[HN Gopher] Dutch designer drives his car on the plastic waste h...
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       Dutch designer drives his car on the plastic waste he collects
        
       Author : akeck
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-01-14 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)
        
       | yreg wrote:
       | Fuel consumption: 14 kg of plastic per 100 km, but to be fair
       | it's a Volvo 240 with a tiny refinery mounted on the roof.
       | 
       | Why don't the fuel producers do this? Is it less efficient than
       | recycling the waste?
        
         | eptcyka wrote:
         | We kind of already do - just instead of making diesel, the
         | plastic is burned to generate electricity. Since machines to
         | harvest a difference in temperature or exothermic processes
         | scales with size, one could argue it's more efficient to burn
         | it in a massive, very efficient furnaces instead of converting
         | the plastic into diesel that is then burned in an engine that
         | must be operational at a far larger range of RPMs.
        
           | Ekaros wrote:
           | My understanding is that higher temperatures also mean some
           | toxic byproducts get processed. And you can install scrubbers
           | and other technologies to clean rest from exhaust... And with
           | combined production also capturing waste heat after
           | electricity production efficiency is comparatively good.
        
         | jamil7 wrote:
         | In countries like Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands it's kind
         | of done indirectly through waste to energy systems where
         | plastic waste is burnt. I think there's a few systems in place
         | to mitigate the environmental impact.
        
           | westbywest wrote:
           | Highlighting Vienna's district heating system which does
           | this, partly because the facility in Spittelau had artist
           | Friedensreich Hundertwasser design it to look like a
           | psychedelic castle. https://hundertwasser.com/en/architecture
           | /910_arch73_fernwae...
        
         | nbutyllithium wrote:
         | > Why don't the fuel producers do this?
         | 
         | I recall reading about some of them looking into it but running
         | into issues ensuring a "clean" recycled plastic supply at the
         | scales they need. Can't seem to find the article in my history
         | but there's a ton of varied results I'm seeing from searches
         | talking about the idea of recycling plastic. Example:
         | https://www2.afpm.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/sum-21-3...
         | 
         | I think one of the main issues was, at least in the US,
         | chlorinated plastic (e.g. PVC) ends up in the bulk supply of
         | used plastics through negligence/malice/whatever and even at a
         | few percent ends up creating some pretty corrosive compounds
         | which are difficult/expensive to remove before they damage the
         | equipment.
         | 
         | Looks like people are working on that issue too though:
         | https://www.power-technology.com/features/plastic-pyrolysis-...
        
       | jp57 wrote:
       | _The plastic waste is heated in a boiler to about 700 degrees
       | Celsius, after which it evaporates. The gas is then cooled down
       | and turns into a diesel-like liquid one hour later._
       | 
       | A kind of pyrolysis, I assume, and very energy intensive. Does
       | this process really produce more stored energy in the output
       | product than it took to run the reaction?
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | The source material is industrial waste that the owner is
         | receiving for free. Neither economics nor ecological concerns
         | favor this approach notwithstanding the free source of plastic
         | chips.
        
         | schiffern wrote:
         | The article says it produces 300% more CO2, so it's also
         | roughly a 3-to-1 ratio of process energy in to fuel output.
         | 
         | "fuel production by burning plastic on the roof is four times
         | more carbon intensive than producing fuel from crude oil in a
         | refinery."
        
           | justsomehnguy wrote:
           | Which begs a question if a solar concentrator can be used for
           | this.
        
         | samstave wrote:
         | >>> _diesel-like liquid_
         | 
         | What, _specifically_ is that liquid and how toxic is that stuff
         | vs diesel/petrol...?
         | 
         | If you spill a liter of that stuff into a canal/ditch/stream,
         | What consequences?
        
           | FooBarBizBazz wrote:
           | Yeah, that's my worry. I like the idea of pyrolizing plastic
           | to dispose of it (and get energy), but -- a petrochemical
           | company was just proposing to do this, in what presumably was
           | a much better-controlled process, and there were (justified)
           | protests, because the process was going to send horrible
           | quantities of serious carcinogens up the stack. Which makes
           | me wonder what horrible byproducts this might inadvertently
           | be making.
           | 
           | This:
           | 
           | https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-pascagoula-
           | pollut...
        
       | tsimionescu wrote:
       | So he's trying to increase his greenhouse gas emissions as much
       | as possible?
       | 
       | Plastic waste is carbon that isn't going into the atmosphere, not
       | very fast at least. Turning it back into oil and then burning
       | that is the very opposite of what we should be doing with it.
        
