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Plastic to Oil – Produces 80% Oil
- quaintdev 4y agoSo what is wrong with this? I am assuming it only takes soft plastic but still why we don't see widespread use of it.
- wheels 4y agoI'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.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoOther than if you have a Mr Fusion you can’t run a car off of solid plastics. But, I assume some additional steps are required to make it usable. The site doesn’t detail the possible uses of the the oil, but generally liquids and solids can be used in different situations. The oil could also be used as lubricant rather than an energy source.
- naravara 4y agoI don't know if most households have enough use for lubricants to be able to consume a quantity equivalent to 80% of the volume of plastics they're disposing of. My door hinges and bike-chains can only be so smooth. Even if it was converting it into usable motor-oil (which I doubt it is) I don't think I could consume that much. I suppose if it's usable for a kerosine type of lamp maybe, but is it pure enough to not present respiratory issues? And why would I need a kerosine lamp?
- fnordpiglet 4y agoYeah I don’t think it’s the next Nespresso and they probably need to detail the use cases better. But I can see this useful in a machinist shop that might have a lot of waste plastic from packing materials etc.
- finnh 4y agoAirplanes run off kerosene, so that's a sizeable market if this fuel is good enough
- jandrese 4y agoNo chance the FAA lets people use homemade recycled plastic oil in their turbojet engines. Jet turbines are very tolerant of different fuels, but this is a bridge too far.
- jhoechtl 4y agoMany people still have ICE cars, you left that intentionally out?
- naravara 4y agoI mentioned motor oil
- jandrese 4y agoNo way I'm trusting oil made from random household waste plastic as the primary lubricant in my car engine. What are the lubricating properties? What are the breakdown characteristics? High temperature resilience? Presumably it would vary by batch. You are just begging for a seized engine.
- SigmundA 4y agoAn electric car can, in my area they burn garbage for electricity: https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/ https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/
- luxoramonrising 4y agoFlammable lubes are a big no no
- fnordpiglet 4y agoThey don’t detail much about the properties of the oil produced
- actionfromafar 4y agoAlso, plastics can contain all sorts of nasty toxic surprises. Better to burn it at a centralized location with proper filtering and treatment than having little batches or mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity.
- AuthorizedCust 4y ago> Better to burn it at a centralized location with proper filtering and treatment than having little batches or mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity. If we can assure that the output meets a standard should we burn it, then certainly we should be able to assure the output meets a standard should we refine/convert it.
- beanjuice 4y agoAnd the conversion of plastic into oil will have cost much more energy, producing the same pollution in the end.
- flavius29663 4y agoBut at least we save some landfill space. Also micro-plastics contamination is everywhere.
- AuthorizedCust 4y agoIn the USA, landfill space concerns are based on a hoax. Landfill space is a function of landfill development, and there’s no shortage of spaces to create landfills.
- flavius29663 4y agoI am not talking about running out of space in general. I am talking about taking a hill covered with trees or farms, and turning it into a hill of garbage. Surely you can see why I would prefer a natural hill? If you can burn it, there is no point in burring it. We're still taking a lot of stuff from underground and burn it for energy, why not burn the stuff we already have above ground?
- osigurdson 4y agoI don’t believe plastic burning is a widespread energy source.
- mrpopo 4y agoJapan and I believe Singapore burn most of their plastic in incinerators to generate electricity. Coincidentally they are also among the highest plastic waste producers per capita.
- throwaway2037 4y agoKorea, Taiwan, and Switzerland are similar.
- elil17 4y agoIt happens in waste-to-energy power plants (a.k.a garbage power plants). They can be a great way to get rid of waste but they require a lot of filtering of the exhaust to be safe. Adequate filtering is universal in some countries (like Sweden). In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than coal plants.
