

Circuit boards are usually made to be flame retardant or even fire proof. Pyrolizing this kind of board would yield negligble usable product. You would be far better to try this with boat hulls. After witnessing several boat fires I can assure you there is far larger quantity of flammable content in the resin mix. The silica fibres will not yield anything useful either way.

Electronic glass is less than 20PPM if sodium by definition provided in Mil Std. 883-C.

Structural glass is having less than 10 wt percent sodium oxide.

Sodium ions are not glass former. Glass former are silica lead oxide, phosphor oxide, boron oxide and list goes on.

Sodium is modifier ions and changes glass viscosity and allows us to melt glass at low temperature. Changes electrical properties of the glass. Down side of sodium is it loves to absorb water and then localized pH goes up and dissolves glass locally and makes it week.

This is the reason we can put in glass only to the extend we can bond and hold in glass structure as properties modifier

Do an energy balance. See if you get as much diesel BTU's out as it takes to pyrolyze it. First Law of Thermo comes to mind: You can't get something for nothing. Second law says: You can't even break even!"

Thanks wcfloyd.

Back in the late 1980's I was involved in a pilot pyrolyzation plant. The feedstock was shredded "fiberglass" automotive body panels. These parts were about 25% thermoset polyester, 25% fiberglass, and 50% calcium carbonate filler. The pyrolysis process involves heating the feedstock to a temperature high enough to "crack" or thermally break-down the polymer to smaller molecules. These smaller molecules exist as a gas at the pyrolysis temperature and are vacuumed out of the chamber and collected. At lower temperatures, some of the gases condense to a liquid state. Since the polymer is changed to a mixture of gases and removed, the fiberglass and fillers are left behind. The gas condensate has properties similar to diesel fuel, but is a complex mixture of various long and short chain hydrocarbons, along with other carbon-nitrogen-oxygen species. The uncondensed lighter gases, can be used like natural gas to fuel the pyrolysis process. The solids can be further processed to reclaim the fiberglass, which can be reused as reinforcement in other applications. The operation never became economically viable because of the uncertainty in the availability of the feedstock. Reclaimation of circuit boards is technically feasible, but you should look carefully at the business case before launching into such a venture.

Thank you Bngreve.

Hi Bngreve. Was wondering if it is possible that taking this condensate that is similar to diesel and running it through pyrolosis a second time would improve it as a diesel fuel? Would it help to remove other chemicals possibly?

The pyrolysis condensate is a hydrocarbon "soup" containing all kinds of different compounds. The composition of this "soup" changes depending on the nature and consistency of the feedstock and the pyrolysis temperature. I am sure the quality of the condensate as a diesel fuel could be improved by careful control of the feedstock, selection of the optimum temperature, and the introduction of a catalyst or other chemicals to direct the gas phase reactions. A lot of work and experimentation to be sure.

Thanks for your thoughtful answer.

Welcome to the insanity. Nice answer.

Do you mean ryrolysis ?

'...ryrolysis ?...'

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Ruh roh!

Weesel fyool fwum fibugwas pywowosis.