         | colechristensen wrote:
         | Plastic is just fuel that spent it's wild teenage years as
         | something useful. We _should_ burn our garbage and use the
         | energy for useful things.
         | 
         | Pumping our environment full of artificial hormones and getting
         | everybody full of random plasticy bits is bad. Until we have so
         | much renewable energy that we don't need fossil fuels, burning
         | garbage displacing burning coal/oil/gas is a net positive.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Proper sequestration of plastic garbage in well managed
           | garbage dumps is much better. Turning plastic into fuel and
           | then burning the fuel is far less energy efficient than
           | burning extracted fuel, so it's worse in the most critical
           | way right now: it releases more greenhouse gas.
           | 
           | Of course, it's much better to produce less plastic in the
           | first place.
        
             | Ekaros wrote:
             | I think if we compare burying plastic to properly
             | controller industrial incineration in combined production
             | that is both electricity and heat is likely better option.
             | As that means we do not need to extract and process the
             | fuel we would use for same purpose.
             | 
             | Now refining plastic to fuel used in other ways or small
             | scale burning is likely just idiotic.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | I very much doubt this. Burning plastic is much less
               | energy efficient than burning oil. However, plastic
               | contains a similar amount of carbon/kg as oil. So,
               | sequestering a kg of plastic while extracting a kg of oil
               | is better than doing it the other way around.
               | 
               | Even if we look at production costs, extracting and
               | transporting liquids from the ground is also less energy
               | intensive than transporting and processing solid plastic
               | waste.
        
           | jacquesm wrote:
           | Burning plastic, especially recycled plastic has the risk of
           | producing all kinds of unintended by-products, some of which
           | can be highly toxic.
        
             | actionfromafar wrote:
             | On the flip side, a lot of plastic toxicity is _burnt away_
             | in the furnace. The rest, is what filters are for. Seems a
             | lot easier to deal with it at the co-generation plant than
             | in a garbage heap.
        
               | jacquesm wrote:
               | The toxicity that you burn away is much less than the one
               | that you get in return.
               | 
               | Dioxins for instance:
               | 
               | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676
               | 572...
        
         | xyst wrote:
         | I'm far from an expert on recycling of plastic. However, the
         | options I see are as follows:
         | 
         | - it sits in a landfill where the plastic eventually (many
         | years down the line) breaks down into microplastics.
         | 
         | - it gets sent into to a recycling facility (fuel/time/energy
         | spent to transport), then it may or may not get "burned" or
         | processed with other like plastics and eventually recycled
         | (iirc, plastic can really only be recycled through this process
         | a few times)
         | 
         | - it gets sent to city recycling facility but repackaged and
         | sold to some other state or country for processing (+more fuel
         | consumption/time/energy). Then depending on the country, or
         | state it's processed in same fashion as option 2 and thus
         | incurring more GHGs
         | 
         | - or maybe it somehow ends up in your local street, rivers,
         | lakes, oceans and eventually degrade into microplastics and
         | eventually into the food/water you live on
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Plasma gasification is the cleanest mechanism to convert
           | plastics to energy while rendering byproducts inert, there
           | just isn't much will to implement. Energy output can
           | contribute towards direct air capture of carbon to
           | mineralize, the rest can be from renewables.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
           | 
           | https://netl.doe.gov/research/Coal/energy-
           | systems/gasificati...
           | 
           | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783.
           | .. ("Plasma gasification versus incineration of plastic
           | waste: Energy, economic and environmental analysis")
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722984 (u/CptFribble:
           | "I am once again asking you to consider plasma gasification.
           | Here is my standard comment, copied again")
           | 
           | https://news.mit.edu/2021/inentec-turning-trash-into-
           | valuabl... (Control-F "Recycling plastic")
           | 
           | HN Discussion stream on the topic: https://hn.algolia.com/?da
           | teRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
           | 
           | (the art project is fine though)
        
             | mulmen wrote:
             | Where do we get more plastic after we plasma gasify what we
             | have? Can the byproducts be used to make more plastic?
        
               | toomuchtodo wrote:
               | You can gasify many materials besides plastic
               | (garbage/waste stream). Filter out metals, brick, rock,
               | glass first. Perhaps site near existing landfills in
               | order to balance the ingest stream between ongoing waste
               | and the waste mine. I have heard the phrase that the
               | landfills of today are the mines of tomorrow, but I think
               | they're more like Superfund sites, all to require
               | remediation in the future at some point (hence the
               | importance of projects that can reasonably degrade these
               | materials into inert byproducts).
               | 
               | https://netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-
               | systems/gasificati...
        
