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?
Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
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Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#12Everyone 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?
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#13If they do it via "pyrolyse" (burning plastic without oxygen) there is this Quantafuel [1] doing this in "large scale".
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#14Everyone 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?
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
Certainly, in some settings.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
> 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.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#16Everyone 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?
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
Seed oils that are now widespread as cooking oils were originally used as machine lubricants.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the oil it produced would be worth about £0.25 (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 £1 (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..…
When running on spare hydro, wind or solar power which cannot be accumulated or returned to grid, it can have some uses.
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.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#18Everyone 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?
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
In china, its common to cook with "gutter oil" which is sewage, filtered and refined. Humans are amazing.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
You could probably use it in a diesel engine. People filter used frying oil from restaurants and run their diesels on that.
Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?
In china, its common to cook with "gutter oil" which is sewage, filtered and refined. Humans are amazing.
It doesn’t seem to be common, but there seem to have been some scandals around that, and an increase in regulations. Really gross!