7 ms·

Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

169 points by endswapper 9y ago

djsumdog 9y ago
I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it.
- lotophage 9y ago
  > I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it There are passive technologies that claim to be able to skim plastic from the ocean: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/
- speedplane 9y ago
  It goes further back then that. The 1980 Supreme Court patent case Chakrabarty v. Diamond was about oil eating bacteria that could be used to clean up oil spills. Not the same, but similar category. It was a very important case for patent law, but the technology was never commercially developed. For the patent law nerds out there, it's a pretty great case to get acquainted with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty
- aaron695 9y ago
  > I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it. I don't think this would be the idea. I think by making it worth money to recycle the plastic it doesn't get into the oceans. It's certainly not worthwhile trying to getting the existing plastic out of the oceans, this has been well covered by engineers.
  - Double_a_92 9y ago
    You don't even have to recycle it. Burning it for heat energy is enough. Most plastic only produces water and co2 when burned...
    - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
      Are you sure about that? As a younger person I burned a few samples of various things called 'plastic' and the fumes sure smelled like maybe I should be sterile by now.
      - msl 9y ago
        Plastics tend to consists of carbon and hydrogen chains. See for example polycarbonate [1], polyetene [2] and ABS [3] (contains nitrogen). They might however contain all sorts of additives. In order to produce just water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen the burning must be carefully controlled [4] - in your experiment the burning was probably not complete, which explains the fumes (that might have been carcinogenic [4]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styrene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plastics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plasti...
        scq 9y ago
        You generally don't want to burn halogenated plastics like PVC though. As I understand it that will release highly toxic dioxins (which cause cancer and birth defects among other things) unless they are incinerated at high temperatures.
        pjc50 9y ago
        I don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct - incineration of plastics is needs to be done at high temperatures to avoid this problem.
- roryisok 9y ago
  > I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it. Surely it could just be solar powered? Autonomous even?
- mthmohan 9y ago
  There are natural "gyres" in the oceans that collect garbage - see this link for the "Great Pacific garbage patch" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch). It's about the size of Texas and has a significant amount of plastic in it, although of smaller sizes. That would seem to be a great place to focus these collection and conversion efforts.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Except even in those places the density of plastic is very low. > 200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch. > 4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch It's a serious problem, but it's one that requires people to stop using so much plastic; to make sure they re-use plastic; and to make sure that plastics are recycled after use. Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem.
    - snarf21 9y ago
      Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem. So much this and I don't know that we really have an answer to fix this. This micro things are toxic to the entire aquatic ecosystem.
      - kwhitefoot 9y ago
        Part of the answer is simply to stop using non-biodegradable stuff in cosmetics. It isn't difficult to do. All that is needed is an incentive like making inclusion of plastic micro-beads illegal. Isn't California considering doing that?
        snarf21 9y ago
        Wow, that is encouraging. I hope that is true and gets passed. It could mean the end of yoga pants (they are good and bad) so I'm not sure how I feel about this. :)
Gatsky 9y ago
No mention of the carbon footprint of this thing.
- DamonHD 9y ago
  In principle negative by one measure since you are recovering energy (embedded in the outputs, possibly to then be used as fuel) if done well.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  If it runs on electricity, the carbon footprint will vary wildly with where the power comes from.
speedplane 9y ago
As a tech product it's cool, but as a green project, I'd guess that increasing recycling programs would probably have a much larger and immediate effect.
- usrusr 9y ago
  Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there. I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people ignoring the too good to be true test. But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a world of difference in terms of funding. I don't see this ever really competing with conventional resource extraction while there is still a drop of crude in the ground, but as a trophy token, "plastic patch fuel" could make fundraising much easier.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    > Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there. Every day, we are putting tons of waste into the ocean. With better recycling/avoidance programs, we may reduce that by 20%, greatly reducing the amount of waste we put into the ocean each year. I don't know the details of this tech, but it could remove far less than that same 20% reduction.
