[HN Gopher] Plastic to Oil - Produces 80% Oil
___________________________________________________________________
Plastic to Oil - Produces 80% Oil
Author : hochmartinez
Score : 221 points
Date : 2023-01-19 12:26 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blest.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (blest.co.jp)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| WOW! super surprised to see Blest on here. From my understanding
| I believe these guys went bankrupt a few years back. Maybe they
| are back from the dead?
|
| This tabletop unit is more of a demonstration unit they don't
| really intend to sell. It is for educational purposes and really
| as a demonstrator for their large scale industrial units. This is
| why when you search for Blest Plastic to oil on Youtube you'll
| mostly find educational institutions demoing this unit and not
| much else.
|
| One of the original engineers is apparently an independent
| contractor now?
|
| He used to post a few Youtube videos of a similar unit to the
| tabletop version but he seems to have disappeared as well.
|
| [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHLWZgFThQs
| flakiness wrote:
| From: https://www.youtube.com/@Plastic2oiltv/about
|
| > "Blest Co., Ltd. went bankrupt in 2017 and started a business
| as a freelance engineer. Currently, I am setting up and running
| a consulting company on plastic fuels."
|
| So I guess this is not Blest (which I heard first time.)
| flakiness wrote:
| Oh, I noticed the domain name being blest.co.jp.
|
| https://blest.co.jp/eng/company/
|
| > INCORPORATED March , 2018
|
| So someone bought it and keeps it running? Interesting.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Some issues:
|
| 1) Says it draws 1 kilowatt constantly and 'begins to produce oil
| in one hour', while also only holding about 1 kg max of plastic.
| How long does it take to finish processing the 1 kg of plastic
| into the 0.8 kg of oil? Is this a reasonable overall energy-
| return-on-energy-investment (and see #2 below, it will take
| additional energy).
|
| 2) If this is producing a typical crude oil, is further refining
| needed to create individually useful products? What's the average
| hydrocarbon length and the overall distribution of different
| lengths of hydrocarbons? Are there aromatic components of the oil
| (such as benzene, a known carcinogen)?
|
| 2) What kind of waste is leftover? Does it generate a polcyclic
| aromatic hydrocarbon-laden toxic glop, or what? How is this waste
| to be disposed?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Below the "spec table" they have an example run with household
| plastic waste.
|
| - 3.5 hours @ 1 kW (may be an overestimate of power since it
| says as a guide)
|
| - Converts 400g of plastic to 286g of oil, so with a "dirtier"
| source of plastic its a ~70% return.
|
| Also more data here [0] with ratios in the 60-90% range.
|
| [0] https://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/
|
| Edit: On that page it also says "As you look into the data you
| can understand our machine can produce high grade oil mixture
| of gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil and little heavy oil. The oil
| can be used as recycled fuel for electric power generator
| without refining." The second sentence seems like a bit of a
| reach, that there would not be some intermediary step.
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| I am dubious of the photos that show coloured plastics turning
| into clear oil.
|
| Does this process really break down all the many types of dyes?
| sbaiddn wrote:
| No idea how this thing works but why wouldn't it destroy all
| "dyes"? It breaks every other bond, why not dye bonds?
|
| I'm also curious that the liquid is clear, though, because
| you'd think this thing creates a soup of organic chemicals each
| with different color responses.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > No idea how this thing works
|
| I just have a suspicion that this thing _doesn 't work_, and
| the claims on the website aren't real...
| antisthenes wrote:
| This is like the Juicero of alchemy.
| [deleted]
| thepangolino wrote:
| [dead]
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| [dead]
| userbinator wrote:
| More information here:
|
| https://blest.co.jp/eng/faq/
|
| This seems to be intended for PP/PE which is basically a long-
| chain hydrocarbon anyway, but does make up the bulk of plastic
| use. It seems to be a very stereotypically Japanese product.
| hinkley wrote:
| The current wisdom is that PP is one of the least problematic
| plastics wrt to leachate contaminating the contents. HDPE is
| also fairly well regarded. In theory LDPE is also considered
| 'food safe' but if you can _smell_ the plasticizers evaporating
| off of LDPE (which I absolutely can) then what 's it doing to
| your food?
|
| I read something about PE in the environment recently but I
| can't recall if it said it was the hardest to break down or the
| easiest. I'm thinking the former though, since I came away from
| that article feeling better about PP and worse about PE.
| hinkley wrote:
| Here's some math:
|
| 3.5KWh rough estimate of power requirement (not including
| embodied energy of device or repairs).
|
| Oil contains 10,000 kWh per cubic meter (1 million ml). 10
| million Wh/m^3 = 10 Wh/ml
|
| Device outputs 380ml of oil, so output is 3800 Wh/run. Depending
| on the fudge factors on the input power this device yields less
| than 1.1 units of oil per unit of electricity.
|
| Even if they increase the efficiency at scale, this device's
| entire value seems to be in in removing a waste product, not in
| generating an input stream. A device that can 'pull' hydrocarbons
| from the air might actually beat this on the grounds of
| efficiency for inputs.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| 400g plastic becomes 286g of oil (less than 75%), what is the 80%
| in reference to?
| ubxe wrote:
| https://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Great, another reason I'm pissed off about plastic recycling!
| I've been collecting my plastic for as long as I can remember and
| recycling it, then they tell us only about 12% has EVER been
| recycled.
|
| Now we can break it down to get the oil back! A$$holes!
| askvictor wrote:
| I'm getting to the point where I think plastic recycling was
| always a scam to make people use more plastics without any
| guilt. That said, putting plastics into landfill not such a bad
| thing; we've taken oil from the ground, made it into plastics,
| then putting it back in the ground. Better than burning it.
| There is a lot of space for landfill, and not very much oil.
| The problem is when it doesn't end up in landfill, but ends up
| in the sea. Which by virtue of there being more and more
| plastics (since they're guilt-free now) there is more and more
| of.
| xsmasher wrote:
| Be careful where you get stats like that. If the stat says that
| "12% of plastic (ever produced globally) is recycled" that
| doesn't mean your local recycling program is terrible.
|
| I just got a notice from my trash company that only 10% of
| their collected material is contaminated / not recyclable.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| What percentage of plastic do you think is even collected? It's
| a weird stat to compare the household recycling of bottles and
| containers (which even in the US gets recycled at a non-trivial
| rate) and all plastic ever (lawn chairs, toys, complex mixed
| materials etc.)
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Don't recycle. If its going to get dumped anyway put your
| plastic recycling in the garbage. Then it'll end up in a
| nominally regulated local dump and not in a Vietnamese river.
|
| Btw anyone who has even a cursory understanding of polymer
| physics suspected that plastics recycling was a scam. The whole
| scheme was either to greenwash industry throwing the moral
| responsibility to the end users or to condition us to recycle
| when they finally figured out how to do it.
|
| For what it's worth, extracting energy out of plastic is
| probably best way to deal with it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You forgot the third option... Grind it up, and put it in
| inappropriate places... Like "ooh, we can mix it into
| asphalt"...
|
| Mixing some material that you don't want and can be quite
| toxic into something you're gonna leave in the environment
| just seems like a bad idea...
|
| Let me think... When else did we do that? Oh yeah - when we
| mixed coal fly ash into bricks[1]! Everyone wants mercury
| poisoning from the bricks their houses were made from - and
| it was a very cheap way to dispose of otherwise hard to deal
| with toxic waste!
