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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."
Hurray, we can turn safely contained pollution on/in the ground into air pollution! Someone managed to rebrand this exercise as environmentally conscious, while all we're doing is burning trash. Hat's off, really.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
... after studying the chemical composition of oil: "This stuff is way too valuable to simply burn it".
right...
If it ends up in a landfill right now, you're doing something wrong. Some countries (Scandinavia) have recycling quotas >90% already.
Fleur de Sel
I've been watching GRC for a while now... Last I heard their prototype microwave was functional, and they were taking orders. The prototype uses a vacuum chamber: fill the chamber with used tires, apply vacuum, turn on the microwave, and *poof*, out comes the hydrocarbons.
Every 20lb tire yields a gallon of diesel fuel, ~50 cubic feet of "propane" (butane and... something else), recyclable steel, and carbon black. Haven't seen anything recently, just a new patent for using microwaves to desalinate seawater...
This thing looks useful too - there's a ton of plastic warehoused in the world's garbage dumps, and it won't be long until they start getting mined.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
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!
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!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The Earth wants plastic for itself, and created us to make it! (Thank you, George Carlin.)
Jhyrryl
power used for one kilogram conversion is a minuscule 1kilowatt.
Power is meaningless here. Energy is what shall be considered. And the physical unit for energy is the Joule (J), or possibly the kilowatt-hour (kWh).
Usually I don't try to explain that anymore, but here it's different, it's Slashdot...
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
And which way are the oil prices headed?
You have to think long term.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
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.
Smile, don't click...
I think you would have to get paid in order to take the plastic - putting plastic in a landfill is not free. So 1 tonne of plastic costs $x to store in a landfill - residue costs $y to store in a landfill - so $x-$y would contribute to your margin.
Why is JBIs solution supposed to be a better alternative than the UN sponsored machine made by Blest (founded by Akinori Ito)? /. reported on this earlier this year, but no-one mentions a comparison between these solutions.
IIRC,
Check out the article and the video about Blests "plastic to oil" solution.
From what I can see, two of Blests major advantages, is that the equipment is so small that it's portable, and that it requires no chemical additives to do its thing.
That's going to be a huge factor when it comes to introducing this to the developing countries, which we most definitely will need to do in the long run.
Quick! Start buying up landfills!
Plastic mining is the way of the future.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Might be why they're locating in Niagara Falls.
Niagara Falls has (or at least had) tons of industry because plentiful cheap hydro energy.
Businesses regularly get that cheap hydro at a discount to entice jobs.
Hasn't worked like it used to because the offshore production costs were so much cheaper it eliminated the advantage... but in this case, it might make sense... the main cost for this process is likely to be energy, and it wouldn't work to offshore this industry, I'd think.
This space available.
"So your average plastic water bottle requires about 1/4 a litre of refined oil products to be produced."
I have no idea of plastic production, but it looks wrong to me: if oil costs about $40 per barrel (159l), 1/4 litre is about $0.05. I can't imaging a plastic bottle costing that much - I can buy a bottle of water in a supermarket for not much more than 5 cent. Am I missing something?
Try Germany ... they refill the bottles and use them again. Wow!
No sig today...
Oh, just checked oil prices... $88 per barrel. That means a plastic water bottle's raw material costs over $0.10?
Yes you are. The 1/4 litre is refined oil products not raw crude oil. During refining many components in crude are separated and depending on the economics of the refinery various products are made, be it diesel, kerosene, jet, bitumen, extracted impurities such as sulphur, mercaptain, and if there's a chemical plant nearby often propylene and other feedstocks to create plastics through polymerisation. If there's no chemical plant around hydrcarbons like propylene are either minimised or converted to more profitable products.
:)
So while 1/4 litre of refined product is needed to make a bottle, much more crude is needed, however that crude contains other quite valuable products that also generate money, so there never can be a generalised direct link between the price of oil and the price of a finished product as it heavily depends on the economics of the individual refinery.
