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Dutch designer drives his car on the plastic waste he collects
- yreg 3y agoFuel consumption: 14 kg of plastic per 100 km, but to be fair it's a Volvo 240 with a tiny refinery mounted on the roof. Why don't the fuel producers do this? Is it less efficient than recycling the waste?
- eptcyka 3y agoWe kind of already do - just instead of making diesel, the plastic is burned to generate electricity. Since machines to harvest a difference in temperature or exothermic processes scales with size, one could argue it's more efficient to burn it in a massive, very efficient furnaces instead of converting the plastic into diesel that is then burned in an engine that must be operational at a far larger range of RPMs.
- Ekaros 3y agoMy understanding is that higher temperatures also mean some toxic byproducts get processed. And you can install scrubbers and other technologies to clean rest from exhaust... And with combined production also capturing waste heat after electricity production efficiency is comparatively good.
- jamil7 3y agoIn countries like Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands it’s kind of done indirectly through waste to energy systems where plastic waste is burnt. I think there’s a few systems in place to mitigate the environmental impact.
- westbywest 3y agoHighlighting Vienna's district heating system which does this, partly because the facility in Spittelau had artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser design it to look like a psychedelic castle. https://hundertwasser.com/en/architecture/910_arch73_fernwaermewerk_spittelau__792 https://hundertwasser.com/en/architecture/910_arch73_fernwae...
- nbutyllithium 3y ago> Why don't the fuel producers do this? I recall reading about some of them looking into it but running into issues ensuring a "clean" recycled plastic supply at the scales they need. Can't seem to find the article in my history but there's a ton of varied results I'm seeing from searches talking about the idea of recycling plastic. Example: https://www2.afpm.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/sum-21-35-plastic-recycling-and-refining-in-the-circular-economy https://www2.afpm.org/forms/store/ProductFormPublic/sum-21-3... I think one of the main issues was, at least in the US, chlorinated plastic (e.g. PVC) ends up in the bulk supply of used plastics through negligence/malice/whatever and even at a few percent ends up creating some pretty corrosive compounds which are difficult/expensive to remove before they damage the equipment. Looks like people are working on that issue too though: https://www.power-technology.com/features/plastic-pyrolysis-fuel-from-waste-plastic/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/plastic-pyrolysis-...
- jp57 3y agoThe plastic waste is heated in a boiler to about 700 degrees Celsius, after which it evaporates. The gas is then cooled down and turns into a diesel-like liquid one hour later. A kind of pyrolysis, I assume, and very energy intensive. Does this process really produce more stored energy in the output product than it took to run the reaction?
- dotancohen 3y agoThe source material is industrial waste that the owner is receiving for free. Neither economics nor ecological concerns favor this approach notwithstanding the free source of plastic chips.
- schiffern 3y agoThe article says it produces 300% more CO2, so it's also roughly a 3-to-1 ratio of process energy in to fuel output. "fuel production by burning plastic on the roof is four times more carbon intensive than producing fuel from crude oil in a refinery."
- justsomehnguy 3y agoWhich begs a question if a solar concentrator can be used for this.
- samstave 3y ago>>>diesel-like liquid What, _specifically_ is that liquid and how toxic is that stuff vs diesel/petrol...? If you spill a liter of that stuff into a canal/ditch/stream, What consequences?
- FooBarBizBazz 3y agoYeah, that's my worry. I like the idea of pyrolizing plastic to dispose of it (and get energy), but -- a petrochemical company was just proposing to do this, in what presumably was a much better-controlled process, and there were (justified) protests, because the process was going to send horrible quantities of serious carcinogens up the stack. Which makes me wonder what horrible byproducts this might inadvertently be making. This: https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-pascagoula-pollution-future-cancer-risk https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-pascagoula-pollut...
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- tsimionescu 3y agoSo he's trying to increase his greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible? Plastic waste is carbon that isn't going into the atmosphere, not very fast at least. Turning it back into oil and then burning that is the very opposite of what we should be doing with it.
- colechristensen 3y agoPlastic is just fuel that spent it's wild teenage years as something useful. We should burn our garbage and use the energy for useful things. Pumping our environment full of artificial hormones and getting everybody full of random plasticy bits is bad. Until we have so much renewable energy that we don't need fossil fuels, burning garbage displacing burning coal/oil/gas is a net positive.
- tsimionescu 3y agoProper sequestration of plastic garbage in well managed garbage dumps is much better. Turning plastic into fuel and then burning the fuel is far less energy efficient than burning extracted fuel, so it's worse in the most critical way right now: it releases more greenhouse gas. Of course, it's much better to produce less plastic in the first place.