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash_brick
| juancroldan wrote:
| "This sounds too cool, let's check HN comments for the
| disappointment"
| csours wrote:
| If you wanted to burn plastic for energy, you can already do it
| at a electrical generation plant.
|
| You have to put more energy in to get oil out.
|
| Um. And climate change.
| 8note wrote:
| Burning plastic however, has high temperature requirements to
| avoid giving off toxic fumes in the smoke, which I think you
| would reduce by doing a conversion to oil first.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Some of it doesn't even burn:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-india-plastic-
| recycl...
| Reason077 wrote:
| Waste-to-energy plants are _designed_ to reach those high
| temperatures, amongst other measures, to minimise and
| prevent toxic emissions.
|
| They still produce a lot of CO2, though: plastic is still a
| fossil fuel. From a climate perspective, we'd be better to
| bury the stuff in the ground than to burn it. And ideally,
| we'd just produce a lot less plastic in the first place!
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Are you suggesting to bury it in the ground so it can
| leach into groundwater and soil rather than even trying
| to capture and reuse the CO2? Are you serious or are you
| joking?
| csours wrote:
| Digging a hole and lining it with clay and polymer,
| filling it with household waste, and then covering it
| with a polymer liner is significantly cheaper than what
| you are describing.
|
| It's not great, there's no great solution, the problem is
| hard on multiple levels. If a solution made sense, people
| would already be doing it.
| ars wrote:
| > From a climate perspective, we'd be better to bury the
| stuff in the ground than to burn it.
|
| Actually from a climate perspective we'd be better off
| burning the plastic, and reducing how much fresh oil we
| pump.
|
| I'd rather "bury" if you will, the oil, instead of the
| plastic.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| Not all energy is created equal though. There are
| applications where 1kwh of oil is more valuable than 1kwh of
| electricity.
| suh_dude wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only one who thinks that...
| ahmedk92 wrote:
| Before looking, it will probably be more pollution.
| koheripbal wrote:
| There is a reason that portion of the crude oil was made into
| plastic, and not sold as oil or fuel to begin with.
| perrygeo wrote:
| My first thought was "what kind of oil?". It matters. The
| clean burning, energy dense stuff was turned into fuel from
| the start. The rest of it is barely fit for a cigarette
| lighter.
|
| But beyond that, not all plastics come from crude oil
| directly. Many plastics, especially baggies and consumer
| plastics of the type shown in these photos, come from
| liquids that are removed from natural gas.
|
| Either way, you're certainly dealing with a liquid
| hydrocarbon of inferior quality. And at the huge energy
| cost of having refined it twice. I'd be surprised if this
| provided any net-positive energy. And it's certainly a
| dirty burning fuel with low BTU per volume.
|
| Why not just burn the plastic directly at this point?
| leeoniya wrote:
| there was an infuriating segment on the local news last night
| that single-use/disposable coffee cups (e.g. keurig) are
| somehow "greener" because they supposedly use water/energy
| more efficiently than "traditional" ways of making coffee. of
| course, zero mention of where these things end up after their
| 15 seconds of fame.
|
| https://wgnradio.com/the-business-of-food-with-steve-
| alexand...
|
| it's like CO2 is the only impact to the environment that
| matters. you can always find greener ways to source the
| energy, but you're not going to find a lot of ways to reduce
| plastic trash.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Omg infuriating. Telling me my French press wastes hot
| water is absurd.
| duffyjp wrote:
| Japan imports almost all of its oil, so maybe it makes sense in
| that market though the scale seems impractical to me.
|
| * https://www.worldometers.info/oil/japan-oil/
| georgyo wrote:
| 1kW/h for 3 hours or 3kw.
|
| 400g plastic to 286g oil.
|
| Seems extremely carbon negative.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > kW/h
|
| (tears hair out)
| jsight wrote:
| Still not as bad as kwh/hr. That one is showing up on some
| car UIs now.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Why can't we just use the right unit for energy - Joule? A
| battery capacity should be stated in MJ / GJ.
| danuker wrote:
| An hour is a popular unit for me personally. I measure my
| work and plan my day in hours (since pretty much all
| clocks use hours, not kiloseconds).
|
| I don't use seconds very much (with the exception of Unix
| epoch seconds, or a short experiment).
|
| I can't divide by 3600 in my head. I can, however,
| multiply by 1. Therefore, Watt-seconds (AKA Joules) are
| not as useful to me as Watt-hours and kiloWatt-hours.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Natural gas is consumer priced in GJ and seems to work
| fine. Eventually we would just develop and intuition
| about number of K/M/G J in various battery sizes without
| the complex/ugly kwh unit.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's at least dimensionally correct.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Maybe the machinery takes 3 hours to spool up to generating
| 1kW?
| deadbeeves wrote:
| No, it gradually increases its consumption at a rate of 1
| kW every hour, thus at the 3-hour mark it's consuming 3 kW.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Gosh. Better make sure you put it on a timer switch or
| that's going to get expensive.
| danuker wrote:
| It can't be carbon negative if you burn the resulting oil. The
| carbon in the atmosphere goes up.
|
| Ths technology is pointless. The carbon can be sequestered as
| plastic.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| But they don't like doing that because it does break down
| over time and starts leeching into the soil underneath.
|
| Which can be caught and prevented, of course, but nobody
| wants to build a landfill like that.
|
| I too think it should be sequestered, ideally in fairly
| stable conditions; worst case, it stays there for the next
| thousand years and the plastic breaks down into whatever it
| does (entropy etc). But in a good case, they discover a means
| to effectively reuse, recycle or break down plastics, so that
| the sequestered plastic can be processed.
|
| But it's not economically viable, not when it's cheaper to
| export it AND get paid by counties and the government (in the
| form of subsidies) for the box-ticking exercise of separating
| it out and calling it recycled.
| lazide wrote:
| Huh? Everyone already builds landfills like that. They have
| to be clay lined anyway and leachate collected for a number
| of reasons.
| [deleted]
| chpatrick wrote:
| Surely it's still not good to put that plastic in the atmosphere
| though, especially while spending extra energy. If it can't be
| recycled the next best thing is to bury it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In the waste hierarchy, burning plastic with energy recovery
| and gopf fikters comes after recycling and before well-managed
| landfill.
|
| This becomes less true as alternative non-fossil energy becomes
| more dominant though, since you're not displacing dirtier
| fossil fuels.
| smileysteve wrote:
| What, no, burning it is surely better than digging up
| previously buried stuff to refine and burn.
|
| Only if we approach a 0 drilling world would it make sense to
| bury plastic instead of burn it.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| If we pump it back into the oil fields (and stop using oil!)