- cassepipe 4y agoDo you know if they have to reach a certain temperature ? I would think so because I assumme garbage produces a lot of fumes and gases that would better off burned for energy rather that ending in the air. On the other end I wonder what kind of temperature you can get with a dumpster fire
- fomine3 4y agoIncinerators in Japan must be above 800C to avoid generating toxic materials like dioxins. https://www.env.go.jp/content/900453393.pdf https://www.env.go.jp/content/900453393.pdf
- jhoechtl 4y ago> In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than coal plants. Source? With EPA being so rigid about diesel cars it would doubt that. Unless the whole regulation was about keeping german car manufacturers in cheque...
- kortex 4y agoI 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.
- jandrese 4y agoPresumably the noxious byproducts are released during the oil recycling process? It would explain where all of that missing mass went. But if this is the case you'll still need to filter the gas so there is little benefit.
- LatteLazy 4y agoI 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...
- ozim 4y agoStill might make sense when solar/wind is at peak to make it as a longer time storage? While still getting rid of plastic waste.
- actionfromafar 4y agoBut of what use is that mystery oil? All current petroluem products are highly quality controlled, both for lubrication and use in engines. You didn't get rid of the plastic, you converted it into a liquid which you must now dispose of safely. The only upside I see is that the plastic won't litter and turn into micro plastics in the ocean, but since it's already collected, then burn in a central plant ASAP IMHO.
- layer8 4y ago> But of what use is that mystery oil? You can probably power the next few runs of the machine with it.
- eloff 4y agoYou could probably use it in a diesel engine. People filter used frying oil from restaurants and run their diesels on that.
- actionfromafar 4y agoYes, you absolutely can, especially in an old diesel engine, they can run on all kinds of oil. But the engine might not fare well, depending on the properties of the oil, and the exhaust might contain "interesting" stuff like dioxins, depending on what was in the mystery plastic to begin with.
- headcanon 4y agoI would imagine that its not economically viable at scale. First, it might be too energy-intensive for the value of the end product, and second, the plastic you can get is still the plastic that you're able to separate from trash, which it might be better to just recycle it normally. These are just peanut-gallery guesses though, I don't know for sure.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe very small scale ensures it isn't economical. If thermal decomposition of plastic is to be worthwhile, it would be on the scale of oil refineries (which it would likely resemble.) It might be worthwhile to separate plastics now, not for conversion now, but to stockpile for later processing by this or other means. Just put the stuff in plastics-only landfills designed to ease later mining. Fixed carbon will be more valuable after fossil fuel use ends.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hammock 4y agoEveryone 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?
- profstasiak 4y agowould you cook your dinner with gasoline?
- kspacewalk2 4y agoCertainly, in some settings. https://www.amazon.com/Gasoline-Stove/s?k=Gasoline+Stove https://www.amazon.com/Gasoline-Stove/s?k=Gasoline+Stove
- p886 4y agoSeed oils that are now widespread as cooking oils were originally used as machine lubricants.
- TSiege 4y agoFascinating and makes sense. I've recently gone down a rabbit hole on the uses of linseed oil pre fossil fuels, but it's too gummy to ever be used as a lubricant. Do you know off hand which seed oils were used for lubricants?
- ElevenLathe 4y agoCastor oil was famously used as a lubricant in early WWI-era airplane engines. The fumes would blow in the pilot's face and are also a laxative.
- TSiege 4y agoHaha that's amazing! Hopefully the pilots weren't too phased. Thanks for sharing Did some further digging and it looks like it does have a tendency to gum. From wikipedia, "The viscosity of castor oil at 10 °C is 2,420 centipoise,[28] but it tends to form gums in a short time, so its usefulness is limited to engines that are regularly rebuilt, such as racing engines. Lubricant company Castrol took its name from castor oil." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Lubrication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_oil#Lubrication
- delijati 4y agoIf they do it via "pyrolyse" (burning plastic without oxygen) there is this Quantafuel [1] doing this in "large scale". [1] https://www.quantafuel.com/ https://www.quantafuel.com/
- userbinator 4y agoIt's pretty close to the same principles a petroleum refinery operates on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_catalytic_cracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_catalytic_cracking
- PaulHoule 4y agoOrdinary physical recycling of plastics (melt them down) runs into problems because plastics get mixed and mixed with contaminants and because the molecular chains get damaged and break down over time. There are two approaches to chemical recycling. One of them is to reverse the polymerization process and produce the monomer. This can be purified and used to make virgin quality plastic. The other one is like what you describe and produces outputs similar to a petrochemical factory that can be used to make all sorts of things. Both of the above processes are still terribly expensive and environmentally dirty but they are the subject of very active research and they might get practical someday.