           | Cthulhu_ wrote:
           | I want to believe landfills of plastic are a form of carbon
           | sequestering, but that depends entirely on whether anything
           | leeches out of it over time into ground water.
        
             | tsimionescu wrote:
             | Even if it does leech, the carbon emissions are at least
             | significantly slowed down compared to directly burning the
             | plastic.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | The first one is much better than any of the others. Global
           | warming is a _far_ more pressing problem than microplastic
           | pollution. Plastic is in fact one of the few materials we
           | have that can sequester carbon in a relatively inert way, so
           | burying it in a landfill is infinitely better than burning
           | it.
        
             | yreg wrote:
             | Yeah, I don't get why are we burning plastics. It seems
             | like a terrible idea.
        
         | jayd16 wrote:
         | It specifically calls this out in the article... but its an art
         | project not a way of life.
        
           | smackeyacky wrote:
           | and thought provoking too, whether that was the artists
           | intention or not.
           | 
           | Has a good callback to history (wood gas cars)
           | 
           | Has an interesting take on plastic waste - it's currently
           | free which is weird when you think about it.
           | 
           | Is horrendous for the environment so would never scale but
           | again do our current activities scale in a way that is
           | acceptable any more.
           | 
           | Doesn't matter if you like it or not - as art it works well.
        
         | djha-skin wrote:
         | And instead we should continue to burn gasoline?
         | 
         | Your premise implies that he wouldn't have burned anything if
         | he didn't burn plastic. This is largely false for most of the
         | population. You're going to burn _something_ somewhere, whether
         | coal or natural gas at the power plant or most likely gasoline
         | in your car. You might as well burn things that need to be
         | cleaned up anyway.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Yes, we should absolutely burn gasoline before burning
           | plastic. Plastic should be buried, not burned. Of course,
           | ideally we should be riding electrified public transport
           | consuming renewable energy instead of ICE cars - but not
           | everything that's less than ideal is as bad. And burning
           | plastic is probably one of the worse ways of powering a car.
           | Maybe coal-powdered would be worse, but I wouldn't bet on it.
           | 
           | The article itself how much more CO2 this art project
           | produces compared to a gasoline car.
        
         | h0l0cube wrote:
         | This is covered in the fine article:
         | 
         | > On the other hand, the CO2 emissions from fuel production and
         | combustion are not praiseworthy. First, there is the burning of
         | plastic on the roof. Making 1 liter of diesel requires burning
         | 1 kg of plastic, which results in 2-2.7 kg of carbon emissions.
         | Second, there is the combustion of diesel fuel while driving,
         | which emits 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide per liter. Together, that
         | becomes 4.7 to 5.4 kg CO2 per liter. Consequently, with a fuel
         | economy of 7.14 liters per 100 km, the Volvo emits 33.6 to 38.6
         | kg of greenhouse gases per 100 km.
         | 
         | > In contrast, the emissions of the average fossil fuel-powered
         | car in Europe amount to 25.8 kg/100 km, including crude oil
         | production, fuel refining, and vehicle manufacturing The
         | emissions of a small electric car like the Nissan Leaf amount
         | to 10.9 kg/100km in Europe, including the emissions of
         | electricity production.
         | 
         | The article make some other interesting points:
         | 
         | > Much of the plastic waste that the Volvo 240 burns burns
         | anyway. Not in cars but in incinerators. That is the case for
         | 44% of plastic waste in Europe.
         | 
         | > The carbon emissions are the same. So is the air pollution,
         | although it's easier to put a flue gas scrubber on thousands of
         | incinerators than on millions of cars. The main difference is
         | that burning plastic waste in incinerators to power electric
         | cars allows many of us to externalize the side effects of car
         | driving. An incinerator can be (and always is) located in a
         | poor neighborhood, where it causes high incidences of cancer
         | and other health problems despite air pollution control.
         | 
         | And moreover, this isn't really meant to be for widespread
         | adoption:
         | 
         | > In contrast, Schalkx's Volvo internalizes all the side
         | effects of driving automobiles. The car is not a pleasure to
         | drive, at least not regularly. It is dirty. Its interior stinks
         | of plastic, which cannot be healthy - Gijs keeps the car
         | windows open no matter the weather. Furthermore, he needs to
         | spend a lot of time collecting plastic and making fuel, and all
         | these disadvantages make him think twice before he gets behind
         | the wheel.
         | 
         | There's plenty more interesting points, and the article is
         | relatively short and worth the read.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | Good point. Most of it is indeed incinerated here.
        