| then it is essentially a carbon credit. The cost of doing that
| would be an excellent basis for the cost of a carbon credit.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It would be a percentage of what was taken out though, given
| it takes energy to convert plastic back to oil; it would
| likely get mixed with other oil products instead so that the
| companies can cash in on government subsidies for using
| "green" technologies.
| elil17 wrote:
| We could also just bury the plastic, like we do now. Most
| plastic cannot be decomposed by bacteria, so most of that
| carbon will be sequestered from the atmosphere.
| rcshubhadeep wrote:
| It is written in one of the pages - "As you look into the data
| you can understand our machine can produce high grade oil mixture
| of gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil and little heavy oil. The oil
| can be used as recycled fuel for electric power generator without
| refining"
|
| I am no expert, and so I have the question actually. How do we
| use that oil in reality?
| odiroot wrote:
| The obvious answer would be cracking.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
| ezconnect wrote:
| It will definitely burn. Diesel heater for water and air is one
| application.
| LegitShady wrote:
| oil usually has mixtures of hydrocarbons like this. Refineries
| use processes like fractional distillation to separate the
| components so that they can be used separately, or processes
| like cracking are used which convert longer chain hydrocarbons
| into simpler hydrocarbons.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Many diesel engines can burn a mix of those (of course, depends
| on the ratios). Or you can refine it into the pure fuels.
|
| My question is, if it's aimed to power an electricity
| generator, why not just burn the plastic at a high temperature?
| (What I imagine there's no answer for, because it's what people
| actually do. They are probably using the generator only as a
| display application.)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Distill it into fractions and use the fuel like normal.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Crude oil is much messier than this. Still we refine it just
| fine :)
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| It would be nice if they listed safe use cases for oil from
| squished plastic...
|
| I couldn't imagine you want this reaching smoke point.
|
| BRB drinking water derived from urine to wash down the bug
| protein bars I ate earlier. I'll be sure to wipe later with 2
| square inches of newspaper that I'll later dispose in my
| apartment's communal compost heap...protect the planet!
| dylan604 wrote:
| what oil would you ever want to reach its smoke point?
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Cooking oils when stir frying, obviously this isn't safe for
| that.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Great, now instead of turning the 95% of all extracted oil into
| greenhouse gases, we now can turn the 99+%. That is efficiency.
| osrec wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34441324
| settrans wrote:
| Only if it increases demand for oil.
|
| Realistically, this oil would replace oil that would otherwise
| have to be pumped from the ground.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So when there's unrest in the middle east, does the price of
| this converted oil suddenly spike as well? /s
| lesuorac wrote:
| Ah yes, just like how fracking reduced the other methods of
| drilling oil from the ground.
| kemiller wrote:
| Well one hopes this is an enabler of a more-closed loop process
| for plastics. But... yeah.
| Xylakant wrote:
| we always could - burning the plastic always was an option, and
| effectively happens in a lot of places (incinerator). Recycling
| into oil would give us the option to use it as input to either
| new plastic or other hydrocarbon based products.
|
| Now, whether this works as advertised is an open question.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is a very mature industry. I'm skeptical it's economical
| at all.
| Xylakant wrote:
| It's also an area where the economics are changing -
| renewable energy is cheap during peak hours. So if you can
| build a process that can essentially soak up that energy
| you could try and do arbitrage. Whether that's enough to
| make that economically viable depends on the capital
| investment required, but it's at least possible in the near
| future.
| soperj wrote:
| The alternative is polluting the entire planet with micro-
| plastics for a 5% savings in greenhouse gasses.
| hinkley wrote:
| This does nothing to prevent micro plastics.
|
| Micro plastics are plastics that have escaped into the
| environment, which by definitions means we are no longer
| collecting them for disposal or recycling.
|
| All this does is keep some recycling programs from shutting
| down, and most of those are collecting bulk #1 and #2 which
| as far as I'm aware are not the major source of micro plastic
| pollution.
|
| Patagonia has a fucked up plan of using recycled polyester in
| everything lately and I don't see how nobody is noticing that
| a major source of urban micro plastics is going to be coming
| from dryer lint. Which means synthetics and dryers are a bad
| combo.
|
| I line dry all my exercise clothes, but most people don't.
| Retric wrote:
| How exactly do materials go from dryer lint to trash bag
| and then somehow end up in the ocean?
|
| I can see a washing machine sending micro plastics down the
| drain resulting in some small percentage of those ending up
| in the ocean. Assuming some failure where raw sewage was
| dumped into a river or ocean.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Most, if not all dryers vent to the outdoors.
|
| Some particles make it through the lint trap into the
| hot/humid air stream into the environment.
|
| Normal wear of the garments will shed micro particles
| from just rubbing up against them.
| Retric wrote:
| So using a dryer is better for the ocean than air drying,
| good to know.
| kraquepype wrote:
| I would think air (line) drying would be better in terms
| of microplastics, since there is no tumbling.
|
| Would it be safe to say that (mostly) frictionless line
| drying would shed fewer particles than tumble drying?
| Retric wrote:
| The dryer collects already loose or broken fibers in the
| lint trap for disposal. Air drying doesn't which means
| those large broken fibers containing several orders of
| more magnitude more plastic than might escape from a
| dryer end up in the environment.
|
| This is why new clothes result in dramatically more lint
| than old clothes by weight.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Isn't it possible that tumbling is the only significant
| source of breakage?
| Retric wrote:
| If that was the case old clothes would produces far more
| lint in a dryer because the dryer would keep damaging
| them. Instead the reverse happens with new clothes
| produces vastly more and it tappers off.
|
| They do cause damage, but it isn't the overwhelming
| source of damage.
| hinkley wrote:
| Old clothes have a lot less fiber in them. Whether your
| math checks out would depend on the % of fibers lost per
| week rather than just the total number.
|
| Washing machines also have lint traps, and the water
| treatment plant has to deal with a lot of solids from
| washing machines. I don't have numbers on what percent
| comes out in that case.
| Retric wrote:
| I am doing this comparison based on weight not individual
| items.
|
| It's really obvious is you've ever washed a full load of
| new clothes vs old clothes.
| hinkley wrote:
| The dryer abrades the fabric. If you have a delicate or
| dear piece of clothing they always advise that you air
| dry it as the fabric will last longer. Those delicate
| bags for the washing machine are substantially about
| limiting abrasion from rougher clothing, and also about
| not accidentally running them through the dryer by
| tucking inside or clinging to something else.
| Retric wrote:
| Normal use also abrades fabrics, the point is normal use
| doesn't collect these damaged fibers so they all just end
| up in the environment.
| soperj wrote:
| They end up in the environment regardless. Where do you
| put your lint trap material? where does the dryer vent
| to?
| Retric wrote:
| If you want to be _that_ pedantic the clothes you're
| using right now are already part of the environment as
| are clothes sitting in stores etc.
|
| However, using the common terminology a sealed garbage
| dump isn't part of the environment in question because
| sea life isn't coming into contact with it.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| Technically yes, if dryers can improve their filtration,
| and dryer owners can be trusted to maintain their filters
| ...
| soperj wrote:
| You don't need much of a failure. Many cities all you
| need is a really rainy day and it overflows into general
| ocean run off[0]. I'm pretty sure parts of Vancouver
| still just send sewage directly into the ocean. All of
| Victoria did for over a hundred and fifty years until
| during Covid they finished a treatment plant finally[1].
|
| [0] - example - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
| columbia/sewage-overf...
|
| [1] -https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
| columbia/victoria-crd...
| Xylakant wrote:
| if you're worried about microplastics from drying your
| patagonia fleece in the dryer, worry about other things
| first. Car tires get ground up into microplastic and
| estimates range between 10 and 28% of the total
| microplastic pollution in the oceans [1]. And that's not
| surprising - the weight loss of a single tire over its
| lifetime likely exceeds the entire weight of your fleece
| jacket. Drive less car miles before worrying about
| patagonia clothes.
