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Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back to Oil

Posted by samzenpus on from the but-how-is-it-on-popcorn dept.

An anonymous reader writes "From the newscientist article: "Key to GRC's process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.""

10 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. I've been saying for years by afidel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That the mines of the next century will be our garbage mountains. It will be the place with the highest density of easily obtainable materials.

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    1. Re:I've been saying for years by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only problem is that they also have a very high density of thoroughly toxic materials, stuff that you really don't want disturbed if you can avoid it.

      Unfortunately, I could easily see it being economically infeasible to mine garbage dumps, because the cost of environmental remediation would be worse than just leaving the resources there, entombed with all the hazardous stuff.

      Really, if we had a slightly longer planning horizon than we seem to have, we'd at least be sorting our garbage before burying it, instead of piling it all together. Just pulling out all the metal and putting it in one hole, with the plastic and organics in another, or burying similar types of appliances together, would make the landfills that much more attractive to mine later on.

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  2. but... by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    no mention on how much energy it takes to run the thing, or how much energy it puts out. it's not of much use if it costs a fraction to just bury the old plastic and make new stuff from scratch.

    1. Re:but... by Iron+Sun · · Score: 5, Insightful
      The article doesn't give exact figures, but it does say:

      GRC says its Hawk-10 can extract enough oil and gas from the left-over fluff to run the Hawk-10 itself and a number of other machines used by Gershow.

      That addresses the energy issue, but still leaves open the question of how much it costs to maintain the equipment. You'd have to think they've got some sort of business model worked out if they've progressed to the point of selling to customers.
    2. Re:but... by ricree · · Score: 5, Insightful

      no mention on how much energy it takes to run the thing, or how much energy it puts out. it's not of much use if it costs a fraction to just bury the old plastic and make new stuff from scratch.
      They claim that it is capable of pulling out enough fuel to have a surplus, but even if it isn't it could still be viable as a means to recycle plastics. I don't know how economically viable that would be now, but the raw materials for plastic are likely to rise, while the price of these machines will likely fall. Even if it is not viable now, who is to say it will never be. All in all, it sounds plausible.
    3. Re:but... by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If all it does is recylce plastics, that's a commercial value right there. Landfill space is getting scarce in a lot of cities.

      -jcr

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    4. Re:but... by Iron+Sun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It obviously isn't completely unviable, as they have their first customer lined up. It must make economic sense to them.

      It also doesn't require that the oil produced be comparable in price to the imported stuff, as there is additional value added in the form of reduced processing of their auto waste. If the machine creates real savings in that area then the fact that it powers itself is a nice secondary feature.

      A landfill reducing device that powers itself with a net energy surplus doesn't sound like it has no commercial value.

    5. Re:but... by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not only reducing landfill; this could be huge in electronics recycling. Much of that recycling goes on (officially illegally) in China. It goes like this: they take all parts that have copper in them and throw them in a big heap all day. At night, they douse the huge heap in fuel and light it; the plastics burn all night, spewing huge amounts of toxins across the landscape. In the morning, they collect the blackened ball of copper for sale and brush aside the ash.

      Compare that to this, where, according to the article, it produces enough oil to run itself plus "other" machinery. Coated wire goes in, stripped wire comes out.

      One big issue comes up for me: the contents of that oil. In such a recycling process, the oil itself could simply be gelled and discarded, with the energy to run the machine coming from cleaner sources; the key issue is that you're not doing burns of toxic plastics. So it's still useful. For wider use, however, one would want the oil to be clean enough to use. What happens with chlorinated plastics, like PVC? Where does the chlorine end up? What about fluorinated plastics? And so on -- where do all of these things end up?

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  3. Enforcement isn't the problem. by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just need to have non-stupid options. Every four or five months, I check with my state's waste management website for how to handle the tricky stuff (like fluorescent tubes and button batteries), mostly because that's about how often I lose a CFL. Their answer is that I must drive halfway across the state (it's a small state, but the way the roads are, half-way across might as well be all the way across). Also, I have to make a special appointment for the privilege.

    I might consider doing this when my CRT monitor finally fails, but somehow I doubt that burning 12 gallons of gasoline for a single compact bulb is less harmful to the environment than tossing it in with the regular trash. And if it's not, then there's no point in my continuing to use them, as the 12 gallons of gasoline puts the lifetime cost well over that which regular light bulbs would've been over the same time period. They fail to break often enough that just accumulating a bunch of spent CFLs is really an option. It'd take me ten years to fill a small box with 'em, and frankly, I don't want to store hazardous waste for that long.

    The items aren't exactly very large or numerous. I fail to see why they can't just put one or more small bins at the transfer station for them. How much space would a whole town's worth of expired button batteries need to take, anyway?

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  4. Re:Hooray! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you make plastic, you can sell it to people who need just about anything

    No, the reason why plastics are not very recyclable is that you cannot substitute one plastic for another. The previous method recycles polycarbonate from CDs only into polycarbonate. Polycarbonate cannot be used instead of polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, etc. These other plastics have far more uses. So turning into fuel is a more general use to me.

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