             | yreg wrote:
             | But an incineration plant has probably better filters on
             | its chimneys than the homebrew mobile refinery.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Sure, it calls it out to some extent, but overall both the
           | article and the art piece itself seem to imply that this is a
           | somewhat good idea, and definitely imply that plastic waste
           | is a comparable problem to global warming (or even more
           | pressing, given that the art piece massively sacrifices
           | carbon emissions per km for the massive gain of burning some
           | plastic).
           | 
           | The reality is that plastic waste is a much, much lesser
           | problem than global warming. Burning plastic to power cars,
           | even a statement, is insane given that we have already blown
           | past the 1.5 degrees warming and are on a trajectory that
           | will probably lead to much more than 2 degrees, which is now
           | the most _optimistic_ target for 2100 - and even this assumes
           | 0 net emissions in 10 years, which is obviously a fantasy.
           | 
           | Overall this is an idiotic art piece that entirely misses the
           | point of what we should really care about in
           | environmentalism.
        
             | h0l0cube wrote:
             | > overall both the article and the art piece itself seem to
             | imply that this is a somewhat good idea
             | 
             | Literally this is not the case, and should be evidenced by
             | the quotes I highlighted. It's more an intellectual deep
             | dive on an interesting concept. It's not advocating that
             | people ought to do this. To quote TFA:
             | 
             | > Carbon emissions are not the only worry. Because of the
             | chemicals added to plastic, burning it to make fuel creates
             | a lot of nasty air pollution. Nobody in their right mind
             | would propose a switch to cars fuelled by plastic waste.
             | However, it is instructive to examine the motives behind
             | this unanimous conclusion.
             | 
             | Low-Tech Magazine's niche is _low tech_ self-sufficiency,
             | which is the main talking point of the article. Here from
             | the first paragraph:
             | 
             | > During the Second World War, many motorized vehicles in
             | continental Europe were converted to drive on firewood. 1
             | That happened as a consequence of the rationing of fossil
             | fuels. Wood gas vehicles were a not-so-elegant alternative
             | to their petrol cousins, but their range was comparable to
             | today's electric vehicles. In Germany alone, around 500,000
             | wood gas cars, buses, and trucks were operated by the end
             | of WWII. An even more cumbersome alternative was the gas
             | bag vehicle.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | > It's unlikely that Schalkx will drive 12,000 km per
               | year, and so, ultimately, he will produce less pollution
               | than the drivers of more sustainable-looking cars that
               | face none of these problems.
               | 
               | > Somehow, the Dutch authorities, who are not known for
               | their permissivity, officially approved the car after
               | inspection. Schalkx drives tax-free and - thanks to his
               | car being an oldtimer - can enter low-emission zones,
               | where he parks alongside the latest electric SUV. Justice
               | is not yet out of this world.
               | 
               | To me this seems to be an overall endorsement of the
               | project as an environmentally friendly idea.
        
               | paulmd wrote:
               | Low-tech or traditional methods don't mean they're
               | inherently better for the climate or environment though.
               | The Victorian era coal smog was very low-tech and yet we
               | can probably agree that it would be a bad idea to return
               | to that.
               | 
               | like if they called it "trash-burning monthly" it
               | wouldn't be _surprising_ that you open the cover and find
               | that's exactly what's inside, but it's also not a good
               | thing to encourage even in a hobby sense, really. And
               | there is a lot of the world that has done some pretty
               | awful things environmentally for a very long time.
               | 
               | If it makes you feel better I have hobbies that are
               | environmental disasters too. I don't feel great about the
               | knowledge that mercury/chromium/selenium intensifier or
               | pyrocat exist, even plain old fixer isn't great (although
               | people will take it since it's full of silver and worth
               | recovering).
               | 
               | https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/mercury-
               | intensifier.74... (Mmm mercury II chloride, if you don't
               | have any in your medicine cabinet just pop over to the
               | barber and ask them for a scoop, very "traditional"!)
               | 
               | https://www.ebay.com/itm/324458861037
               | 
               | (In film, this will bind to the un-fixed silver and help
               | pull a little more in, or even strip the fixed silver and
               | re-precipitate another metallic salt instead. Obviously
               | takes a pretty aggressive reducing agent to bind to
               | precipitated noble metals, so more aggressive the action
               | the better it works... and those agents also love to bind
               | to your nerves. So it's pretty much literally "the better
               | it works the more poisonous". Mmm, organometallic
               | chemistry, isn't it grand?)
        
