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Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

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Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#71

Post by elil17 »

radicalbyte wrote: post #37
chpatrick wrote: post #28

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.

We could also just bury the plastic, like we do now. Most plastic cannot be decomposed by bacteria, so most of that carbon will be sequestered from the atmosphere.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#72

Post by ZeroGravitas »

bloomingeek wrote: post #48

Great, another reason I'm pissed off about plastic recycling! I've been collecting my plastic for as long as I can remember and recycling it, then they tell us only about 12% has EVER been recycled. Now we can break it down to get the oil back! A$$holes!

What percentage of plastic do you think is even collected? It's a weird stat to compare the household recycling of bottles and containers (which even in the US gets recycled at a non-trivial rate) and all plastic ever (lawn chairs, toys, complex mixed materials etc.)

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#74

Post by smileysteve »

chpatrick wrote: post #28

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.

What, no, burning it is surely better than digging up previously buried stuff to refine and burn.

Only if we approach a 0 drilling world would it make sense to bury plastic instead of burn it.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#76

Post by flavius29663 »

beanjuice wrote: post #45
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And the conversion of plastic into oil will have cost much more energy, producing the same pollution in the end.

But at least we save some landfill space. Also micro-plastics contamination is everywhere.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#77

Post by Xylakant »

gmuslera wrote: post #73

Great, now instead of turning the 95% of all extracted oil into greenhouse gases, we now can turn the 99+%. That is efficiency.

we always could - burning the plastic always was an option, and effectively happens in a lot of places (incinerator). Recycling into oil would give us the option to use it as input to either new plastic or other hydrocarbon based products.

Now, whether this works as advertised is an open question.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#78

Post by acidioxide »

osigurdson wrote: post #60
wheels wrote: post #3

Earlier 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.

I don’t believe plastic burning is a widespread energy source.

In my city there is an incineration plant which produces about 94 GWh of electricity a year, covering 11% of city's needs.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#79

Post by cassepipe »

elil17 wrote: post #69
osigurdson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe plastic burning is a widespread energy source.

It happens in waste-to-energy power plants (a.k.a garbage power plants). They can be a great way to get rid of waste but they require a lot of filtering of the exhaust to be safe. Adequate filtering is universal in some countries (like Sweden). In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than coal plants.

Do you know if they have to reach a certain temperature ? I would think so because I assumme garbage produces a lot of fumes and gases that would better off burned for energy rather that ending in the air. On the other end I wonder what kind of temperature you can get with a dumpster fire

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#80

Post by layer8 »

actionfromafar wrote: post #10
ozim wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

> But of what use is that mystery oil?

You can probably power the next few runs of the machine with it.

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