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/
| tires...
| einpoklum wrote:
| I'm wondering - how much microplastics come from
| _bicycle_ tires? I mean, surely it's a lot less, but how
| much less? Say, per bike km ridden?
| Xylakant wrote:
| I can tell you that my pair of bike tires is now 13 000km
| old, still going strong, and weighs about 790g each. It
| may loose maybe 100 or 200g over it's lifetime, but
| unlikely that it's even that much. Worst case estimate so
| far would be 790g/13 000km, or 0.061g/km per wheel -
| under the assumption that the whole tire is consumed.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| For cars and bikes alike, it all comes down to how much
| work the tires are doing, which is to say, how much hard
| acceleration and hard braking occurs, especially to the
| point of losing traction despite grippy conditions
| (burnout/skid), in conjunction with how much mass is
| being moved.
|
| E-bikes and e-scooters are going to be way worse than
| human power, per distance, because of the quicker
| acceleration/braking. My FWD scooter is always slipping
| on uphill climbs, but my RWD bike doesn't because the
| weight is shifted appropriately.
|
| Lots of considerations.
| hinkley wrote:
| We should worry about the global phenomenon of
| microplastics for sure, but most of what's in my yard
| came from litter or from the dryer vent.
|
| Also they used to use more natural fibers and now it's
| almost all blends, except some of the work clothes.
| HPsquared wrote:
| For tires, is anyone working on biodegradable or
| otherwise eco-friendly tire materials? Something that is
| biocompatible. Although you don't want tires breaking
| down and causing accidents... Tires have a lot of
| conflicting design requirements.
| hinkley wrote:
| Michelin had a tire formula a few years ago that was
| augmented with natural hydrocarbons. They claimed that it
| gave the tire better performance at 50% tread wear as
| well. But I found out recently they don't sell the model
| I bought anymore so I'm not sure if the expectations
| matched the projections or what happened.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Bio tires would be great, but the more immediate, easy
| and efficient solution is public transport investment to
| reduce car use.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Tires made with natural rubber are nothing new, that's
| the way _all_ tires used to be made. And I doubt it 's
| any better for the environment, from either a
| microplastics perspective or a deforestation perspective.
| thomasjb wrote:
| This would be rather useful in remote locations which find
| themselves with surplus plastics (remote islands with no landfill
| options for example), surplus renewable electricity and big old
| diesel engines. Those are unusual circumstances, but they are out
| there, and if there were organisations willing to fund the
| electricity aspect, the issue of plastic litter could be reduced
| in many places (and that includes ghost nets and other seaborne
| plastic). The resulting oil could pay back some of the cost of
| production, and be sold at a discount to the heavy diesel engine
| users in the area, on the condition that they uprate their
| emissions equipment. This may or may not have helpful effects in
| local markets.
| HackOfAllTrades wrote:
| Why do people keep falling for this? This same fraud used to pop
| up only every 10 years. Now it's 5 or less.
|
| I'm a PhD chemist. Please consider this: While plastics and oil
| are both hydrocarbons they have this important difference. Liquid
| hydrocarbons have short carbon chains and lots of hydrogen.
| Plastics have very LONG carbon chains, usually with many double
| bonds, and very little hydrogen.
|
| That is why, when you heat plastic it decomposes into char -- as
| in charcoal. It is IMPOSSIBLE to produce oil, even theoretically,
| without adding a source of hydrogen.
|
| A few centuries ago these same fraudsters would be selling you a
| way to change Iron into Gold.
| godelski wrote:
| Is it hard to add a source of hydrogen? In the images they have
| here it looks like there is a vat of water and it explicitly
| says it produces H2O and CO2 gas waste (though calls the CO2
| harmless). That would imply there is a source of hydrogen here.
| (Not an expert, just legitimately curious so I can better spot
| snake oil)
| didericis wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Zmtc22uPLd4
|
| I'm not a chemist/someone else can offer a more detailed
| explanation (just love the excuse to post that song), but
| with most of these kinds of things the energy and advanced
| equipment required to go in a theoretically plausible
| direction for a minuscule amount of yield is usually absurd.
| Including turning iron into gold. (I think it might
| theoretically be possible to do that at this point as well,
| but if it is possible I'm sure it'd be astronomically energy
| intensive and wasteful to manipulate matter to that degree)
| outworlder wrote:
| Turning iron to gold is not possible as a chemical
| reaction. They are elements. You need a nuclear reaction.
| 40yearoldman wrote:
| Ahh! So it is possible, just need a nuclear reaction!
| otikik wrote:
| The way to turn iron to gold is ancient: smelt the iron,
| make a weapon with it, and use that to steal the gold from
| someone else.
| agumonkey wrote:
| teleochemistry
| Turbots wrote:
| [dead]
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| At that point, why not just use hydrogen as a fuel? Or better
| yet, just use batteries.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Hydrogen is extraordinarily annoying to store and
| transport. Oil is kind of annoying, but not "heavy cans of
| pressurized gas that leaks through metal walls anyway and
| is explosive in a wide range of air concentrations"
| annoying. Nobody has figured out a workable way to deal
| with this, though they might at some point.
|
| It's also not an accident electric cars are so heavy--
| gasoline or diesel fuel are fantastically energy-dense
| compared to almost anything else you might want to use,
| even accounting for the intricate engine you need to haul
| around to take advantage of them. Not to say that you
| shouldn't try and use something else, just that it's a very
| real problem.
| arbitrage wrote:
| I can't fuel my car with hydrogen.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| And there we have it, the solution we've needed all along
| - dirigibles.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| You could, the technology exists. The reason hydrogen
| fuel cells never caught on is because the production of
| hydrogen doesn't make economic and environmental sense.
| Which gets back to the root of problem with the OP
| claims.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Hydrogen leaks through metals because it can diffuse
| through the lattice, and attaching it to carbon stops it
| from doing that.
| aeroblade wrote:
| You know, before tossing around your "PhD" in Chemistry maybe
| it'd be good to be sure you know what you're talking about
| first...