               | h0l0cube wrote:
               | > Low-tech or traditional methods don't mean they're
               | inherently better for the climate or environment though
               | 
               | How is this in contradiction with what I'm saying? To
               | quote my own post:
               | 
               | > Low-Tech Magazine's niche is low tech self-sufficiency
               | 
               | Neither I nor the writer of TFA think the venn diagram of
               | low-tech self-sufficiency and environmentalism isn't a
               | perfect circle, and that should be pretty obvious.
               | 
               | > it's also not a good thing to encourage even in a hobby
               | sense
               | 
               | That's not what TFA is doing. Do you really think there's
               | going to be any consequential amount of people taking
               | this up after reading the article? Maybe a few hackers
               | will think it's fun, but the article spends a lot of time
               | emphasizing how undesirable this idea is in practice.
        
           | akira2501 wrote:
           | > and all these disadvantages make him think twice before he
           | gets behind the wheel.
           | 
           | So.. it's a toy and not a tool. It tries to invest interest
           | around this mans childish ambitions, but it fails to produce
           | anything of lasting or shared value.
        
             | xyzzy123 wrote:
             | Think of it more like conceptual / performance art.
        
           | KennyBlanken wrote:
           | > The emissions of a small electric car like the Nissan Leaf
           | amount to 10.9 kg/100km in Europe, including the emissions of
           | electricity production.
           | 
           | Why are they measuring carbon impact per mile for
           | manufacture? Is this based off some assumed period of
           | ownership after which the car magically is useless and the
           | battery can't be recycled, etc?
        
       | dotancohen wrote:
       | The article suggests that the fuel is made completely on site (on
       | the roof of the vehicle) from discarded plastic chips from a
       | neighbor's business. But some numbers do not add up.
       | > Making 1 liter of diesel requires burning 1 kg of plastic,
       | which results in 2-2.7 kg of carbon emissions.
       | 
       | Does that number (1 kg) include the plastic consumed in the
       | burning process, whose heat is then used to define (opposite of
       | refine) the plastic back to liquid? How does 1 kg of plastic
       | contain 2 kg of carbon? Or is the O2 in CO2 so heavy that "carbon
       | emissions" weigh significantly more than the source hydrocarbon?
       | > Second, there is the combustion of diesel fuel while driving,
       | which emits 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide per liter.
       | 
       | Same question.
        
         | wlesieutre wrote:
         | The carbon atom has an atomic weight of 12, while each oxygen
         | is 16, so you have 32 weight of oxygen per 12 carbon.
         | 
         | The hydrogen in hydrocarbons on the other hand, doesn't weigh
         | much at all. Atomic weight of 1. But with a high school
         | knowledge of chemistry I couldn't tell you what all is in those
         | plastics.
        
         | bruce343434 wrote:
         | Atomic weight of C is ~12. Atomic weight of O is ~16.
         | 
         | C : CO2
         | 
         | 12 : (12+16+16)
         | 
         | 12 : 44
         | 
         | 1 : 3.666
         | 
         | so turning 1kg of pure C into pure CO2 by pulling O2 from the
         | surrounding air creates 3.666kg CO2
         | 
         | Plastic also contains some H (weight ~1). Depends on the kind
         | of plastic. Assuming water bottle plastic, AKA PET, AKA
         | Polyethylene terephthalate, Its molecular formula is
         | (C10H8O4)n.
         | 
         | So starting weight of 10x12+8x1+4x16=192, and we assume
         | complete burning so CO2 + H2O end products.
         | 
         | 1 C10H8O4 + 10 O2 = 10 CO2 + 4 H2O
         | 
         | 1x192 : 10x44
         | 
         | 192 : 440
         | 
         | 1 : 2.29
         | 
         | perfectly burning 1kg of PET produces 2.29kg of CO2
        
         | fatuna wrote:
         | Fair question! Carbon had an atomic weight of ~12, oxygen has
         | an atomic weight of ~16. So carbon is responsible for 12/44
         | part of the weight of CO2. If we assume plastic to be 80%
         | carbon, then 1kg of plastic would produce (0,8*44)/12~= 2,9 kg
         | of plastic. So probably plastic is less than 80% plastic :).
         | But then number makes sense, similarly for diesel.
        