- hinkley 4y ago3) use the best-effort stream of materials to manufacture bulk materials where a small quantity of chemicals that refuse to bond to each other doesn't compromise the product. Those plastic park benches and decking material products are using a lot of plastic to overcome statistics. But the perverse incentive is that a product that uses a lot of your material per consumer looks much better on paper than it is in real life. Instead of twenty shirts or fifty detergent bottles we made one bench, that goes to the landfill when it's done because it's not cradle-to-cradle.
- hinkley 4y agoSCWO (supercritical water oxidation) is pretty much only used for superfund projects because of the expense of the machinery. It basically burns materials in oxygenated water, turning everything into water, carbon dioxide, and salts/acids. The salts and acids are a problem that prevents commercial use, because it turns out corrosion, heat, and pressure are the 'pick two' of ceramic materials. Last I read someone was trying to work around this problem by building a heat and pressure optimized vessel and coating it with a corrosion (and?) resistant glazing. I imagine getting the thermal expansion for the two materials to be identical is a right difficult problem.
- userbinator 4y agoMore information here: https://blest.co.jp/eng/faq/ https://blest.co.jp/eng/faq/ This seems to be intended for PP/PE which is basically a long-chain hydrocarbon anyway, but does make up the bulk of plastic use. It seems to be a very stereotypically Japanese product.
- hinkley 4y agoThe current wisdom is that PP is one of the least problematic plastics wrt to leachate contaminating the contents. HDPE is also fairly well regarded. In theory LDPE is also considered 'food safe' but if you can smell the plasticizers evaporating off of LDPE (which I absolutely can) then what's it doing to your food? I read something about PE in the environment recently but I can't recall if it said it was the hardest to break down or the easiest. I'm thinking the former though, since I came away from that article feeling better about PP and worse about PE.
- userbinator 4y agobut if you can smell the plasticizers evaporating off of LDPE It's more likely you're smelling unpolymerised ethylene. LDPE itself doesn't require plasticisers --- it's already extremely flexible without them.
- stonemetal12 4y ago400g plastic becomes 286g of oil (less than 75%), what is the 80% in reference to?
- ubxe 4y agohttps://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/ https://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/
- georgyo 4y ago1kW/h for 3 hours or 3kw. 400g plastic to 286g oil. Seems extremely carbon negative.
- danuker 4y agoIt can't be carbon negative if you burn the resulting oil. The carbon in the atmosphere goes up. Ths technology is pointless. The carbon can be sequestered as plastic.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoBut they don't like doing that because it does break down over time and starts leeching into the soil underneath. Which can be caught and prevented, of course, but nobody wants to build a landfill like that. I too think it should be sequestered, ideally in fairly stable conditions; worst case, it stays there for the next thousand years and the plastic breaks down into whatever it does (entropy etc). But in a good case, they discover a means to effectively reuse, recycle or break down plastics, so that the sequestered plastic can be processed. But it's not economically viable, not when it's cheaper to export it AND get paid by counties and the government (in the form of subsidies) for the box-ticking exercise of separating it out and calling it recycled.
- lazide 4y agoHuh? Everyone already builds landfills like that. They have to be clay lined anyway and leachate collected for a number of reasons.
- pfdietz 4y ago> kW/h (tears hair out)
- Oxidation 4y agoMaybe the machinery takes 3 hours to spool up to generating 1kW?
- chpatrick 4y agoSurely it's still not good to put that plastic in the atmosphere though, especially while spending extra energy. If it can't be recycled the next best thing is to bury it.