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2019.0002...
| )
|
| https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/Amid-controversy-i...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01652...
| zwkrt wrote:
| I don't know if you meant to, but all three of those links
| are hilarious if you read them. The first one has `moving
| toward` in the title, which is academic speak for "it doesn't
| work and we don't know how to make it work". Otherwise it
| would be arrived at. Very similar to Betteridge's Law of
| Headlines for academia.
|
| The second link is a news article that is very critical about
| the motivations, projected success, and sneaky language used
| by companies to justify pyrolisys. And this is coming from
| what is ostensibly a pro-chemical news source.
|
| The third article is paywalled and I'm guessing 99% of us
| can't read it. However, the `Opportunities and Challenges` is
| again academic talk for "we looked into it and it's really
| really hard".
| aliswe wrote:
| I'm not calling you out, but please check these clips and
| comment.
|
| I dont know anything about this so I appreciate the opportunity
| to learn.
|
| https://youtu.be/njIYHtFmcSs https://youtu.be/TFuTCpCVSbM
| https://youtu.be/1STaZYZ-P1w etc
| _hypx wrote:
| You can steam reform plastic and get hydrogen for that purpose.
| It will imply that you have to lose a percentage of your
| plastic input, but if it is just plastic waste then that is not
| a huge problem.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Was going to ask about that - I mean, hydrocarbon chains, by
| definition, contain hydrogen, so surely you should be able to
| use part of the input as hydrogen source (leaving concerns of
| practicality, efficiency and price aside).
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| My understanding is that polyethylene, one of the most common
| plastics, has no double bonds, and the exact same ratio of
| carbon:hydrogen as shorter carbon chains. Simply breaking the
| polymer into short chains should literally give you oil. Why
| not?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Polyethylene is (CH2)n, where n is in the thousands or so, or
| 2.00 H per C. An octane (e.g., for gasoline) would be C8H18,
| or 2.25 H per C. Smaller-chain molecules are even higher H/C
| ratio.
|
| So even polyethylene is short about .25 H per C.
| overboard2 wrote:
| Could you potentially do it with steam and the right catalyst?
| cal85 wrote:
| Interesting, thanks. As someone with little understanding of
| chemistry, can you clarify why "adding a source of hydrogen" is
| not possible/practical?
| frinko wrote:
| Thank you for shedding light on this.
| zerop wrote:
| What kind of Oil it generates? Where it can be used?
| hammock wrote:
| Everyone is talking about using this oil as fuel and the
| shortcomings. Could you cook with this oil? Or lubricate some
| tool/equipment in your garage?
| profstasiak wrote:
| would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My dad served in the army as a cook in Vietnam. He used
| gasoline stoves to cook dinner for the troops.
| zucked wrote:
| "White gas" used for cooking stoves (think Coleman stoves,
| laterns, etc) used to be unleaded, additive free gasoline.
| It's not gasoline now (according to wiki: cyclohexane,
| nonane, octane, heptane, and pentane.) Naptha also works in
| those stoves but doesn't last as long. Apparently you can
| still run the stoves on gasoline if you'd like.
| a13o wrote:
| Truffle oil is 2,4-dithiapentane derived from petroleum, so
| if you like truffle fries you might not mind
| nebula8804 wrote:
| How about coffee?
|
| Heres a video of one of the original engineers brewing coffee
| with "plastic oil". Does not look healthy given that there is
| so much black smoke.
|
| [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbonK7vBCZI
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Certainly, in some settings.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Gasoline-Stove/s?k=Gasoline+Stove
| p886 wrote:
| Seed oils that are now widespread as cooking oils were
| originally used as machine lubricants.
| TSiege wrote:
| Fascinating and makes sense. I've recently gone down a
| rabbit hole on the uses of linseed oil pre fossil fuels,
| but it's too gummy to ever be used as a lubricant. Do you
| know off hand which seed oils were used for lubricants?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Castor oil was famously used as a lubricant in early WWI-
| era airplane engines. The fumes would blow in the pilot's
| face and are also a laxative.
| TSiege wrote:
| Haha that's amazing! Hopefully the pilots weren't too
| phased. Thanks for sharing
|
| Did some further digging and it looks like it does have a
| tendency to gum. From wikipedia, "The viscosity of castor
| oil at 10 degC is 2,420 centipoise,[28] but it tends to
| form gums in a short time, so its usefulness is limited
| to engines that are regularly rebuilt, such as racing
| engines. Lubricant company Castrol took its name from
| castor oil."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Lubrication
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| So was olive oil, in addition to the use in food.
| hammock wrote:
| Yes my point. They still are.
|
| Soybean oil is used in a wide range of lubricant and
| functional fluids applications: Gear oils
| and lubes Chainsaw bar oil Compressor oil
| Two-cycle engine oil Metalworking oils and Wire
| rope, chain, and cable lubricants General purpose and
| penetrating lubricants Transformer and transmission
| line cooling fluids Greases - automotive, machinery,
| rail curve, track Food-grade, industrial, and
| elevator hydraulic fluids
|
| https://www.stle.org/images/pdf/STLE_ORG/AM2019%20Presentat
| i...
|
| Obviously this is a backwards example (food-grade oil used
| for non-food applications), and my question was using this
| plastic oil for food applications.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| In china, its common to cook with "gutter oil" which is
| sewage, filtered and refined. Humans are amazing.
| eloff wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be common, but there seem to have been
| some scandals around that, and an increase in regulations.
| Really gross!
| pubby wrote:
| It's more common to unsafely reuse oil than pull it from
| the sewer. This is done everywhere to some extent (bad
| grease at a fast food joints, etc), but China does it on
| a bigger scale.
| Oxidation wrote:
| "Gutter oil", _digou you_ is any illegally recycled and
| refined oil. It 's not necessarily from actual gutters: the
| "gutter" can be figurative. To be clear, does include,
| rarely and in the most egregious cases, literal sewer
| skimmings, but is also buying used cooking oil from food
| vendors (like from deep fat fryers and grill traps) and
| animal carcass rendering. Then refining and selling that
| oil for food use rather than as biofuel or other industrial
| uses. It can even apply simply to just using once-virgin
| frying oil for longer than regulations allow.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| How do people ever consume that without immediately getting
| sick?
| dahfizz wrote:
| I think people here are confusing "cook with" to mean
| either "the fuel source to cook" or "the oil in the pan
| to aid in cooking".
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Unfortunately, no. See also, "frying with transformer
| oil".
| generalizations wrote:
| I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy
| who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any
| hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break
| even. He was converting tires and waste plastic.
|
| Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the
| partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random
| company and blackholed.
|
| Edit: found a source. Better than popsci.
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave...
