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Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

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Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#171

Post by osigurdson »

danuker wrote: post #93
osigurdson wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Natural gas is consumer priced in GJ and seems to work fine. Eventually we would just develop and intuition about number of K/M/G J in various battery sizes without the complex/ugly kwh unit.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#172

Post by anonymouse008 »

generalizations wrote: post #109

I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break even. He was converting tires and waste plastic. Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random company and blackholed. Edit: found a source. Better t…

Was it this company by chance?

https://www.qualitystocks.com/global-resource-corporation-in...

I've been looking for a 'real machine' in the wild for some time now - have yet to see one.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#173

Post by generalizations »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #172
generalizations wrote: post #109

I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break even. He was converting tires and waste plastic. Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random company and blackholed. Edit: found a source. Better t…

Was it this company by chance? https://www.qualitystocks.com/global-resource-corporation-in... I've been looking for a 'real machine' in the wild for some time now - have yet to see one.

Yup, that's the one. I think the tech got blackholed pretty effectively. https://archive.is/20120908120121/http://www.popsci.com/pops...

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#174

Post by notinfuriated »

generalizations wrote: post #109

I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break even. He was converting tires and waste plastic. Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random company and blackholed. Edit: found a source. Better t…

Possibly a dumb question, but how much plastic exists in tires? I figured they were mostly natural rubber. Naturally, that must be outdated.

From my own naive Google search on "how much plastic in the average tire", I see https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires... says, highlighted by goog:

> By 1931 the U.S. chemical company DuPont had industrialized the manufacturing of synthetic rubber. Today tires consist of about 19 percent natural rubber and 24 percent synthetic rubber, which is a plastic polymer.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#175

Post by generalizations »

csours wrote: post #164
generalizations wrote: post #109

I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break even. He was converting tires and waste plastic. Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random company and blackholed. Edit: found a source. Better t…

Just like the "water carburetor" and other miracles that never materialized, the problem is that the alternative is cheaper and simpler (which means cheaper). It doesn't sound expensive to add water injection to an internal combustion engine, until you have to make it work in production, with end users. YOU can make it work, because you are motivated, but what about the guy who buys it because it's cool and then forg…

Found some sources. See other comments.

> the alternative is cheaper and simpler

What's interesting is that it seems like the microwave version was the cheaper and simpler alternative. And the engineering problems were apparently solved, since they were building the product for their first deal, and were demoing the tech to the popsci reporter who visited.

> Back at the shop, Pringle is still zapping new materials. A sample labeled “bituminous coal” goes in and, 15 seconds later, Pringle ignites the resulting gas. “You see,” he says, “why they might want to kill me.”

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#176

Post by generalizations »

notinfuriated wrote: post #174
generalizations wrote: post #109

I remember nearly two decades ago a PopSci article about some guy who figured out how to use microwaves to convert plastic (any hydrocarbon) into oil and natural gas. More than enough to break even. He was converting tires and waste plastic. Nothing ever came of it - IIRC, ownership disputes with the partner, and eventually the patent got purchased by some random company and blackholed. Edit: found a source. Better t…

Possibly a dumb question, but how much plastic exists in tires? I figured they were mostly natural rubber. Naturally, that must be outdated. From my own naive Google search on "how much plastic in the average tire", I see https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/tires... says, highlighted by goog: > By 1931 the U.S. chemical company DuPont had industrialized the manufacturing of synthetic rubber. Today…

Interesting. Synthetic rubber is still just hydrocarbons, so it would get converted back to oil/natgas just the same as the rest.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#177

Post by ac29 »

lesuorac wrote: post #114
jnovek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landfills amortize the carbon emissions. Keeping the plastic's carbon temporarily sequestered in a landfill puts it somewhere other than the atmosphere. Eventually we'll have to do something with all that carbon, but we're better off burying it until we get a better handle on emissions in general.

You can still burry the soot after you burned the plastic.

Most of the carbon is going to end up as CO2 in the air, though.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#178

Post by hunter2_ »

einpoklum wrote: post #150
Xylakant wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're worried about microplastics from drying your patagonia fleece in the dryer, worry about other things first. Car tires get ground up into microplastic and estimates range between 10 and 28% of the total microplastic pollution in the oceans [1]. And that's not surprising - the weight loss of a single tire over its lifetime likely exceeds the entire weight of your fleece jacket. Drive less car miles before wor…

I'm wondering - how much microplastics come from _bicycle_ tires? I mean, surely it's a lot less, but how much less? Say, per bike km ridden?

For cars and bikes alike, it all comes down to how much work the tires are doing, which is to say, how much hard acceleration and hard braking occurs, especially to the point of losing traction despite grippy conditions (burnout/skid), in conjunction with how much mass is being moved.

E-bikes and e-scooters are going to be way worse than human power, per distance, because of the quicker acceleration/braking. My FWD scooter is always slipping on uphill climbs, but my RWD bike doesn't because the weight is shifted appropriately.

Lots of considerations.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#179

Post by [deleted] »

generalizations wrote: post #175
csours wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the "water carburetor" and other miracles that never materialized, the problem is that the alternative is cheaper and simpler (which means cheaper). It doesn't sound expensive to add water injection to an internal combustion engine, until you have to make it work in production, with end users. YOU can make it work, because you are motivated, but what about the guy who buys it because it's cool and then forg…

Found some sources. See other comments. > the alternative is cheaper and simpler What's interesting is that it seems like the microwave version was the cheaper and simpler alternative. And the engineering problems were apparently solved, since they were building the product for their first deal, and were demoing the tech to the popsci reporter who visited. > Back at the shop, Pringle is still zapping new materials. A…

[deleted]

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#180

Post by ansible »

dehrmann wrote: post #170
ansible wrote: post #85

Sounds similar to the thermal depolymerization [1] developed by companies like Changing World Technologies. [2] That technology seems very promising, but they ran into a number of difficulties in practice. They build a plant to process turkey leftovers in Missouri, but the plant wasn't profitable, and the community complained about the smell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization [2] https://en.w…

I went down this rabbit hole for a bit. The only obvious issue seems to be that burying (or burning if you're Swedish) plastic is really, really cheap. For the turkey waste, we're already good at rendering animal remains, so there just isn't a need.

Yes.

For CWT in specific, the original articles (in popular science magazines like Discover or PopSci) described the desire to process various kinds of plastics, much like the linked article talks about. The methane would be tapped off early, and used the power the production process, with the end product being various kinds of oils.

It wasn't clear why CWT decided to pivot to processing turkey waste. They were hamstrung by fluctuating prices for the waste stream, that (IIRC) could be used as an input for fertilizer production.

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