- radicalbyte 4y agoIf we pump it back into the oil fields (and stop using oil!) then it is essentially a carbon credit. The cost of doing that would be an excellent basis for the cost of a carbon credit.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoIt would be a percentage of what was taken out though, given it takes energy to convert plastic back to oil; it would likely get mixed with other oil products instead so that the companies can cash in on government subsidies for using "green" technologies.
- elil17 4y agoWe could also just bury the plastic, like we do now. Most plastic cannot be decomposed by bacteria, so most of that carbon will be sequestered from the atmosphere.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoIn the waste hierarchy, burning plastic with energy recovery and gopf fikters comes after recycling and before well-managed landfill. This becomes less true as alternative non-fossil energy becomes more dominant though, since you're not displacing dirtier fossil fuels.
- smileysteve 4y agoWhat, no, burning it is surely better than digging up previously buried stuff to refine and burn. Only if we approach a 0 drilling world would it make sense to bury plastic instead of burn it.
- londons_explore 4y agoI am dubious of the photos that show coloured plastics turning into clear oil. Does this process really break down all the many types of dyes?
- sbaiddn 4y agoNo idea how this thing works but why wouldn't it destroy all "dyes"? It breaks every other bond, why not dye bonds? I'm also curious that the liquid is clear, though, because you'd think this thing creates a soup of organic chemicals each with different color responses.
- londons_explore 4y ago> No idea how this thing works I just have a suspicion that this thing doesn't work, and the claims on the website aren't real...
- nebula8804 4y agoWell this machine has been around for a decade or so I think Here is some organization in Alaska demonstrating the operation but like I said in my other comment in this thread, the tabletop unit is more of a demonstrator model that is meant for educational purposes and their goal is to upsell on the industrial units. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhvogn49riI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhvogn49riI
- sbaiddn 4y agoBreaking polymers down is a thing though. Not my area of expertise, but they try to make feedstock organic or of it. Lots of research to make it cheap and better control off the outputs. But I wouldn't expect a crystal clear liquid output. Again, not my area.
- bloomingeek 4y agoGreat, 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!
- sbaiddn 4y agoDon't recycle. If its going to get dumped anyway put your plastic recycling in the garbage. Then it'll end up in a nominally regulated local dump and not in a Vietnamese river. Btw anyone who has even a cursory understanding of polymer physics suspected that plastics recycling was a scam. The whole scheme was either to greenwash industry throwing the moral responsibility to the end users or to condition us to recycle when they finally figured out how to do it. For what it's worth, extracting energy out of plastic is probably best way to deal with it.
- londons_explore 4y agoYou forgot the third option... Grind it up, and put it in inappropriate places... Like "ooh, we can mix it into asphalt"... Mixing some material that you don't want and can be quite toxic into something you're gonna leave in the environment just seems like a bad idea... Let me think... When else did we do that? Oh yeah - when we mixed coal fly ash into bricks[1]! Everyone wants mercury poisoning from the bricks their houses were made from - and it was a very cheap way to dispose of otherwise hard to deal with toxic waste! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash_brick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash_brick
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoWhat 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.)
- sbaiddn 4y ago
- rcshubhadeep 4y agoIt is written in one of the pages - "As you look into the data you can understand our machine can produce high grade oil mixture of gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil and little heavy oil. The oil can be used as recycled fuel for electric power generator without refining" I am no expert, and so I have the question actually. How do we use that oil in reality?
- tastyfreeze 4y agoDistill it into fractions and use the fuel like normal.
- odiroot 4y agoThe obvious answer would be cracking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
- whatever1 4y agoCrude oil is much messier than this. Still we refine it just fine :)
- ezconnect 4y agoIt will definitely burn. Diesel heater for water and air is one application.
- LegitShady 4y agooil usually has mixtures of hydrocarbons like this. Refineries use processes like fractional distillation to separate the components so that they can be used separately, or processes like cracking are used which convert longer chain hydrocarbons into simpler hydrocarbons.
