Transforming Waste Plastic Into $10/Barrel Fuel

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."

Comments

In the future...

[dch24]

We will be mining the great pacific garbage patch to get fuel for our SUVs.

Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

The Japanese and Norwegians are already working on freeing up all that oil trapped in Minke whales in the ocean (purely for research purposes, of course). :P

Not really new tech...

[Sooner Boomer]

The ability to convert ethylene to polyethylene, and back to ethylene again has been around for a long time. Likewise, you can pyrolyze a bunch of different plastics, then use the Fischer-Tropsh process to make diesel and gasoline. The problem is how you deal with everything ELSE that's NOT hydrogen or carbon, (like chlorine from polyvinyl chloride) and keep it from forming REALLY toxic stuff (like dioxins). One of the key elements to almost all recycling is separation of the incoming materials and appropriate treatment for each category. But if it works, good luck to them!

$10 per Barrel

[arthurpaliden]

Like they will really sell below the world price per barrel. Their investors will really love that. Not.

Re:$10 per Barrel

[coaxial]

It doesn't matter. If they can produce this stuff in any volume, it will drive the price of oil down for everyone. If they can do it in enough volume to supply the entire United States (not likely), then other companies will spring up doing the same thing, which will also drive the price down to just above the cost of production. That's how a free marketplace is supposed to work.

That's how economics works for elastic priced goods, in a free market. Neither of which exist here.

1. Oil is inelastically priced. People will pay whatever the price is. When oil hit $130 a barrel, no one stopped consuming oil. More importantly, $70 a barrel is considered a deal, when it was priced at $40 a barrel not that long ago.

2. There is not a free market for oil. The oil is dominated by an international cartel (OPEC) that literally sets the price of oil. Oil comes on to the market to move prices down. Oil comes off of the market to drive prices up. If this technology would begin to impact prices by increasing supply, OPEC will cut production to keep the supply low. Perhaps not before driving the price down to unprofitability.

Your faith in The Market(tm) is misguided, because as you examine how the largest players in the national international economies work, one can only come to the inescapable conclusion, that they quite literally, don't play by the same rules as you.

They delude you into thinking that you and them are on the same side, but you are not one of them. You are their resource, to manipulate and exploit.

Class war? Forget it. That war is over. The middle class lost.

Re:And In Other News

[Waffle Iron]

Call me a skeptic, but when someone starts talking about $10/barrel oil made from trash, well let's just say we have a saying here in Missouri: "Show me".

The plastic was made by joining petroleum molecules together. What makes you think that pulling them back apart would be very costly?

Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!!

[icebike]

Dare I ask how much energy is expended in this conversion?

It doesn't matter EmagGeek, because it gets all the energy it need by burning some of the output product for power generation. It outputs both oil and power.

Since all that plastic was going into the ground anyway, its a net gain, and the energy of conversion is not an issue.

Re:Already...

[anagama]

What are you talking about? When oil was $10/bbl (latter 90s), gas was under a buck a gallon. I remember paying $1.20/gal when I was in HS (graduated 1987). Minimum wage when I was in HS was around $3/hr (2.5gal/hr). Minimum wage in the late 90s was maybe $6/hr (6gal/hr). Minimum wage now is $8.55/hr (WA), and gas is $3/gal (2.85gal/hr). Clearly, kids these days have it better than I did when I was a kid, but not so great as kids in the late 90s.

To look at it another way, gas was $1/gal when oil was $10/bbl. 15 minutes ago as I'm typing this, oil was 72.27/bbl. That's 7x more than the 90s price, yet gas is only 3x more expensive.

We're getting a bargain price but people are so energy greedy they don't even realize it. Whine whine, whine, but for what you get from fossil fuel, it's a deal at thrice the price. Seriously, go ahead and dig a 10x10x6 foot hole with a shovel, then watch it being done with an excavator -- you'll get an instant appreciation for the power of oil.

Re:What can you actually do with 5Mil

[Sj0]

Why?

You take one hydrocarbon that burns like the dickens and convert it into another hydrocarbon that burns like the dickens but happens to be liquid (and thus more convenient).

I don't really see any magic involved. You won't get all the energy back, for sure -- turning the oil into plastic and the plastic into fuel will result in far less net energy than just turning the oil into fuel products to begin with, but that's factored into the cost.