- Ekaros 3y agoI think if we compare burying plastic to properly controller industrial incineration in combined production that is both electricity and heat is likely better option. As that means we do not need to extract and process the fuel we would use for same purpose. Now refining plastic to fuel used in other ways or small scale burning is likely just idiotic.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI very much doubt this. Burning plastic is much less energy efficient than burning oil. However, plastic contains a similar amount of carbon/kg as oil. So, sequestering a kg of plastic while extracting a kg of oil is better than doing it the other way around. Even if we look at production costs, extracting and transporting liquids from the ground is also less energy intensive than transporting and processing solid plastic waste.
- dotancohen 3y agoThe article suggests that the fuel is made completely on site (on the roof of the vehicle) from discarded plastic chips from a neighbor's business. But some numbers do not add up. > Making 1 liter of diesel requires burning 1 kg of plastic, which results in 2-2.7 kg of carbon emissions. Does that number (1 kg) include the plastic consumed in the burning process, whose heat is then used to define (opposite of refine) the plastic back to liquid? How does 1 kg of plastic contain 2 kg of carbon? Or is the O2 in CO2 so heavy that "carbon emissions" weigh significantly more than the source hydrocarbon? > Second, there is the combustion of diesel fuel while driving, which emits 2.7 kg of carbon dioxide per liter. Same question.
- wlesieutre 3y agoThe carbon atom has an atomic weight of 12, while each oxygen is 16, so you have 32 weight of oxygen per 12 carbon. The hydrogen in hydrocarbons on the other hand, doesn’t weigh much at all. Atomic weight of 1. But with a high school knowledge of chemistry I couldn’t tell you what all is in those plastics.
- bruce343434 3y agoAtomic weight of C is ~12. Atomic weight of O is ~16. C : CO2 12 : (12+16+16) 12 : 44 1 : 3.666 so turning 1kg of pure C into pure CO2 by pulling O2 from the surrounding air creates 3.666kg CO2 Plastic also contains some H (weight ~1). Depends on the kind of plastic. Assuming water bottle plastic, AKA PET, AKA Polyethylene terephthalate, Its molecular formula is (C10H8O4)n. So starting weight of 10x12+8x1+4x16=192, and we assume complete burning so CO2 + H2O end products. 1 C10H8O4 + 10 O2 = 10 CO2 + 4 H2O 1x192 : 10x44 192 : 440 1 : 2.29 perfectly burning 1kg of PET produces 2.29kg of CO2
- fatuna 3y agoFair question! Carbon had an atomic weight of ~12, oxygen has an atomic weight of ~16. So carbon is responsible for 12/44 part of the weight of CO2. If we assume plastic to be 80% carbon, then 1kg of plastic would produce (0,8*44)/12~= 2,9 kg of plastic. So probably plastic is less than 80% plastic :). But then number makes sense, similarly for diesel.
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- bdcravens 3y agoSo he's basically just making diesel fuel, which could be done as a separate process, and used in any diesel-compatible engine (I presume) > 1 kg of plastic gives 0.5 liters of diesel, so the fuel economy is 7.14 liters per 100 km This converts to about 33 MPG https://convertermaniacs.com/liter-per-100-kilometers-to-miles-per-gallon/7.14-liters-per-100km-to-mpg.html https://convertermaniacs.com/liter-per-100-kilometers-to-mil...
- dontlaugh 3y agoThat’s pretty miserable efficiency. Lots of diesel cars can do as low as 3-4 l/100km.
- systems_glitch 3y agoIndeed, our 2002 Jetta TDI has 300K miles on the clock and still does 40-45 MPG highway.
- rootusrootus 3y agoIs that with functioning emissions controls, or without?
- wkat4242 3y agoThose weren't affected by dieselgate
- systems_glitch 3y agoCorrect, not a "we cheated on the emissions" model.
- dontlaugh 3y agoMy Peugeot 207 was doing up to 60 mpg (UK). Newer small diesel cars beat that easily.
- stere0 3y agoI'm not a chemist, but isn't this an application of the Fischer Tropsch process similar to coal to liquid and gas to liquid?
- eterevsky 3y agoIt's _much_ better to burning trash in special facilities, where it is burnt down to CO2, rather to some kind of soot that will pollute the atmosphere. It will also be more efficient in terms of energy production.
- tsimionescu 3y agoBetter yet to bury it in a landfill and not deliberately release CO2 at all.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoThis. Wait until we get the plastic-eating microorganisms, the plastic certainly isn’t going anywhere.
- jamil7 3y agoSome countries don’t have the space for landfill and need the energy. If we’re moving towards renewables and less plastic/plastic alternatives then I think this is an acceptable intermediate use of plastic waste.
- tsimionescu 3y agoI'm quite sure that it would be better to burn gas or oil and find some other country to bury the plastic for you. Burning plastic is just very inefficient, and expensive if you don't want the thickest toxic smog.
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- RespectYourself 3y ago[dead]
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoAre there metrics on how many `kg` of plastic waste required input wise -> how many `l` of "diesel like liquid" output? how many "kilometers per liter" is the car getting on the diesel / how many "kilometers per kg of plastic"? Curious on yield/waste/efficiency/etc.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago> That includes the fuel used to heat the plastic waste on the roof (1 kg of plastic gives 0.5 liters of diesel, so the fuel economy is 7.14 liters per 100 km).
