*eco

It's Mr. Fusion!

Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by Stingray.

Ok... this seems a little too good to be true.

First of all... how much electricity does the machine need to transform, say... 1 kg of plastic?

Secondly, if you melt 1kg of plastic, I don't believe that there isn't some form of leftover after the process. What could we do with that? I mean, it's not plastic anymore, so it can't be recycled.

But if this does what it's supposed to, in a cheap, efficient way, then it's quite amazing. But for people to start collecting plastic garbage and return it to a transformation plant, there would have to be some form of compensation. Let's say they made a huge industrial size version of this machine, to transform tons of plastic at a time. Who would be stupid enough to go pick plastic around and then give it for free to a company that would then make a profit selling oil?

How it COULD work, is people would deliver plastic to the company, and instead of being given money, they could be given X tokens for Y kilos of plastic, and those tokens could be used at a petrol station to refill your car for example.

I don't know... someone else's thoughts on this?

Anything that recycles plastic is a good thing -- whether it's re-used again as plastic or broken down like this to oil again. As long as we limit as much as possible using finite virgin resources to replace something that we just buried in a landfill that's a gain.

I think the reason this thing has potential is that some people will see it as more of an incentive to recycle plastic if they know it's going towards something that is valued more (oil) than just one of many possible products of oil (like an unglamorous plastic bag).

This is neat, but I do want to know the energy requirements in addition to the material requirements.

@EMPIRE

I basically figure that they'd get most of their plastic from places like the dump. People are throwing their plastic away already for no compensation. There could be something done city-wide to give a third type of garbage bin (Or fourth, in some cases). Recently in my town, everybody was given a small green bin for organic waste (paper, bones from food, etc.) Perhaps another could be distributed specifically for plastic products, and picked up on garbage day, and taken to one of the possible plants.

The rewards would basically pay for themselves, if this does what it says, then there would be significantly lowered gas prices, not to mention even if there IS some waste by-product, it's far less than the amount of plastic that would've gone in.

I'm going to do a bit more digging on this to see if I can find any answers to your energy questions, I'm curious about them now, too.

Aha!

"One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity."

source

*Promote for good measure.

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 5:49am PDT - promote requested by original submitter Shepppard.

So wait, this whole time we've been worried about all this non-biodegradable plastic, we could have just heated it up and passed it through some tap water? Color me a skeptic, but...

>> ^Shepppard:
"One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity."
source

this seems all kinds of bullshit to me
1 liter of water is 1kg. density of crude oil is about ~8/10th of water.
so this about 80% efficiency of conversion plastic into "oil" in materials itself.
"while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity" isn't a complete measure of the amount of energy.
amount of energy usage is measured in kilowatt/hour or Joules or even 'horse power'. just "1 kilowatt" doesn't tell anything.
so it's using 1 kilowatt of electricity during what period of time? per second? per minute? per day?

plus the whole conversion seem to be way too simple.
if you'll take a look at the bottom of most (any?) plastic container you'll see some symbols, they indicate how recyclable that plastic is. most plastic deteriorates after repeated recycling. so not all plastic is created equal. different types have different polymers which do not turn back into crude oil when heated.

>> ^terrestrialFish:

So wait, this whole time we've been worried about all this non-biodegradable plastic, we could have just heated it up and passed it through some tap water? Color me a skeptic, but...


I think the issue with non-degrading plastics has been the stuff blowing around uncollected. Animals get tangled in it, choke on it, or swallow it so that it takes up space in their stomach rather than actual food. No recycling process will help with that kinda thing.

Turning plastics into a fuel source certainly sounds feasible, but I don't know enough about this particular device to comment on whether it lives up to its description (the connection I'm on today doesn't like video for some reason).

I want one. ..two

I imagine melting and boiling a load of plastic requires a lot of heat over a long time. Even then, thermosetting polymers don't melt easy. I aint too clued up on the science of polymers, but I can't help thinking there is probably a good reason we don't recycle plastics like this, and I somewhat doubt its some oil lobby trying to make sure we can't all make our own black gold.

I've been looking for one of these to attach to the back of my DeLorean.