         | pard68 wrote:
         | Oxygen in the air is the extra weight.
        
       | bdcravens wrote:
       | So he's basically just making diesel fuel, which could be done as
       | a separate process, and used in any diesel-compatible engine (I
       | presume)
       | 
       | > 1 kg of plastic gives 0.5 liters of diesel, so the fuel economy
       | is 7.14 liters per 100 km
       | 
       | This converts to about 33 MPG
       | 
       | https://convertermaniacs.com/liter-per-100-kilometers-to-mil...
        
         | dontlaugh wrote:
         | That's pretty miserable efficiency. Lots of diesel cars can do
         | as low as 3-4 l/100km.
        
           | systems_glitch wrote:
           | Indeed, our 2002 Jetta TDI has 300K miles on the clock and
           | still does 40-45 MPG highway.
        
             | rootusrootus wrote:
             | Is that with functioning emissions controls, or without?
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Those weren't affected by dieselgate
        
             | dontlaugh wrote:
             | My Peugeot 207 was doing up to 60 mpg (UK). Newer small
             | diesel cars beat that easily.
        
           | UniverseHacker wrote:
           | Incredibly - mind blowingly good for a full sized station
           | wagon from the 1980s... most vehicles this size were getting
           | 15mpg at the time. The 245 has massive storage area and with
           | the optional 3rd row seat can seat 7.
        
       | stere0 wrote:
       | I'm not a chemist, but isn't this an application of the Fischer
       | Tropsch process similar to coal to liquid and gas to liquid?
        
       | eterevsky wrote:
       | It's _much_ better to burning trash in special facilities, where
       | it is burnt down to CO2, rather to some kind of soot that will
       | pollute the atmosphere. It will also be more efficient in terms
       | of energy production.
        
         | tsimionescu wrote:
         | Better yet to bury it in a landfill and not deliberately
         | release CO2 at all.
        
       | MuffinFlavored wrote:
       | Are there metrics on how many `kg` of plastic waste required
       | input wise -> how many `l` of "diesel like liquid" output? how
       | many "kilometers per liter" is the car getting on the diesel /
       | how many "kilometers per kg of plastic"? Curious on
       | yield/waste/efficiency/etc.
        
       | Neil44 wrote:
       | How do you get 2.7kg of carbon by burning 1kg of plastic? Am I
       | thinking too simplistically about that? Also he's currently using
       | industrial plastic chips, high quality homogeneous material, if
       | you were using plastic garbage you then run into contaminants,
       | full bottles of whatever, labels, glues different types of
       | plastic - not all plastics will liqify etc etc etc. Well done for
       | the proof of concept though.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | When you burn it the oxygen gets bound to it so the CO2 weight
         | is higher.
         | 
         | It does sound like a lot though yes
         | 
         | Edit: Like bruce343434 said below it is right:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994147
        
       | yread wrote:
       | There is a video (in Dutch) https://www.autovisie.nl/video/uw-
       | garage/gijs-rijdt-met-zijn...
       | 
       | You can see how dirty the burning is producing soot-heavy smoke
       | when he drives it around Arnhem
        
       | SigmundA wrote:
       | In my area they burn garbage for electricity[1] which a lot of
       | the content will be plastics, they collect metals from the ash.
       | As mentioned it still releases carbon in to the atmosphere but
       | better than this setup since the emissions controls are much
       | better as they are with most power plants.
       | 
       | With an electric car you are not limited to any one fuel, whether
       | it be solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, nat gas, oil, coal or plastic
       | / garbage this is the big win decoupling fuel from transport.
       | 
       | 1. https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/
        
       | WalterBright wrote:
       | > Because of the chemicals added to plastic, burning it to make
       | fuel creates a lot of nasty air pollution.
       | 
       | Even a tiny whiff of burning plastic makes me nauseous for hours.
       | I want nothing to do with that. If I seal clothes in a plastic
       | tub for a few years, the clothes take on a plastic smell that
       | also makes me nauseous. It doesn't wash out, so those clothes get
       | thrown out. Long ago I got rid of all the dishes made of plastic.
       | Even plastic cups impart a plasticy taste to water.
        
       | jokoon wrote:
       | It's ridiculous what people will do to keep using their car
        
       | foul wrote:
       | Woodgas vehicles were enormously inefficient. Said that, rest of
       | the story is sick AF, he made a pyrolithic device all by himself.
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-14 23:01 UTC)