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Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

bloomberg.com

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Re: Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

#2

Post by djsumdog »

I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8

The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it.

Re: Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

#4

Post by lotophage »

djsumdog wrote: post #2

I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing…

> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it

There are passive technologies that claim to be able to skim plastic from the ocean:

https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/

Re: Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

#5

Post by speedplane »

djsumdog wrote: post #2

I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing…

It goes further back then that. The 1980 Supreme Court patent case Chakrabarty v. Diamond was about oil eating bacteria that could be used to clean up oil spills. Not the same, but similar category. It was a very important case for patent law, but the technology was never commercially developed.

For the patent law nerds out there, it's a pretty great case to get acquainted with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty

Re: Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

#8

Post by aaron695 »

djsumdog wrote: post #2

I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing…

> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it.

I don't think this would be the idea.

I think by making it worth money to recycle the plastic it doesn't get into the oceans.

It's certainly not worthwhile trying to getting the existing plastic out of the oceans, this has been well covered by engineers.

Re: Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

#9

Post by usrusr »

speedplane wrote: post #6

As a tech product it's cool, but as a green project, I'd guess that increasing recycling programs would probably have a much larger and immediate effect.

Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there.

I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people ignoring the too good to be true test.

But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a world of difference in terms of funding. I don't see this ever really competing with conventional resource extraction while there is still a drop of crude in the ground, but as a trophy token, "plastic patch fuel" could make fundraising much easier.

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