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Seed oils that are now widespread as cooking oils were originally used as machine lubricants.
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?
1kW/h for 3 hours or 3kw. 400g plastic to 286g oil. Seems extremely carbon negative.
Ths technology is pointless. The carbon can be sequestered as plastic.
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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.
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 p…
1kW/h for 3 hours or 3kw. 400g plastic to 286g oil. Seems extremely carbon negative.
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.
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/
It's pretty close to the same principles a petroleum refinery operates on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_catalytic_cracking
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.
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.
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.
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?
would you cook your dinner with gasoline?