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Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

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Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#281

Post by sbaiddn »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #72
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.)

Almost none. If you aren't sorting the plastic by type (the number in the package) it probably won't get done and will be routed to a landfill (or river) in Asia.

Big corporate consumers of plastic can recycle because they guarantee that its all one type of plastic (say a fisherman's nylon net). So recycled plastic does exist. But mostly of it isn't.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#282

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#283

Post by osigurdson »

_ea1k wrote: post #272
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.

I hear this occasionally, but what are the benefits relative to kwh?

It basically comes down to stating things in their simplest and most correct form. It is like using 75/25 to express the number 3. When expressing an energy value, use the right unit (Joule) not a derived unit multiplied by another quantity to get back to the original.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#284

Post by worik »

csours wrote: post #223
yowlingcat wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The solution is to not generate waste we cannot dispose of

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#285

Post by yowlingcat »

worik wrote: post #284
csours wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The solution is to not generate waste we cannot dispose of

I think this is the correct approach. No need to recycle what we do not generate. My only question is, how much legacy plastic would remain in the supply chain and what do we do with it?

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#286

Post by Schroedingersat »

andrewflnr wrote: post #274
cowpig wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iron (26) -> Lead (82) -> Gold (79) How does that work?

Ha, woops. I was just assuming Gold had higher atomic number. But I don't know, maybe a convenient positron emission decay path.

You smash a proton into it and knock a light atom nucleus off. Works every time about 2% of the time.

For the stuff that doesn't end up as gold you can just keep hitting it with neutrons until it's heavy enough to try again.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#287

Post by micropresident »

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…

What are you talking about? This works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

The carbon without hydrogen produced CO, and it is burned to produce CO2, and that is used to actually heat the mixture.

Re: Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil

#288

Post by bradjohnson »

lvxferre wrote: post #271
bradjohnson wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for it. How do we as consumers do that in a practical way?

It's all about small decisions. I'll list some examples but keep in mind that they're just examples. * Prefer markets that overall use less plastic, even if this might bring you a small inconvenience. For example if market A sells groceries in bulk (bring your own bag) and market B sells the same groceries in styrofoam trays, then you buy it in market A, even if it's a bit further from your home. * Actively refuse un…

"Unnecessary" plastic that you can avoid with small decisions only accounts for a small proportion of plastic waste. Product packaging often can't be avoided for most people and I don't find it particularly useful to shame consumers for what is largely out of their control.

> Prefer markets that overall use less plastic, even if this might bring you a small inconvenience.

Great. If you can. I live in Canada and over 90% of our grocery sales come from the largest 8 food retailer corporations. The majority of the stock has excessive plastic packaging. Even the vegetables are often shrink-wrapped or in sealed plastic bags.

> Actively refuse unnecessary plastic.

There's very little plastic that you have a choice about. Most people bring their own reusable bags because single-use plastic bags are banned in Canada. It's not enough.

> Homemade alternatives for store-bought products.

It's typically more expensive and more time consuming to do so. If you are not in an income bracket that you have to worry about meeting your bill payments, sure this is great. I jar a lot of my own stuff and I avoid soda anyway. Not everyone has the freedom (time + money + space) to pursue this.

> Reusing containers so you need to buy less tupperwares.

Sure. You can do that. For me I probably re-use 1 in 5 of any single-use containers that I buy and I haven't bought tupperware in years. It's kind of like trying to slow down a runaway train by blowing at it, though.

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