abhiyerra 9y ago
There is another company that is also working on this in the Bay Area. http://www.resynergi.com http://www.resynergi.com
Double_a_92 9y ago
If that would work profitabely, why not use it for regular trash? I guess it collects the plastic, but the oi transformation is just a gimmick to get publicity.
ReligiousFlames 9y ago
In VICE HBO Season 5 Ep 7 "Plastic Oceans," Jeanette Garcia, a PhD polymer science researcher at IBM's Almaden Bernal facility in San Jose, discussed chemical recycling of plastic. http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and-plastic-oceans/index.html http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and... (PS: I went to a dark matter conference at that enormous facility in the mid-90's and was offered a job but couldn't get a work permit being 15 requiring parental and school approvals. Bernal Road is also an awesome, steep road bike route.)
userbinator 9y ago
I can see this working very well for plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene (which fortunately make up the majority of the stuff floating in the oceans) which are essentially long-chain hydrocarbons with nothing but H and C, but I wonder how it would handle fluorinated and chlorinated plastics (PTFE, PVC).
omginternets 9y ago
>Turning plastic to oil [...] saving oceans The phrase "robbing Peter to pay Paul" comes to mind.
ajdlinux 9y ago
There's an Australian company that's trying to build a plastics-to-diesel plant in my city, but is facing a lot of local opposition due to pollution and safety concerns - a government health review panel has basically suspended the project until they can provide more evidence of safety. Will be interesting to watch. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-to-prove-safety-of-a-plastictofuel-plant-for-hume-20170509-gw0oa6.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-to-p... http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-panel-slams-proposed-hume-plastics-plant-20170503-gvy4no.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-panel-s...
chicob 9y ago
All carbon that comes from fossil sources should be avoided. This is only a good idea if it prevents further extraction of oil or coal. Otherwise we will just be adding more extra carbon to the carbon cycle, by dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
- dotancohen 9y ago
  In fact, having the carbon stored in the garbage patch is better for the environment (and the organisms that depend on a stable environment) than burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere.
  - technofiend 9y ago
    You don't want to burn and release, that's true, but you also don't want the plastic in the food chain. So you need some sort of way to compress and store the co2 until it can be sequestered.
    - chicob 9y ago
      Perhaps making plastic waste ingots when the recyclability is too low to be profitable and then burying large volumes of plastic this way.
endswapper 9y ago
Plastic-to-diesel plant set for Nova Scotia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390
thriftwy 9y ago
Before long we're going to campaign protecting the unique ecosystem that arose on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Patch is shrinking, we will say, due to ongoing cleaning/mining operations, and its endemic creatures are struggling without their home.
- graphitezepp 9y ago
  This idea feeds my current existential crisis nicely.
- WhoBeI 9y ago
  :) I wonder if, given time, an organism will evolve to make use of the plastic. Currently it's an untapped source of energy floating around the oceans and nature is really clever in finding ways to tap energy.
easilyBored 9y ago
If there was a way to really do it, I would not mind a x% tax on items that use plastic. Plastics make our life easier, much easier, so we can afford to pa x% more to safely recycle it. The money would be going to getting rid of it...not pork projects or paying for $400,000 pensions for civil servants.
- endswapper 9y ago
  I think we could avoid an actual tax with an effective tax. Container deposits such as bottles and cans have proven to be effective. It's worth exploring whether expanding the concept to cover materials in general would yield similar benefits. It wouldn't have to cost consumers anything more and it provides an incentive for the consumer to take on more responsibility for material and environmental stewardship.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    In Norway we have variations on systems like this for tyres, electronic equipment and so on. Generally the manufacturer or importer pays into a fund that is supposed to pay for recycling of the product once it is scrapped. In addition shops that sell electronic goods have to accept scrap electronic goods (anyone's not just what they sold) for recycling. Petrol stations have public bins for recycling containers that contained toxic chemicals like screen wash, antifreeze, and oil. Really it all just comes down to political will.
loki22 9y ago
While generating fuel from plastic is nice, the value is really low, and the carbon goes back in the environment. The oil that comes from catalytic pyrolysis also contains some oxidation products that are nasty smelling and of questionable toxicity. Even better is to simply recycle for use in some other application. The cost of plastic monomers is typically higher than fuel. The holy grail will be to get monomers back to generate pristine polymer back!

