A Machine That Turns Plastic Back Into Oil

Originally posted by TheOracle
This is incredible news and this invention has to be one of the most important steps for our planet. Imagine the millions of tons of wasted plastic waiting to be recycled back into oil and gasoline!

The questions now: Are we in the green, using 1kw of electricity to create 1 liter of oil?
Will the govts and oil corporates allow this to be mass produced?

It doesn't make sense to me at all.

First, the claim that it reduces carbon emissions by 80% is a complete lie, it does no such thing, in fact it INCREASES carbon emissions! The 80% reduction claim is based on burning the plastic versus making the oil, but that's not a fair comparison, because what will happen to the oil? It will be burned!!!! So exactly the same amount of CO2 will enter the atmosphere from burning either the oil or the plastic!!!

The reason the oil causes more CO2, is the 1KW of energy used to make the oil has its own carbon footprint, as the coal burning plant used to make the 1KW of electricity is adding carbon to the air to produce that 1KW.

So if all the CO2 is going to end up in the air anyway, it seems like it will create less of a carbon footprint to avoid the 1KW conversion step and just burn the plastic directly, if the toxins from burning the plastic can be filtered out. That's the real issue with burning plastic.

Regarding "Are we in the green, using 1kw of electricity to create 1 liter of oil?" well how long do we have to apply 1KW to do that? If it takes 5 seconds it would be economical, if it takes 5 days, it's like running a 1000W space heater for 24 hours a day for 5 days, so we don't know from that statement how much electricity the conversion takes, without the time factor. It would have been better if they gave us the number of kilowatt-hours instead of the number of kilowatts.

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Last I checked benzene's evaporate into thin air, but before they do they can be used to melt plastics.

That's the same basic phenomenon that we're talking about here. I'll try to explain what is happening chemically again.

Plastic is simply a long chain of molecules, primarily hydrogen and carbon (hydrocarbons) all linked together. Now if you have a steel chain and you want to make shorter lengths, you cut the links (analogous here to the chemical bonds). You can make lengths of chain as short or as long as you want, simply by choosing how many links to cut.

We can do the same with polymers. The energy we introduce determines how quickly links are cut, as well as which ones are cut. All the chemical bonds are not the same strength, and of course the weaker ones will be cut first. If a benzene arrangement is in the polymer chain, it will be likely that we will see benzene in the final product, for instance.

But we still have the ability to choose how much energy we put in, and thus the general length of the polymer chains in the product. The length of these chains are what determines the density of the products, and thus their use. Diesel fuel is composed of fairly long chains as compared to gasoline, for example.

Also, remember that diesel fuel and gasoline are not homogeneous mixtures. They are mixtures of a fairly large variety of different compounds, with the only real requirement being the boiling points of these compounds and the energy density of the final product. That octane rating you see on the gasoline pumps is the energy density: it is a ratio of the energy density of the product you are buying to an equal amount of pure octane (C8H18).

So all this machine does is to 'crack' the polymer chains in the plastic so they become lighter compounds instead. Once 'cracked' sufficiently, the products are separated out by their boiling points, the same way gasoline and diesel fuel are separated out during the refining stage. If we are getting too much diesel fuel and not enough gasoline, we just 'crack' the polymers a little more until we get the most efficient products.

I am assuming the real innovation in this machine to be a controlled process that does just that. The rest is basically just a moonshine still for plastic.

TheRedneck

reply to post by cupocoffee

The lab I have; the problem is time. And to be honest, money, because I do have to spend an appreciable amount of my time making sure my family has food on the table.

It's not hard to build a lab; I built mine in about a year. The trick is to understand what tools you need and how much room to do what you need. Anyone with a background in the field they want to experiment in will already have a good grasp of this.

What we need is more people willing to set up a lab where they can try out these new ideas and either improve or perfect them. I'm one man, and someone with more authority than me has decreed that there are only 24 hours in a day, and that I, at my age, need to spend 8 of them sleeping. Some folks with very little real authority have also decreed that I must spend more of that time in order to provide for my family, and so far I have not been able to break those bonds.