- marcosdumay 4y agoMany diesel engines can burn a mix of those (of course, depends on the ratios). Or you can refine it into the pure fuels. My question is, if it's aimed to power an electricity generator, why not just burn the plastic at a high temperature? (What I imagine there's no answer for, because it's what people actually do. They are probably using the generator only as a display application.)
- gmuslera 4y agoGreat, now instead of turning the 95% of all extracted oil into greenhouse gases, we now can turn the 99+%. That is efficiency.
- kemiller 4y agoWell one hopes this is an enabler of a more-closed loop process for plastics. But… yeah.
- Xylakant 4y agowe always could - burning the plastic always was an option, and effectively happens in a lot of places (incinerator). Recycling into oil would give us the option to use it as input to either new plastic or other hydrocarbon based products. Now, whether this works as advertised is an open question.
- koheripbal 4y agoThis is a very mature industry. I'm skeptical it's economical at all.
- Xylakant 4y agoIt's also an area where the economics are changing - renewable energy is cheap during peak hours. So if you can build a process that can essentially soak up that energy you could try and do arbitrage. Whether that's enough to make that economically viable depends on the capital investment required, but it's at least possible in the near future.
- soperj 4y agoThe alternative is polluting the entire planet with micro-plastics for a 5% savings in greenhouse gasses.
- hinkley 4y agoThis does nothing to prevent micro plastics. Micro plastics are plastics that have escaped into the environment, which by definitions means we are no longer collecting them for disposal or recycling. All this does is keep some recycling programs from shutting down, and most of those are collecting bulk #1 and #2 which as far as I’m aware are not the major source of micro plastic pollution. Patagonia has a fucked up plan of using recycled polyester in everything lately and I don’t see how nobody is noticing that a major source of urban micro plastics is going to be coming from dryer lint. Which means synthetics and dryers are a bad combo. I line dry all my exercise clothes, but most people don’t.
- manbitesdog 4y ago"This sounds too cool, let's check HN comments for the disappointment"
- ahmedk92 4y agoBefore looking, it will probably be more pollution.
- koheripbal 4y agoThere is a reason that portion of the crude oil was made into plastic, and not sold as oil or fuel to begin with.
- perrygeo 4y agoMy first thought was "what kind of oil?". It matters. The clean burning, energy dense stuff was turned into fuel from the start. The rest of it is barely fit for a cigarette lighter. But beyond that, not all plastics come from crude oil directly. Many plastics, especially baggies and consumer plastics of the type shown in these photos, come from liquids that are removed from natural gas. Either way, you're certainly dealing with a liquid hydrocarbon of inferior quality. And at the huge energy cost of having refined it twice. I'd be surprised if this provided any net-positive energy. And it's certainly a dirty burning fuel with low BTU per volume. Why not just burn the plastic directly at this point?
- leeoniya 4y agothere was an infuriating segment on the local news last night that single-use/disposable coffee cups (e.g. keurig) are somehow "greener" because they supposedly use water/energy more efficiently than "traditional" ways of making coffee. of course, zero mention of where these things end up after their 15 seconds of fame. https://wgnradio.com/the-business-of-food-with-steve-alexander/coffee-pods-or-old-school-drip-which-is-better-for-the-environment/ https://wgnradio.com/the-business-of-food-with-steve-alexand... it's like CO2 is the only impact to the environment that matters. you can always find greener ways to source the energy, but you're not going to find a lot of ways to reduce plastic trash.
- duffyjp 4y agoJapan imports almost all of its oil, so maybe it makes sense in that market though the scale seems impractical to me. * https://www.worldometers.info/oil/japan-oil/ https://www.worldometers.info/oil/japan-oil/
- ansible 4y agoSounds 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_World_Technologies
- dehrmann 4y agoI 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.
- ansible 4y agoYes. 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.