169 points by endswapper 9y ago

I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one from a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8 The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it.

lotophage 9y ago
> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it There are passive technologies that claim to be able to skim plastic from the ocean: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/
speedplane 9y ago
It goes further back then that. The 1980 Supreme Court patent case Chakrabarty v. Diamond was about oil eating bacteria that could be used to clean up oil spills. Not the same, but similar category. It was a very important case for patent law, but the technology was never commercially developed. For the patent law nerds out there, it's a pretty great case to get acquainted with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Chakrabarty
aaron695 9y ago
> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it. I don't think this would be the idea. I think by making it worth money to recycle the plastic it doesn't get into the oceans. It's certainly not worthwhile trying to getting the existing plastic out of the oceans, this has been well covered by engineers.
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  You don't even have to recycle it. Burning it for heat energy is enough. Most plastic only produces water and co2 when burned...
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Are you sure about that? As a younger person I burned a few samples of various things called 'plastic' and the fumes sure smelled like maybe I should be sterile by now.
    - msl 9y ago
      Plastics tend to consists of carbon and hydrogen chains. See for example polycarbonate [1], polyetene [2] and ABS [3] (contains nitrogen). They might however contain all sorts of additives. In order to produce just water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen the burning must be carefully controlled [4] - in your experiment the burning was probably not complete, which explains the fumes (that might have been carcinogenic [4]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styrene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plastics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plasti...
      - scq 9y ago
        You generally don't want to burn halogenated plastics like PVC though. As I understand it that will release highly toxic dioxins (which cause cancer and birth defects among other things) unless they are incinerated at high temperatures.
        pjc50 9y ago
        I don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct - incineration of plastics is needs to be done at high temperatures to avoid this problem.
roryisok 9y ago
> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it. Surely it could just be solar powered? Autonomous even?
mthmohan 9y ago
There are natural "gyres" in the oceans that collect garbage - see this link for the "Great Pacific garbage patch" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch). It's about the size of Texas and has a significant amount of plastic in it, although of smaller sizes. That would seem to be a great place to focus these collection and conversion efforts.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Except even in those places the density of plastic is very low. > 200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch. > 4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch It's a serious problem, but it's one that requires people to stop using so much plastic; to make sure they re-use plastic; and to make sure that plastics are recycled after use. Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem.
  - snarf21 9y ago
    Microbeads in cosmetics and microfibres from clothing are a huge problem. So much this and I don't know that we really have an answer to fix this. This micro things are toxic to the entire aquatic ecosystem.
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      Part of the answer is simply to stop using non-biodegradable stuff in cosmetics. It isn't difficult to do. All that is needed is an incentive like making inclusion of plastic micro-beads illegal. Isn't California considering doing that?
      - snarf21 9y ago
        Wow, that is encouraging. I hope that is true and gets passed. It could mean the end of yoga pants (they are good and bad) so I'm not sure how I feel about this. :)

Gatsky 9y ago

No mention of the carbon footprint of this thing.

DamonHD 9y ago
In principle negative by one measure since you are recovering energy (embedded in the outputs, possibly to then be used as fuel) if done well.
roywiggins 9y ago
If it runs on electricity, the carbon footprint will vary wildly with where the power comes from.

speedplane 9y ago

As a tech product it's cool, but as a green project, I'd guess that increasing recycling programs would probably have a much larger and immediate effect.

usrusr 9y ago
Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there. I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people ignoring the too good to be true test. But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a world of difference in terms of funding. I don't see this ever really competing with conventional resource extraction while there is still a drop of crude in the ground, but as a trophy token, "plastic patch fuel" could make fundraising much easier.
- speedplane 9y ago
  > Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills, but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there. Every day, we are putting tons of waste into the ocean. With better recycling/avoidance programs, we may reduce that by 20%, greatly reducing the amount of waste we put into the ocean each year. I don't know the details of this tech, but it could remove far less than that same 20% reduction.

abhiyerra 9y ago

There is another company that is also working on this in the Bay Area. http://www.resynergi.com http://www.resynergi.com

Double_a_92 9y ago

If that would work profitabely, why not use it for regular trash? I guess it collects the plastic, but the oi transformation is just a gimmick to get publicity.