>> ^mxxcon:


"while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity" isn't a complete measure of the amount of energy.


One usually assumes a "kilowatt of electricity" means 1 kWh. If he doesn't, then it might be the first clue.

You'd probably be spending more energy to go back to a petroleum product than in their original manufacture, otherwise this would have already been done before. And not by just one bloke.

Hmmm, /strokes chin in skeptical reflection mode/, has anyone verified his claims? Sounds like garbage to me...

Definitely plausible, seems like this guy is focusing on the refinement. Working with plastic means that the end product is easier to refine, whereas other attempts in this field have worked with materials such as tyres and have to deal with the metal and other materials that exist. IMO cost is the big problem right now, energy requirements can sometimes make the final product more expensive than the original.

Could it use part of the extracted oil to generate the required heat ?

My guess is that the issue is what would we do with the oil? If we were just going to make plastic with it again, it's probably cheaper to recycle by conventional means. Since we are still making plastic with virgin oil anyway, I see no reason to spend more energy turning plastic back into oil only to spend energy making plastic again. You might as well just melt it and pour it back into a mold.

>> ^Deano:

Hmmm, /strokes chin in skeptical reflection mode/, has anyone verified his claims? Sounds like garbage to me...


lolpun.

>> ^bmacs27:

My guess is that the issue is what would we do with the oil? If we were just going to make plastic with it again, it's probably cheaper to recycle by conventional means. Since we are still making plastic with virgin oil anyway, I see no reason to spend more energy turning plastic back into oil only to spend energy making plastic again. You might as well just melt it and pour it back into a mold.


The plastic, once turned into oil, can be refined in to Gasoline, Diesel, and Kerosene.

Anyway, keep this up, I'm quite enjoying reading this discussion.

great sift shep

http://vimeo.com/groups/tokyo/videos/4129407
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/plastic-to-oil-fantastic/

more info^^^

>> ^EMPIRE:


First of all... how much electricity does the machine need to transform, say... 1 kg of plastic?


That's easy: 1.21 Gigawatts!

Saw the number "420 Celsius". That's 788 degrees Fahrenheit. Machine is using serious power. I'd lump this in with desalination plants; conversion can be done but at enormous costs.

>> ^Shepppard:

>> ^bmacs27:
My guess is that the issue is what would we do with the oil? If we were just going to make plastic with it again, it's probably cheaper to recycle by conventional means. Since we are still making plastic with virgin oil anyway, I see no reason to spend more energy turning plastic back into oil only to spend energy making plastic again. You might as well just melt it and pour it back into a mold.

The plastic, once turned into oil, can be refined in to Gasoline, Diesel, and Kerosene.
Anyway, keep this up, I'm quite enjoying reading this discussion.


But the plastic originally comes from oil... To turn it back into oil requires energy, which is typically the burning of other oil/petroleum products.

You'd surely end up with a net negative outcome from all this.

All you would need is one Airborne Wind Turbine attached to one of these.

Yay! Landfill and Oil problem solved.

>> ^joop:
But the plastic originally comes from oil... To turn it back into oil requires energy, which is typically the burning of other oil/petroleum products.

You'd surely end up with a net negative outcome from all this.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Saw the number "420 Celsius". That's 788 degrees Fahrenheit. Machine is using serious power. I'd lump this in with desalination plants; conversion can be done but at enormous costs.


Actually, that's the melting point of your typical water bong.

As someone with experience in the manufacture of various plastics:

AHEM. By looking on the bottom of different plastic containers, you'll notice the "recyclable" symbol made of three curved arrows forming a triangle, as well as a polymer code, such as PE, PC, HDPE, PP, PS, V, LDPE or PETE. These indicate the type of plastic used in the product. PE would be polyethylene, HDPE is High Density polyethylene, PC would be polycarbonate, PP for Polypropylene, Polystyrene, Vinyl/Poly vinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate.

The polyethelylenes and PP melt at lower temperatures (300-400 F)
PS melts higher at around 450 for a good liquid form and
PC melts the highest at 560-650 or higher.

So yeah, you're sucking a lot of juice to melt these - a lot more than you can pull from a few photovoltaics, anyway.