- hinkley 4y agoI believe they started on the wrong foot. They cheaped out on the welding process and so the whole system was losing pressure and stinky volatiles. They had to redo their entire plumbing and people still complained after they swore up and down that there were no more leaks. which might be improper detection or people are used to a smell and don’t believe it’s gone.
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- thepangolino 4y ago[dead]
- coding123 4y ago3.5kwh to run
- generalizations 4y agoI 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 than popsci. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave...
- Laaas 4y agoI'm surprised that people didn't replicate his work in countries that don't respect Western patents.
- koheripbal 4y agoBecause there is no way it was economical. This is no different than a startup founder talking about his new AI crypto fund. BS exists in every industry.
- elromulous 4y agoThose countries probably don't care about recycling.
- kulahan 4y agoIf you can find an economical way to recycle plastic, it would be an insanely lucrative business opportunity. It has nothing to do with their views on the environment.
- jp57 4y agoShouldn't it be almost out of patent by now?
- csours 4y agoJust 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 forgets to fill the system. Sure it's easy to add programming to work around this condition, but is it easy to integrate and test? Anyway, crude oil is very, very cheap, and very easy to integrate into a production process. Waste plastic in the recycling stream is dirty and heterogeneous in composition and size, which makes it hard to integrate into a production process. Not impossible, but more expensive, which means that no one will do it without outside compulsion (and maybe not even then).
- m3kw9 4y agoLove how the site ambiguate oil
- photochemsyn 4y agoSome issues: 1) Says it draws 1 kilowatt constantly and 'begins to produce oil in one hour', while also only holding about 1 kg max of plastic. How long does it take to finish processing the 1 kg of plastic into the 0.8 kg of oil? Is this a reasonable overall energy-return-on-energy-investment (and see #2 below, it will take additional energy). 2) If this is producing a typical crude oil, is further refining needed to create individually useful products? What's the average hydrocarbon length and the overall distribution of different lengths of hydrocarbons? Are there aromatic components of the oil (such as benzene, a known carcinogen)? 2) What kind of waste is leftover? Does it generate a polcyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-laden toxic glop, or what? How is this waste to be disposed?
- dr_orpheus 4y agoBelow the "spec table" they have an example run with household plastic waste. - 3.5 hours @ 1 kW (may be an overestimate of power since it says as a guide) - Converts 400g of plastic to 286g of oil, so with a "dirtier" source of plastic its a ~70% return. Also more data here [0] with ratios in the 60-90% range. [0] https://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/ https://blest.co.jp/eng/experimental-data/ Edit: On that page it also says "As you look into the data you can understand our machine can produce high grade oil mixture of gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil and little heavy oil. The oil can be used as recycled fuel for electric power generator without refining." The second sentence seems like a bit of a reach, that there would not be some intermediary step.
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- paulwilsondev 4y agoOne step closer to Mr. Fusion!
- pipeline_peak 4y agoIt would be nice if they listed safe use cases for oil from squished plastic… I couldn’t imagine you want this reaching smoke point. BRB drinking water derived from urine to wash down the bug protein bars I ate earlier. I’ll be sure to wipe later with 2 square inches of newspaper that I’ll later dispose in my apartment’s communal compost heap…protect the planet!
- dylan604 4y agowhat oil would you ever want to reach its smoke point?
- pipeline_peak 4y agoCooking oils when stir frying, obviously this isn't safe for that.
- toiletfuneral 4y ago[dead]
- nebula8804 4y agoWOW! super surprised to see Blest on here. From my understanding I believe these guys went bankrupt a few years back. Maybe they are back from the dead? This tabletop unit is more of a demonstration unit they don't really intend to sell. It is for educational purposes and really as a demonstrator for their large scale industrial units. This is why when you search for Blest Plastic to oil on Youtube you'll mostly find educational institutions demoing this unit and not much else. One of the original engineers is apparently an independent contractor now? He used to post a few Youtube videos of a similar unit to the tabletop version but he seems to have disappeared as well. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHLWZgFThQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHLWZgFThQs
- flakiness 4y agoFrom: https://www.youtube.com/@Plastic2oiltv/about https://www.youtube.com/@Plastic2oiltv/about > "Blest Co., Ltd. went bankrupt in 2017 and started a business as a freelance engineer. Currently, I am setting up and running a consulting company on plastic fuels." So I guess this is not Blest (which I heard first time.)
