Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

blest.co.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 288 posts

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#221

Post by otikik »

didericis wrote: post #218
godelski wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it hard to add a source of hydrogen? In the images they have here it looks like there is a vat of water and it explicitly says it produces H2O and CO2 gas waste (though calls the CO2 harmless). That would imply there is a source of hydrogen here. (Not an expert, just legitimately curious so I can better spot snake oil)

https://youtu.be/Zmtc22uPLd4 I’m not a chemist/someone else can offer a more detailed explanation (just love the excuse to post that song), but with most of these kinds of things the energy and advanced equipment required to go in a theoretically plausible direction for a minuscule amount of yield is usually absurd. Including turning iron into gold. (I think it might theoretically be possible to do that at this point…

The way to turn iron to gold is ancient: smelt the iron, make a weapon with it, and use that to steal the gold from someone else.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#222

Post by jasonjayr »

Retric wrote: post #154
jasonjayr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most, if not all dryers vent to the outdoors. Some particles make it through the lint trap into the hot/humid air stream into the environment. Normal wear of the garments will shed micro particles from just rubbing up against them.

So using a dryer is better for the ocean than air drying, good to know.

Technically yes, if dryers can improve their filtration, and dryer owners can be trusted to maintain their filters ...

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#223

Post by csours »

yowlingcat wrote: post #213
Reason077 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waste-to-energy plants are designed to reach those high temperatures, amongst other measures, to minimise and prevent toxic emissions. They still produce a lot of CO2, though: plastic is still a fossil fuel. From a climate perspective, we’d be better to bury the stuff in the ground than to burn it. And ideally, we’d just produce a lot less plastic in the first place!

Are you suggesting to bury it in the ground so it can leach into groundwater and soil rather than even trying to capture and reuse the CO2? Are you serious or are you joking?

Digging a hole and lining it with clay and polymer, filling it with household waste, and then covering it with a polymer liner is significantly cheaper than what you are describing.

It's not great, there's no great solution, the problem is hard on multiple levels. If a solution made sense, people would already be doing it.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#224

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

arbitrage wrote: post #216
throwaway5959 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, why not just use hydrogen as a fuel? Or better yet, just use batteries.

I can't fuel my car with hydrogen.

And there we have it, the solution we've needed all along - dirigibles.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#225

Post by frinko »

HackOfAllTrades wrote: post #201

Why do people keep falling for this? This same fraud used to pop up only every 10 years. Now it's 5 or less. I'm a PhD chemist. Please consider this: While plastics and oil are both hydrocarbons they have this important difference. Liquid hydrocarbons have short carbon chains and lots of hydrogen. Plastics have very LONG carbon chains, usually with many double bonds, and very little hydrogen. That is why, when you he…

Thank you for shedding light on this.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#226

Post by whatshisface »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #214
godelski wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it hard to add a source of hydrogen? In the images they have here it looks like there is a vat of water and it explicitly says it produces H2O and CO2 gas waste (though calls the CO2 harmless). That would imply there is a source of hydrogen here. (Not an expert, just legitimately curious so I can better spot snake oil)

At that point, why not just use hydrogen as a fuel? Or better yet, just use batteries.

Hydrogen leaks through metals because it can diffuse through the lattice, and attaching it to carbon stops it from doing that.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#227

Post by askvictor »

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!

I'm getting to the point where I think plastic recycling was always a scam to make people use more plastics without any guilt. That said, putting plastics into landfill not such a bad thing; we've taken oil from the ground, made it into plastics, then putting it back in the ground. Better than burning it. There is a lot of space for landfill, and not very much oil. The problem is when it doesn't end up in landfill, but ends up in the sea. Which by virtue of there being more and more plastics (since they're guilt-free now) there is more and more of.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#228

Post by aliswe »

HackOfAllTrades wrote: post #201

Why do people keep falling for this? This same fraud used to pop up only every 10 years. Now it's 5 or less. I'm a PhD chemist. Please consider this: While plastics and oil are both hydrocarbons they have this important difference. Liquid hydrocarbons have short carbon chains and lots of hydrogen. Plastics have very LONG carbon chains, usually with many double bonds, and very little hydrogen. That is why, when you he…

I'm not calling you out, but please check these clips and comment.

I dont know anything about this so I appreciate the opportunity to learn.

https://youtu.be/njIYHtFmcSs https://youtu.be/TFuTCpCVSbM https://youtu.be/1STaZYZ-P1w etc

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#229

Post by mananaysiempre »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #214
godelski wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it hard to add a source of hydrogen? In the images they have here it looks like there is a vat of water and it explicitly says it produces H2O and CO2 gas waste (though calls the CO2 harmless). That would imply there is a source of hydrogen here. (Not an expert, just legitimately curious so I can better spot snake oil)

At that point, why not just use hydrogen as a fuel? Or better yet, just use batteries.

Hydrogen is extraordinarily annoying to store and transport. Oil is kind of annoying, but not “heavy cans of pressurized gas that leaks through metal walls anyway and is explosive in a wide range of air concentrations” annoying. Nobody has figured out a workable way to deal with this, though they might at some point.

It’s also not an accident electric cars are so heavy—gasoline or diesel fuel are fantastically energy-dense compared to almost anything else you might want to use, even accounting for the intricate engine you need to haul around to take advantage of them. Not to say that you shouldn’t try and use something else, just that it’s a very real problem.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#230

Post by _hypx »

HackOfAllTrades wrote: post #201

Why do people keep falling for this? This same fraud used to pop up only every 10 years. Now it's 5 or less. I'm a PhD chemist. Please consider this: While plastics and oil are both hydrocarbons they have this important difference. Liquid hydrocarbons have short carbon chains and lots of hydrogen. Plastics have very LONG carbon chains, usually with many double bonds, and very little hydrogen. That is why, when you he…

You can steam reform plastic and get hydrogen for that purpose. It will imply that you have to lose a percentage of your plastic input, but if it is just plastic waste then that is not a huge problem.
Post reply on HN