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Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

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Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#91

Post by RajT88 »

ozim wrote: post #5
LatteLazy wrote: post #4

Earlier 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..…

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.

Also makes sense in Japan (and Korea, and maybe other places I don't know about), where the populace is very mindful not just of making sure garbage ends up in a can, but as well separating it based on the type of garbage.

Contrast with the US, where people decide to save a few bucks a month by dumping their garbage bags along the side of the road, or tossing garbage out the window of their car.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#92

Post by hammock »

p886 wrote: post #16
profstasiak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you cook your dinner with gasoline?

Seed oils that are now widespread as cooking oils were originally used as machine lubricants.

Yes my point. They still are.

Soybean oil is used in a wide range of lubricant and functional fluids applications:

  Gear oils and lubes
  Chainsaw bar oil
  Compressor oil
  Two-cycle engine oil
  Metalworking oils and
  Wire rope, chain, and cable lubricants
  General purpose and penetrating lubricants
  Transformer and transmission line cooling fluids
  Greases - automotive, machinery, rail curve, track
  Food-grade, industrial, and elevator hydraulic fluids
https://www.stle.org/images/pdf/STLE_ORG/AM2019%20Presentati...

Obviously this is a backwards example (food-grade oil used for non-food applications), and my question was using this plastic oil for food applications.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#93

Post by danuker »

osigurdson wrote: post #67
_ea1k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still not as bad as kwh/hr. That one is showing up on some car UIs now.

Why can’t we just use the right unit for energy - Joule? A battery capacity should be stated in MJ / GJ.

An hour is a popular unit for me personally. I measure my work and plan my day in hours (since pretty much all clocks use hours, not kiloseconds).

I don't use seconds very much (with the exception of Unix epoch seconds, or a short experiment).

I can't divide by 3600 in my head. I can, however, multiply by 1. Therefore, Watt-seconds (AKA Joules) are not as useful to me as Watt-hours and kiloWatt-hours.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#94

Post by a13o »

profstasiak wrote: post #12
hammock wrote: post #11

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?

Truffle oil is 2,4-dithiapentane derived from petroleum, so if you like truffle fries you might not mind

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#95

Post by zucked »

PaulHoule wrote: post #40
profstasiak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you cook your dinner with gasoline?

My dad served in the army as a cook in Vietnam. He used gasoline stoves to cook dinner for the troops.

"White gas" used for cooking stoves (think Coleman stoves, laterns, etc) used to be unleaded, additive free gasoline. It's not gasoline now (according to wiki: cyclohexane, nonane, octane, heptane, and pentane.) Naptha also works in those stoves but doesn't last as long. Apparently you can still run the stoves on gasoline if you'd like.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#99

Post by kortex »

wheels wrote: post #3
quaintdev wrote: post #2

So what is wrong with this? I am assuming it only takes soft plastic but still why we don't see widespread use of it.

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 imagine it's easier to purify the oil and burn the oil with high efficiency, than to burn solid garbage and filter the flue gas.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#100

Post by ozim »

newyankee wrote: post #86
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.

The key may be economically transporting the waste plastic as feedstock. Guess it may be much more expensive. Even assuming 5 cents/ kwh of solar this makes economic sense as storage system otherwise. I presume in the future we have autonomous robots that clean the cities of plastic and feed it to such machines which run on surplus renewable energy

You still have people paying for their waste disposal, so I would assume transport cost should be covered by that.
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