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Was it this company by chance?
|
| https://www.qualitystocks.com/global-resource-corporation-in...
|
| I've been looking for a 'real machine' in the wild for some
| time now - have yet to see one.
| generalizations wrote:
| Yup, that's the one. I think the tech got blackholed pretty
| effectively. https://archive.is/20120908120121/http://www.pop
| sci.com/pops...
| notinfuriated wrote:
| Possibly a dumb question, but how much plastic exists in tires?
| I figured they were mostly natural rubber. Naturally, that must
| be outdated.
|
| From my own naive Google search on "how much plastic in the
| average tire", I see
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires...
| says, highlighted by goog:
|
| > By 1931 the U.S. chemical company DuPont had industrialized
| the manufacturing of synthetic rubber. Today tires consist of
| about 19 percent natural rubber and 24 percent synthetic
| rubber, which is a plastic polymer.
| generalizations wrote:
| Interesting. Synthetic rubber is still just hydrocarbons, so
| it would get converted back to oil/natgas just the same as
| the rest.
| numlocked wrote:
| If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is:
| https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_...
|
| Edit: more context: the "inventor" is Frank Pringle who
| _appears_ to have invented a number of too-good-to-be-true
| gizmos, including one for weight loss.
|
| Edit 2: also he claimed to cure cancer with microwaves (the
| same year as the oil producing microwaves):
| https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/-b-global-resource...
| Laaas wrote:
| I'm surprised that people didn't replicate his work in
| countries that don't respect Western patents.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Because there is no way it was economical.
|
| This is no different than a startup founder talking about his
| new AI crypto fund.
|
| BS exists in every industry.
| elromulous wrote:
| Those countries probably don't care about recycling.
| kulahan wrote:
| If you can find an economical way to recycle plastic, it
| would be an insanely lucrative business opportunity. It has
| nothing to do with their views on the environment.
| jp57 wrote:
| Shouldn't it be almost out of patent by now?
| csours wrote:
| Just like the "water carburetor" and other miracles that never
| materialized, the problem is that the alternative is cheaper
| and simpler (which means cheaper).
|
| It doesn't sound expensive to add water injection to an
| internal combustion engine, until you have to make it work in
| production, with end users.
|
| YOU can make it work, because you are motivated, but what about
| the guy who buys it because it's cool and then forgets to fill
| the system. Sure it's easy to add programming to work around
| this condition, but is it easy to integrate and test?
|
| Anyway, crude oil is very, very cheap, and very easy to
| integrate into a production process. Waste plastic in the
| recycling stream is dirty and heterogeneous in composition and
| size, which makes it hard to integrate into a production
| process. Not impossible, but more expensive, which means that
| no one will do it without outside compulsion (and maybe not
| even then).
| colordrops wrote:
| It's only cheaper because externalities are ignored. If we
| had proper legislation that took environmental externalities
| into account, it might not be cheaper anymore.
| diyseguy wrote:
| Yes, couldn't they just make some government subsidies to
| incentivize it? Then we could be rid of all the nasty
| plastic waste that keeps finding it's way into the ocean
| and everywhere else?
| ansible wrote:
| > _It doesn 't sound expensive to add water injection to an
| internal combustion engine, until you have to make it work in
| production, with end users._
|
| Water / methanol injection was commonly used on various
| piston engine aircraft in the 1940's. It had several
| benefits, cooling the input air, preventing pre-detonation at
| high compression (due to lower octane fuel in some cases),
| lowering the combustion temperature, and such. It was
| practical and worked fine for high-performance aircraft, that
| saw regular maintenance after every flight.
|
| It doesn't seem very necessary or practical for a ground
| vehicle though.
| csours wrote:
| It was also available on early jet aircraft (and may still
| be used by some). Here's an interesting discussion:
| https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/36185/how-
| does-...
|
| Some people do modify their vehicles for water injection,
| and at least one recent production car has it:
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15340747/new-
| porsche-911-...
| gonzoflip wrote:
| Yeah, water/meth injection is pretty common mod for
| forced induction cars to squeeze some more air in there
| without causing detonation. People often just tap the
| windshield washer reservoir and use that to hold the
| meth, since windshield wiper fluid is a more diluted
| methanol mix you can still use it for your windshield. I
| personally don't run it because running out of meth on a
| vehicle that is tuned for it can have disastrous
| consequences.
| folmar wrote:
| It _is_ practical for cars, but a similar technology is
| easier and better: Exhaust Gas Recirculation.
|
| The problem of water injection is engine corrosion and
| system maintenance. EGR further improves the exhaust gas
| composition by burning the CO and similar not fully
| oxidized parts. The main effect is the same, i.e. providing
| some inert material that expands after detonation using up
| the heat.
| generalizations wrote:
| Found some sources. See other comments.
|
| > the alternative is cheaper and simpler
|
| What's interesting is that it seems like the microwave
| version _was_ the cheaper and simpler alternative. And the
| engineering problems were apparently solved, since they were
| building the product for their first deal, and were demoing
| the tech to the popsci reporter who visited.
|
| > Back at the shop, Pringle is still zapping new materials. A
| sample labeled "bituminous coal" goes in and, 15 seconds
| later, Pringle ignites the resulting gas. "You see," he says,
| "why they might want to kill me."
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| In case anyone else is following along, a patent by Pringle
| has had a very intriguing set of assignments.
|
| Started out with the corporation by Pringle and Co in 2009,
| rest is below:
|
| 2009: GREENTECH ENERGY SOLUTIONS LTD.
|
| 2010: UNIVERSAL ALTERNATIVE FUELS, INC.
|
| 2011: GORTAGCH DEVELOPMENT LIMITED
|
| 2015: GREENTECH ENERGY SOLUTIONS LTD.
|
| Pringle also has a 2020 patent application pending that
| references the 2006 original filing.
|
| [Edit] Thank you forgot it
|
| 2006: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7629497B2/ 2020:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200399541A1/en
| rudyfink wrote:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US7629497B2/ (if anyone
| else was looking for a link, assignment information is
| near the bottom).
| [deleted]
| lvxferre wrote:
| I have a better idea: reduce plastic consumption. I know, I know,
| totally OC donut steel.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| I'm all for it. How do we as consumers do that in a practical
| way?
| delijati wrote:
| If they do it via "pyrolyse" (burning plastic without oxygen)
| there is this Quantafuel [1] doing this in "large scale".
|
| [1] https://www.quantafuel.com/
| userbinator wrote:
| It's pretty close to the same principles a petroleum refinery
| operates on:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_catalytic_cracking
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Ordinary physical recycling of plastics (melt them down) runs
| into problems because plastics get mixed and mixed with
| contaminants and because the molecular chains get damaged and
| break down over time.
|
| There are two approaches to chemical recycling.
|
| One of them is to reverse the polymerization process and
| produce the monomer. This can be purified and used to make
| virgin quality plastic.
|
| The other one is like what you describe and produces outputs
| similar to a petrochemical factory that can be used to make
| all sorts of things.
|
| Both of the above processes are still terribly expensive and
| environmentally dirty but they are the subject of very active
| research and they might get practical someday.
| hinkley wrote:
| 3) use the best-effort stream of materials to manufacture
| bulk materials where a small quantity of chemicals that
| refuse to bond to each other doesn't compromise the
| product.
|
| Those plastic park benches and decking material products
| are using a lot of plastic to overcome statistics. But the
| perverse incentive is that a product that uses a lot of
| your material per consumer looks much better on paper than
| it is in real life. Instead of twenty shirts or fifty
| detergent bottles we made one bench, that goes to the
| landfill when it's done because it's not cradle-to-cradle.