- flakiness 4y agoOh, I noticed the domain name being blest.co.jp. https://blest.co.jp/eng/company/ https://blest.co.jp/eng/company/ > INCORPORATED March , 2018 So someone bought it and keeps it running? Interesting.
- thomasjb 4y agoThis would be rather useful in remote locations which find themselves with surplus plastics (remote islands with no landfill options for example), surplus renewable electricity and big old diesel engines. Those are unusual circumstances, but they are out there, and if there were organisations willing to fund the electricity aspect, the issue of plastic litter could be reduced in many places (and that includes ghost nets and other seaborne plastic). The resulting oil could pay back some of the cost of production, and be sold at a discount to the heavy diesel engine users in the area, on the condition that they uprate their emissions equipment. This may or may not have helpful effects in local markets.
- lvxferre 4y agoI have a better idea: reduce plastic consumption. I know, I know, totally OC donut steel.
- bradjohnson 4y agoI'm all for it. How do we as consumers do that in a practical way?
- lvxferre 4y agoIt'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 unnecessary plastic. For example, where I live bakeries often put bread inside paper bags, and the paper bags inside plastic bags; so I usually tell the workers there "no need for the plastic bag". I'm still creating some garbage (the paper bag) but it's way less than I would otherwise. * Homemade alternatives for store-bought products. It doesn't even need to be the same product, as long as it fills the same role for you - like homemade fruit juice versus soda, homemade tomato sauce, or buying Parmesan in chunks and grating it instead of buing it pre-grated in small packages. You'll need to take your tastes into account, but some replacements might be even cheaper or better than what you're replacing. * Reusing containers so you need to buy less tupperwares. Like ice cream pots, soda bottles, even margarine pots. Where I live there are even jokes about how ice cream pots never contain ice cream, but cooked beans.
- bradjohnson 4y ago"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.
- zerop 4y agoWhat kind of Oil it generates? Where it can be used?
- HackOfAllTrades 4y agoWhy 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 heat plastic it decomposes into char -- as in charcoal. It is IMPOSSIBLE to produce oil, even theoretically, without adding a source of hydrogen. A few centuries ago these same fraudsters would be selling you a way to change Iron into Gold.
- overboard2 4y agoCould you potentially do it with steam and the right catalyst?
- cal85 4y agoInteresting, thanks. As someone with little understanding of chemistry, can you clarify why "adding a source of hydrogen" is not possible/practical?
- chii 4y agoFree elemental hydrogen isn't common. Most are stuck as water, or inside hydrocarbons in the first place (see natural gas), and using those sources basically defeats the purpose. So therefore, it would take more energy to free that hydrogen from water than the recovered output would give you - which is fine, as oil is a dense storage of energy, and current technology is geared towards using it. However, it makes more sense to directly utilize the electricity that is expended freeing hydrogen in the first place.
- para_parolu 4y agoThere are still usages where it can be useful like planes and ships. And some small portion of cars. Right?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- antisthenes 4y agoThis is like the Juicero of alchemy.
- hinkley 4y agoHere's some math: 3.5KWh rough estimate of power requirement (not including embodied energy of device or repairs). Oil contains 10,000 kWh per cubic meter (1 million ml). 10 million Wh/m^3 = 10 Wh/ml Device outputs 380ml of oil, so output is 3800 Wh/run. Depending on the fudge factors on the input power this device yields less than 1.1 units of oil per unit of electricity. Even if they increase the efficiency at scale, this device's entire value seems to be in in removing a waste product, not in generating an input stream. A device that can 'pull' hydrocarbons from the air might actually beat this on the grounds of efficiency for inputs.
- mbfg 4y agoisn't "Be-J" the tipoff?