ReligiousFlames 9y ago

In VICE HBO Season 5 Ep 7 "Plastic Oceans," Jeanette Garcia, a PhD polymer science researcher at IBM's Almaden Bernal facility in San Jose, discussed chemical recycling of plastic. http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and-plastic-oceans/index.html http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and... (PS: I went to a dark matter conference at that enormous facility in the mid-90's and was offered a job but couldn't get a work permit being 15 requiring parental and school approvals. Bernal Road is also an awesome, steep road bike route.)

userbinator 9y ago

I can see this working very well for plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene (which fortunately make up the majority of the stuff floating in the oceans) which are essentially long-chain hydrocarbons with nothing but H and C, but I wonder how it would handle fluorinated and chlorinated plastics (PTFE, PVC).

omginternets 9y ago

>Turning plastic to oil [...] saving oceans The phrase "robbing Peter to pay Paul" comes to mind.

ajdlinux 9y ago

There's an Australian company that's trying to build a plastics-to-diesel plant in my city, but is facing a lot of local opposition due to pollution and safety concerns - a government health review panel has basically suspended the project until they can provide more evidence of safety. Will be interesting to watch. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-to-prove-safety-of-a-plastictofuel-plant-for-hume-20170509-gw0oa6.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-to-p... http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-panel-slams-proposed-hume-plastics-plant-20170503-gvy4no.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-panel-s...

chicob 9y ago

All carbon that comes from fossil sources should be avoided. This is only a good idea if it prevents further extraction of oil or coal. Otherwise we will just be adding more extra carbon to the carbon cycle, by dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

dotancohen 9y ago
In fact, having the carbon stored in the garbage patch is better for the environment (and the organisms that depend on a stable environment) than burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere.
- technofiend 9y ago
  You don't want to burn and release, that's true, but you also don't want the plastic in the food chain. So you need some sort of way to compress and store the co2 until it can be sequestered.
  - chicob 9y ago
    Perhaps making plastic waste ingots when the recyclability is too low to be profitable and then burying large volumes of plastic this way.

endswapper 9y ago

Plastic-to-diesel plant set for Nova Scotia - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390

thriftwy 9y ago

Before long we're going to campaign protecting the unique ecosystem that arose on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Patch is shrinking, we will say, due to ongoing cleaning/mining operations, and its endemic creatures are struggling without their home.

graphitezepp 9y ago
This idea feeds my current existential crisis nicely.
WhoBeI 9y ago
:) I wonder if, given time, an organism will evolve to make use of the plastic. Currently it's an untapped source of energy floating around the oceans and nature is really clever in finding ways to tap energy.

easilyBored 9y ago

If there was a way to really do it, I would not mind a x% tax on items that use plastic. Plastics make our life easier, much easier, so we can afford to pa x% more to safely recycle it. The money would be going to getting rid of it...not pork projects or paying for $400,000 pensions for civil servants.

endswapper 9y ago
I think we could avoid an actual tax with an effective tax. Container deposits such as bottles and cans have proven to be effective. It's worth exploring whether expanding the concept to cover materials in general would yield similar benefits. It wouldn't have to cost consumers anything more and it provides an incentive for the consumer to take on more responsibility for material and environmental stewardship.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  In Norway we have variations on systems like this for tyres, electronic equipment and so on. Generally the manufacturer or importer pays into a fund that is supposed to pay for recycling of the product once it is scrapped. In addition shops that sell electronic goods have to accept scrap electronic goods (anyone's not just what they sold) for recycling. Petrol stations have public bins for recycling containers that contained toxic chemicals like screen wash, antifreeze, and oil. Really it all just comes down to political will.

loki22 9y ago

While generating fuel from plastic is nice, the value is really low, and the carbon goes back in the environment. The oil that comes from catalytic pyrolysis also contains some oxidation products that are nasty smelling and of questionable toxicity. Even better is to simply recycle for use in some other application. The cost of plastic monomers is typically higher than fuel. The holy grail will be to get monomers back to generate pristine polymer back!