| hinkley wrote:
| SCWO (supercritical water oxidation) is pretty much only used
| for superfund projects because of the expense of the machinery.
| It basically burns materials in oxygenated water, turning
| everything into water, carbon dioxide, and salts/acids.
|
| The salts and acids are a problem that prevents commercial use,
| because it turns out corrosion, heat, and pressure are the
| 'pick two' of ceramic materials. Last I read someone was trying
| to work around this problem by building a heat and pressure
| optimized vessel and coating it with a corrosion (and?)
| resistant glazing. I imagine getting the thermal expansion for
| the two materials to be identical is a right difficult problem.
| ansible wrote:
| Sounds similar to the thermal depolymerization [1] developed by
| companies like Changing World Technologies. [2]
|
| That technology seems very promising, but they ran into a number
| of difficulties in practice. They build a plant to process turkey
| leftovers in Missouri, but the plant wasn't profitable, and the
| community complained about the smell.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies
| hinkley wrote:
| I believe they started on the wrong foot. They cheaped out on
| the welding process and so the whole system was losing pressure
| and stinky volatiles. They had to redo their entire plumbing
| and people still complained after they swore up and down that
| there were no more leaks. which might be improper detection or
| people are used to a smell and don't believe it's gone.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I went down this rabbit hole for a bit. The only obvious issue
| seems to be that burying (or burning if you're Swedish) plastic
| is really, really cheap. For the turkey waste, we're already
| good at rendering animal remains, so there just isn't a need.
| ansible wrote:
| Yes.
|
| For CWT in specific, the original articles (in popular
| science magazines like Discover or PopSci) described the
| desire to process various kinds of plastics, much like the
| linked article talks about. The methane would be tapped off
| early, and used the power the production process, with the
| end product being various kinds of oils.
|
| It wasn't clear why CWT decided to pivot to processing turkey
| waste. They were hamstrung by fluctuating prices for the
| waste stream, that (IIRC) could be used as an input for
| fertilizer production.
| paulwilsondev wrote:
| One step closer to Mr. Fusion!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Love how the site ambiguate oil
| quaintdev wrote:
| So what is wrong with this? I am assuming it only takes soft
| plastic but still why we don't see widespread use of it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I think the oil it produced would be worth about PS0.25 (GBP)
| (400ml assuming the price is the same as Brent crude and
| ignoring the cost of the input plastic or the machine itself
| etc). But the power to run it (3kWh) would cost about PS1
| (1GBP) at current rates at least here in the UK.
|
| I might be wrong, I'm not sure whether the oil produced is
| equivalent to Brent crude (I picked it at random) or more
| valuable or less...
| ozim wrote:
| Still might make sense when solar/wind is at peak to make it
| as a longer time storage? While still getting rid of plastic
| waste.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Also makes sense in Japan (and Korea, and maybe other
| places I don't know about), where the populace is very
| mindful not just of making sure garbage ends up in a can,
| but as well separating it based on the type of garbage.
|
| Contrast with the US, where people decide to save a few
| bucks a month by dumping their garbage bags along the side
| of the road, or tossing garbage out the window of their
| car.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But of what use is that mystery oil? All current petroluem
| products are highly quality controlled, both for
| lubrication and use in engines. You didn't get rid of the
| plastic, you converted it into a liquid which you must now
| dispose of safely. The only upside I see is that the
| plastic won't litter and turn into micro plastics in the
| ocean, but since it's already collected, then burn in a
| central plant ASAP IMHO.
| eloff wrote:
| You could probably use it in a diesel engine. People
| filter used frying oil from restaurants and run their
| diesels on that.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes, you absolutely can, especially in an old diesel
| engine, they can run on all kinds of oil. But the engine
| might not fare well, depending on the properties of the
| oil, and the exhaust might contain "interesting" stuff
| like dioxins, depending on what was in the mystery
| plastic to begin with.
| ozim wrote:
| I would say if this could be done by some utility
| company, that company could have diesel engines to
| generate power from that oil which could have filters and
| all that stuff.
|
| I assume it still could be profitable because people who
| want to get rid of plastic waste would still have to pay.
| Getting excess power from grid is also something one
| would get paid for. Then turning on generators when grid
| needs power to get paid when there is a power shortage.
|
| But as I write this out I imagine that it would require
| massive amounts of investments for setting up such
| operation and getting all kind of permits or
| environmental studies and god knows what. Let alone
| getting deals with electric companies - so I think that
| would be something that some electric company would have
| to set up. They would most likely have most know-how for
| such setup.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Meanwhile, the power company in this city burns plastic
| (and all kinds of waste) in their co-generation plant and
| gets electricity and residential heating.
| eloff wrote:
| If you're going to burn it for electricity in a
| stationary location, skip the middle man and burn the
| waste itself.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Last I checked oil was the primary ingredient in making
| plastic. This could be a way to recycle plastic that is
| not recyclable by normal means.
| smcg wrote:
| plastic is a byproduct of the petroleum production
| process.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Much of the feedstock for plastic is from natural gas,
| not from oil. Fracked gas in particular has a lot of
| ethane, which is converted to ethylene and then to
| polyethylene. The rise of fracked gas in the US caused PE
| production to move here.
| layer8 wrote:
| > But of what use is that mystery oil?
|
| You can probably power the next few runs of the machine
| with it.
| newyankee wrote:
| The key may be economically transporting the waste plastic
| as feedstock. Guess it may be much more expensive. Even
| assuming 5 cents/ kwh of solar this makes economic sense as
| storage system otherwise. I presume in the future we have
| autonomous robots that clean the cities of plastic and feed
| it to such machines which run on surplus renewable energy
| ozim wrote:
| You still have people paying for their waste disposal, so
| I would assume transport cost should be covered by that.
| t00 wrote:
| When running on spare hydro, wind or solar power which cannot
| be accumulated or returned to grid, it can have some uses.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I'm not sure the economics works on something like that.
| Once you buy all the equipment, employees, and commercial
| buildings, it simply isn't going to be profitable to only
| run your factory 10% of the time (How often does solar
| power go wasted? Not actually sure).
|
| Maybe it would work if this was only one step in a larger
| processes. When energy is free, use it to make a ton of
| this crude oil and then process the crude with less energy
| intensive methods when electricity is expensive.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If this is a thermal process, then intermittent cheap
| energy can be stored in thermal masses (firebrick, for
| example) much more cheaply than in batteries, and the
| heat used later. That way that later stage can be kept
| operating more continuously.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| More worth than crude. Crude also needs processing. The
| output from this bench processor is probably somewhere around
| the red fraction here:
|
| https://petroleumservicecompany.com/blog/oil-
| barrel-42-gallo...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thanks!
| headcanon wrote:
| I would imagine that its not economically viable at scale.
| First, it might be too energy-intensive for the value of the
| end product, and second, the plastic you can get is still the
| plastic that you're able to separate from trash, which it might
| be better to just recycle it normally. These are just peanut-
| gallery guesses though, I don't know for sure.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The very small scale ensures it isn't economical.
