JBI's Plastic To Oil Gets Operating Permit

Whammy666 writes "JBI, Inc. announced that it has entered into a formal Consent Order with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Region 9, which will allow the Company to immediately run its Plastic2Oil (P2O) process commercially and begin construction of an additional processor at its Niagara Falls, New York P2O facility. JBI has developed a process that takes waste plastic destined for landfills and converts it into diesel fuel, gasoline, and natural gas with very little residue. The process is said to be very efficient thanks to a special catalyst developed by JBI and an attention to process optimization. That plastic water bottle you tossed in the trash could soon be fueling your car instead of sitting in a landfill for 1000 years."

Comments

Given how much oil it takes to make plastic....

[thegarbz]

So your average plastic water bottle requires about 1/4 a litre of refined oil products to be produced. How much oil do you get back from this?

Don't get me wrong it's a great solution to what's already in the landfill, but if most people re-used, re-cycled or substituted (wtf do you need to buy bottled water anyway, the stuff runs from every tap in the city), then there would be a much bigger impact. How much energy does the process need? What are the impacts with regard to the catalyst that is used? How hard is it to manufacture the catalyst?

Re:Given how much oil it takes to make plastic....

[zero0ne]

From their website, it shows that 1 kilogram of plastic converts roughly to one litre of oil.

So the big question in my book is, how much does 1 kilogram of scrap plastic cost, and how much power is needed to do that conversion.

If we say that one litre of oil is worth ~$1, 1 tonne of plastic is ~$200, and power used for one kilogram conversion is a minuscule 1kilowatt.

You have ~$0.30 in direct costs, but after factoring in the plant, machinery, tankers, etc etc etc, the margins on this process must be hair thin.

OH, thats right, lets not forget the government subsidies!

Re:I remember Mendeleev's quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't find that one

his words about burning oil in stoves being equivalent to burning bank notes in a stove

Though I enjoyed this one more

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean.

Floating plastic in the ocean

[scsirob]

I remember reading about a huge amount of plastic floating in the ocean. Since it was just garbage no-one seemed interested in cleaning that up.

Now this plastic has become a valuable supply for producing oil, I'm sure some entrepreneur will stand up and collect it for a profit!

Re:Floating plastic in the ocean

[Asic Eng]

No yet, I think. The "garbage patch" is a huge area of the ocean which consists of a mixture of plastic particles and sea water. Getting the plastic out of that corrosive sea water, in an inaccessible location - that's going to be a lot more expensive than recycling plastic which would otherwise be transported to a landfill. You'd probably start mining closed landfills first before you'd consider the garbage patch.

Way to catch the previous train here

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

So this guy has a process that takes plastic and turns it into oil to power cars. Great...

Well guess what: the new trend is electric, or hybrid-electric cars. Their main fuel is electricity, and there's already a very efficient way to turn waste plastic into electricity, by burning it to fuel a power plant (with the proper filters at the smokestacks to avoid polluting and all). Even accounting for the loses in transportation, battery storage and reuse in electric motors, I bet the plastic-powered electric car is way more efficient than the plastic-gasoline powered ICE car.

So yes, the market for plastic diesel is huge today, but it'll only go down over the years, as oil prices rise and people buy more electric vehicles. In short, I'm not investing.

Re:Someday

[Adolf Hitroll]

Do you mean continent?

BTW, that's what you get when you let fucking sodas define your personality: very little of these bottles are drunk by thirsty people.

Re:Just what we need...

[Pharmboy]

I think that is the main point: You take a barrel of oil and you get to use it twice. And while the whole world is fretting about CO2, the idea of reducing the footprint of plastic trash from 100% to 1% is nothing to sneeze at. Add the other ongoing research to create alcohol out of cellulose (another major portion of trash), and all of a sudden you are virtually "mining" trash by reusing the plastics and paper, making recovering of the aluminum and steel easier. This also decreases water pollution in the long run.

What matters is that using plastics to create oil isn't going to INCREASE CO2, as those cars would be burning something or another to run regardless of source. What also matters is that this would DECREASE the need for agriculture to be specific for fuels, which pushes food prices up and increases the amount of fertilizer (and other pollutants) in the system. It isn't a silver bullet that fixes pollution, but it can be part of a better overall energy policy.

Re:Just what we need...

[Posting=!Working]

That is just a completely wrong statement, NOx and CO emissions are much larger problems than CO2. The CO and NOx can kill you directly. You take care of the actual poisons first, which is what they've done. Causing acid rain and direct respiratory damage are way worse than contributing to global warming.