I did it; you can, too. After all, I'm just a dumb old redneck.

TheRedneck

reply to post by TheRedneck


Hi TheRedneck

Well at least you have a lab to shoot in and that's a good start. Would you be willing to host a shoot there?

My concern is that I would really want to involve more people. Ideally I would like at least three guys to double-check and triple-check each other's work and maybe even a fourth to observe and do commentary for the camera.

So sadly, ironing out all these logistical issues has been the defeat of me you see. Managing such a large project is not my forte, though I wish it were.

reply to post by cupocoffee

We're getting a little off-topic here. Check your u2u box.

TheRedneck

A nice idea, but it won't catch on. It probably takes 5 litres of oil to deliver the Kw to liberate 1 litre of oil.
Secondly, many plastics are 'thermo-harders' this means they can only melt once, the second time they just burn (releasing toxins as the article states).
To recover these, they need complex handling with expensive catalysts & chemicals (many of which are themselves toxic)-making it a non-profit venture, so no company will endorse it.
Better to just go back to glass & paper packaging (that IS easily recycled).
I wrote this same letter to the newspapers after they published a big 'lets recycle plastic' hype-needless to say i was ignored.
That was last year. Today we still dont know what we can put in the pretty collection bags they gave us-the list is huge, there are 100's of types of plastic-they don't even know themselves which ones to take.
What happens to the rest? here in Europe we just sell it to England & they bury it somewhere in Kent.........

reply to post by Azp420


Exactly. It can be done, but it isn't 'cost effective' so they won't.
Their message is CONSUME! CONSUME!

reply to post by TheOracle


Hi,

I am the Managing Director of Flashpoint Consulting K.K., a Tokyo-based management consulting and sales advisory firm. We represent Blest Co., Ltd.'s "plastic-to-oil" products on a global basis. We would be very happy to hear from viewers regarding this technology.

Kind regards,

Brooke

reply to post by TheOracle


I tried this with a pressure cooker and a concrete urn used to burn wood. I cut up 6 or 7 water bottles that are "eco-friendly". I then put them into the steam cooker with 1 CUP of water so the plastic would not burn to the metal. I let it sit on the urn until I seen the steam that was coming out changed colors. More brownish then white clear steam. After this I put industrial tubbing that fit snug over the steam cap of the pressure cooker and then dropped the other end maybe 5inchs from the bottom of a 5gallon bucket that was filled with water. after about an hour I had enough oil floating around top to test it out in my snow blower. That was a bad idea but I am happy I tested it on the old one which had already been replaced. This concept work's, However. I believe the oil collected from the plastic still needs to be refined for use in machinery.

So does anyone know what happened with this technology? Is there an update? What happened to this solution to plastic pollution? Hey that rhymed.

We have to STOP thinking of using oil in the FUTURE ! !
It is killing us ! !

We can re-use the actual plastic to re-make plastic stuff,
as we do with steel, aluminium, glass. . .etc. . .

We MUST think of using **electricity** and **hydrogen**,
the hydrogen being made by electricity from the sun,
or water dams. . .

! ! OIL will be OVER soon ! !

! ! WE NEED CLEAN ENERGY ! !

Blue skies.

Im just thinking, those who say you still use more energy for the conversion surely it balances out? If people start converting there own oil then oil companies will have less demand and produce less. Having local recyled oil to an extent cuts out the transport costs, the demand for extra oil and some of the profit from those with more than they would ever need.

Wait I just had an idea! I remember reading about a machine that gets energy from wasted heat! Im guessing this machine will produce external heat so maybe this additional machine could be used to power the extra conversion process of the oil machine? Imagine if the oil production from this concept could be powered by its own waste heat!

I dont know if this would work but here is a link to the waste heat converter. I dont know the original link I read but it seems genuine. www.energyharvestingjournal.com...


I was bored so I have created this to illustrate the idea, could it possibly work providing both technologies work? Im not sure if the output would be stong enough to power the "oil machine".[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8db953b08112.png[/atsimg]