- Neil44 3y agoHow do you get 2.7kg of carbon by burning 1kg of plastic? Am I thinking too simplistically about that? Also he's currently using industrial plastic chips, high quality homogeneous material, if you were using plastic garbage you then run into contaminants, full bottles of whatever, labels, glues different types of plastic - not all plastics will liqify etc etc etc. Well done for the proof of concept though.
- wkat4242 3y agoWhen you burn it the oxygen gets bound to it so the CO2 weight is higher. It does sound like a lot though yes Edit: Like bruce343434 said below it is right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994147
- euroderf 3y agoSo what is the volume of that 2.7kg of CO2 at STP ? People in general might be more conscious of greenhouse emissions if they could visualise them. "So you're saying that when I go thru a tank of gasoline, the CO2 could fill HOW many football stadiums ?!"
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- yread 3y agoThere is a video (in Dutch) https://www.autovisie.nl/video/uw-garage/gijs-rijdt-met-zijn-volvo-240-gratis-op-plastic-afval/ https://www.autovisie.nl/video/uw-garage/gijs-rijdt-met-zijn... You can see how dirty the burning is producing soot-heavy smoke when he drives it around Arnhem
- ludamn 3y agoTFA aside, this website is so simple and beautiful it makes me wish more websites were like this, nowadays it's rare to find pages that you can delightfully read on mobile unless you have adblocking installed, and even if you can block the ads many times you'll be spammed with sticky videos or other annoying widgets that just scares the reader away from the content -- which is not the case on this website
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- SigmundA 3y agoIn my area they burn garbage for electricity[1] which a lot of the content will be plastics, they collect metals from the ash. As mentioned it still releases carbon in to the atmosphere but better than this setup since the emissions controls are much better as they are with most power plants. With an electric car you are not limited to any one fuel, whether it be solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, nat gas, oil, coal or plastic / garbage this is the big win decoupling fuel from transport. 1. https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/ https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/
- WalterBright 3y ago> Because of the chemicals added to plastic, burning it to make fuel creates a lot of nasty air pollution. Even a tiny whiff of burning plastic makes me nauseous for hours. I want nothing to do with that. If I seal clothes in a plastic tub for a few years, the clothes take on a plastic smell that also makes me nauseous. It doesn't wash out, so those clothes get thrown out. Long ago I got rid of all the dishes made of plastic. Even plastic cups impart a plasticy taste to water.
- jokoon 3y agoIt's ridiculous what people will do to keep using their car
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoOne major point was to be anti-car: > In contrast, Schalkx’s Volvo internalizes all the side effects of driving automobiles. The car is not a pleasure to drive, at least not regularly. It is dirty. Its interior stinks of plastic, which cannot be healthy – Gijs keeps the car windows open no matter the weather. Furthermore, he needs to spend a lot of time collecting plastic and making fuel, and all these disadvantages make him think twice before he gets behind the wheel. Although I will agree this is ridiculous, as most anti-car ideas tend to be. If he’s privileged enough to consider whether he should use his car, then perhaps he should consciously live without one.
- foul 3y agoWoodgas vehicles were enormously inefficient. Said that, rest of the story is sick AF, he made a pyrolithic device all by himself.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoInefficient, yes, but much cleaner than this. This would give you cancer for any extended period of use.
- foul 3y agoSick the story, sick the designer
- Uptrenda 3y agoI've seen YT videos of people building these stills to break down the plastic to 'diesel.' Normally they claim that they're 'recycling' the plastic and imply its an ingenious way to help better the environment. But there's a few things worth noting here: 1. The still needs a way to generate heat to work. A primitive method done in some poorer countries (and in DIY stills) is to use wood to heat it. Guessing the way his still works here relies on fossil fuels to incinerate the plastic (maybe butane or his own fuel -- but if using his own fuel then he would have needed to bootstrap it.) 2. I realize the article mentions this but unless you read the entire article carefully you may not notice this. A lot of people are just going to assume that the designer found a way to recycle plastic without realizing how insanely toxic what they're doing is. Even in the incinerators designed for this purpose scientists have found chemicals in their ashes that never break down from combustion. 3. The author of this article makes frankly a bizarre logical leap by saying that since plastics are already burnt in incinerators doing this isn't that different. They neglect to mention that incinerators are still horrible ways to dispose of waste and that plastic specifically can be recycled into other materials without burning it into a toxic mess. Overall, the still will generate an extremely dirty fuel capable of being used by ancient engines. For the modern gentleman who gives absolutely zero fucks about the environment. A possible next step from this project would be to figure out how to run a car on nuclear waste so that your car can be a fukushima/chernobyl on wheels.
- M95D 3y agoI'm interested to know if non-recyclable plastic (everything not PET) can be used.