|
| If thermal decomposition of plastic is to be worthwhile, it
| would be on the scale of oil refineries (which it would likely
| resemble.)
|
| It might be worthwhile to separate plastics now, not for
| conversion now, but to stockpile for later processing by this
| or other means. Just put the stuff in plastics-only landfills
| designed to ease later mining. Fixed carbon will be more
| valuable after fossil fuel use ends.
| [deleted]
| wheels wrote:
| I'm guessing the answer is, "Because you can already burn the
| plastic directly." Presumably burning this oil would have the
| same levels of pollution as burning the plastic in the first
| place, but also takes extra energy to produce.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Other than if you have a Mr Fusion you can't run a car off of
| solid plastics. But, I assume some additional steps are
| required to make it usable. The site doesn't detail the
| possible uses of the the oil, but generally liquids and
| solids can be used in different situations. The oil could
| also be used as lubricant rather than an energy source.
| SigmundA wrote:
| An electric car can, in my area they burn garbage for
| electricity:
|
| https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/
| luxoramonrising wrote:
| Flammable lubes are a big no no
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| They don't detail much about the properties of the oil
| produced
| naravara wrote:
| I don't know if most households have enough use for
| lubricants to be able to consume a quantity equivalent to
| 80% of the volume of plastics they're disposing of. My door
| hinges and bike-chains can only be so smooth. Even if it
| was converting it into usable motor-oil (which I doubt it
| is) I don't think I could consume that much.
|
| I suppose if it's usable for a kerosine type of lamp maybe,
| but is it pure enough to not present respiratory issues?
| And why would I need a kerosine lamp?
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Many people still have ICE cars, you left that
| intentionally out?
| naravara wrote:
| I mentioned motor oil
| jandrese wrote:
| No way I'm trusting oil made from random household waste
| plastic as the primary lubricant in my car engine. What
| are the lubricating properties? What are the breakdown
| characteristics? High temperature resilience? Presumably
| it would vary by batch. You are just begging for a seized
| engine.
| finnh wrote:
| Airplanes run off kerosene, so that's a sizeable market
| if this fuel is good enough
| jandrese wrote:
| No chance the FAA lets people use homemade recycled
| plastic oil in their turbojet engines. Jet turbines are
| very tolerant of different fuels, but this is a bridge
| too far.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Yeah I don't think it's the next Nespresso and they
| probably need to detail the use cases better. But I can
| see this useful in a machinist shop that might have a lot
| of waste plastic from packing materials etc.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Also, plastics can contain all sorts of nasty toxic
| surprises. Better to burn it at a centralized location with
| proper filtering and treatment than having little batches or
| mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| > _Better to burn it at a centralized location with proper
| filtering and treatment than having little batches or
| mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity._
|
| If we can assure that the output meets a standard should we
| burn it, then certainly we should be able to assure the
| output meets a standard should we refine/convert it.
| mrpopo wrote:
| It is more efficient to burn it, generate electricity and
| charge a EV battery with it, than it is to convert it to
| fuel (consumes energy) and burn it in an internal
| combustion engine (very low efficiency due to small
| scale).
| beanjuice wrote:
| And the conversion of plastic into oil will have cost
| much more energy, producing the same pollution in the
| end.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Since this consumes electricity, the energy need could be
| filled by running the converter at peak hours for
| renewable energy, so effectively soak up excess energy to
| recover oil that's already out of the ground. Which would
| be a net win in terms of energy, possibly even
| financially depending on the investment costs for that
| device. Assuming it even holds up to the promises.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| But at least we save some landfill space. Also micro-
| plastics contamination is everywhere.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| In the USA, landfill space concerns are based on a hoax.
| Landfill space is a function of landfill development, and
| there's no shortage of spaces to create landfills.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I am not talking about running out of space in general. I
| am talking about taking a hill covered with trees or
| farms, and turning it into a hill of garbage. Surely you
| can see why I would prefer a natural hill?
|
| If you can burn it, there is no point in burring it.
| We're still taking a lot of stuff from underground and
| burn it for energy, why not burn the stuff we already
| have above ground?
| jnovek wrote:
| Landfills amortize the carbon emissions. Keeping the
| plastic's carbon temporarily sequestered in a landfill
| puts it somewhere other than the atmosphere. Eventually
| we'll have to do something with all that carbon, but
| we're better off burying it until we get a better handle
| on emissions in general.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| You would be right, IF we were to not take out any other
| fossil fuel to burn. But to bury the plastic now it just
| means we will dig for an equivalent quantity of coal, oil
| or gas to burn. We will burn some stuff regardless, we
| might as well burn what we already have, instead of
| burying it and digging for new stuff.
| lesuorac wrote:
| You can still burry the soot after you burned the
| plastic.
| ac29 wrote:
| Most of the carbon is going to end up as CO2 in the air,
| though.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Unless you capture it, as Amsterdam has been doing.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| CO2 capture is a scam, perpetrated by the petroleum
| industry to make people think it's okay to burn more
| fossil fuels.
| lesuorac wrote:
| You don't need to burn it in an open field ...
|
| You can used a closed system so that the waste is
| actually all captured. Or you can have a more continuous
| system that'll capture/scrub the output.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| All these processes best done in centralized plants with
| quality controls, not in bench processors.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's much easier to purify the burning waste products
| than raw trash. It is much less varied.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I don't believe plastic burning is a widespread energy
| source.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Japan and I believe Singapore burn most of their plastic in
| incinerators to generate electricity. Coincidentally they
| are also among the highest plastic waste producers per
| capita.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Korea, Taiwan, and Switzerland are similar.
| elil17 wrote:
| It happens in waste-to-energy power plants (a.k.a garbage
| power plants). They can be a great way to get rid of waste
| but they require a lot of filtering of the exhaust to be
| safe. Adequate filtering is universal in some countries
| (like Sweden). In the USA, waste-to-energy plants
| frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them
| dirtier than coal plants.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have
| inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than
| coal plants.
|
| Source? With EPA being so rigid about diesel cars it
| would doubt that. Unless the whole regulation was about
| keeping german car manufacturers in cheque...
| [deleted]
| cassepipe wrote:
| Do you know if they have to reach a certain temperature ?
| I would think so because I assumme garbage produces a lot
| of fumes and gases that would better off burned for
| energy rather that ending in the air. On the other end I
| wonder what kind of temperature you can get with a
| dumpster fire
| acidioxide wrote:
| In my city there is an incineration plant which produces
| about 94 GWh of electricity a year, covering 11% of city's
| needs.
| kortex wrote:
| I imagine it's easier to purify the oil and burn the oil with
| high efficiency, than to burn solid garbage and filter the
| flue gas.
| jandrese wrote:
| Presumably the noxious byproducts are released during the
| oil recycling process? It would explain where all of that
| missing mass went. But if this is the case you'll still
| need to filter the gas so there is little benefit.
| coding123 wrote:
| 3.5kwh to run
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-19 23:01 UTC)