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Transforming Waste Plastic Into $10/Barrel Fuel

Posted by samzenpus on from the mr.-fusion dept.

Mike writes "Today Washington DC-based company Envion opened a $5 million dollar facility that they claim will be able to efficiently transform plastic waste into a source of oil-like fuel. The technology uses infra-red energy to remove hydrocarbons from plastic without the use of a catalyst, transforming 82% of the original plastic material into fuel. According to Envion, the resulting fuel can then be blended with other components, providing a source for gasoline or diesel at as low as $10 per barrel."

5 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. And In Other News by MightyMartian · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    And in other news, a new law was finally passed making it legal to beat fraudsters to death with copies of their SEC filings.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:And In Other News by twostix · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      And in yet more news smug ignorant Slashdotters a little too eager to show off their self proclaimed intellectual superiority end up look like basement dwelling comic book guys when it comes commenting on anything outside of the world of computers.

      More at 11.

    2. Re:And In Other News by Sandbags · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      I really don't care that this is possible (it is).

      WTF are we taking oil, making it into plastic, then making it BACK into Oil? This is counter productive, and does NOT solve the issue that we're STILL TAKING OIL OUT OF THE GROUND! This is not only not carbon nuetral, it;s worse.

      Make plastic into other plastics (recycle!) We need plastic either way. We need fuel either way. Until DotyEnergy has a hundred or so RWGS/RFTS plants built, and we can reliably stop using oil for fuel in mass quantity, we need to use the oil we have in the most efficient way. Wasting energy to turn waste plastic into fuel, which extracts less thah 100% of the stored energy and creates a MASS of toxic waste, is less efficint than turning oil into fuel directly. We have pleanty of things to do with the wasted plastic, including things like making insulation out of it further reducing our dependency on energy to heat/cool homes.

      STOP THIS NONSENSE!

      RFTS makes gasoline at between $60 and 80 a barel (depending on local markets), uses off-peak wind and wasted CO2 as inputs, and is completely carbon nuetral without using a drop of fossil fuels. These are NOT vaporware either, the process has been used since WWII. It's been refined far enough that it's competitive to oil, runs in our current cars, ships via our current infrastricuture, Doty is simply lacking investors and governemtninterest to buiold facilities (since big oil sees this as an actual threat, every alternative fuel grant in existance misses the mark and can not be used for this ACTUAL alternative, and since it;s not talked baout by the news either, investors have no clue, lets help them...). https://www.dotyenergy.com/

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      There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
  2. $4.9 million spent on Frank Carlucci by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And the other $100k built the non-impressive looking "facility."

    You don't get major politicos (he preceded Cheney as the Secretary of Defense and is a former National Security Advisor) like Carlucci as your "chairman emeritus" without throwing them a serious bone. I guess they've got designs on some government boondoggle or they would have used that money on Aeron chairs.

    If turning waste plastic into fuel was cost effective, they'd be doing it already.

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