I work at a refinery which is currently burning propylene and butylene through the flare because the unit which uses that feed is down, and it's cheaper to burn it than to try and sell it to a chemical plant. That doesn't directly affect the price of bottles in the local shops either
IIRC, he put the bottle into a fusion-reactor along with some banana-peels, then the car flew away. You might be cherry-picking your facts a little here...
My concern is if you get a net win in energy. If you do, that's great. If you don't, then it should be scrapped like ethanol should be scrapped and not subsidized simply as a feel good program.
Hmm.. but in that case, the bottle would be made of less valuable components. Which would mean that the demand for the components required for a plastic bottle is lower than the demand for the other components, and thus plastic bottle are merely a by-product. So I wonder, would reducing the number of plastic bottle have any impact on the general oil consumption?
After all, even if there wouldn't be any plastic bottles anymore, the oil would still be needed because of the other components.
The point is, we can't keep burning fossil fuels at the rate we have been for the last 110 years. The Carbon, Methane and other environmentally detrimental byproducts released when fossil fuels burn is a bigger problem than running out of oil.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
That plastic water bottle you tossed in the trash could soon be fueling your car instead of sitting in a landfill for 1000 years.
In any case, that's a lot more humane than using cats for this purpose
Ah, but have you talked to the people who are actually doing your "recycling"? Most of the towns around here contract with a firm in New Hampshire. That firm sells the plastic to the highest bidder, which is as it should be. Trouble is, there are few bidders for it.
Currently, as I understand it, most of the recyclables are going into the previously empty shipping containers making the return trip to China after bringing over all the stuff we import from there. Once it's in China, it can be recycled in methods free of US environmental laws, and the bulk of the plastic is simply burned for fuel because it can be done over there in a land without environmental law.
We're not actually "recycling" a lot of what we recycle. We're saving it from going into a landfill, and we're not polluting air in our close vicinity, so we're calling it good.
I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not quite as good as you might think.
I do it because the recycling company breaks even on it, so it doesn't cost me money like bags of actual garbage do.
Projects like this are cool and uncool at the same time, from an environmental perspective. They are cool because we've found a use for old plastic. They are uncool because they lengthen the time before we find more environmentally-conscious alternatives to both burning shit in our automobiles for propulsion AND encourage the use of disposable plastic bottles under a commonly-held myth that recycling them makes it all better.
Remember the chant of the treehugger. "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". We're putting waaaaayyyy too much emphasis on the last of those, when "recycle" should be the absolute last resort because it's horribly inefficient and only marginally effective at best. Reduce and reuse come first and second in terms of efficiency.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Even if the energy is break-even, you're converting electricity from a hydro plant where very little manufacturing exists any more into fuel that can be used in cars and trucks. It's still more efficient than battery-based electric cars (which are great, don't get me wrong, but with battery storage losses and range issues, anyone other than a short-haul commuter won't find them very useful).
We can easily convert petroleum into electricity, but this is a way to convert electricity plus garbage into petroleum. It's a stopgap until we can figure out a better way to propel our vehicles than the burning of a limited resource that has so many more valuable uses.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The main output of this is Diesel fuel. The fuel used to power large trucks. The same trucks that can't be converted to electricity because we don't have anywhere NEAR the energy density necessary in electric storage to power a cross-country truck.
We can very easily convert petroleum into electricity. We have few means of turning electricity plus old petroleum into new petroleum. This is a stopgap measure that will be obsolete in 50 years, but will still be useful for at least a few more decades.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Ah, but have you talked to the people who are actually doing your "recycling"?
No, but I've seen the number of states doing any bottle recycling at all in the US, and even less so plastic bottles if I remember accordingly. I've also seen the numbers for how many bottles got recycled in the state with the highest refund upon returning.
I assume the numbers where quite similar for our whole country as they where for that state. Think it was well above 90%.
Some people only want to look at cost or energy consumption, and I'm not convinced recycling fails even there, but anyhow atleast you recycle the material as well. Also who wants to throw in an estimated price for cleaning up the great pacific garbage patch? No one?
It's quite easy to make the numbers work if you decide what you want to count or not ..
I have no reason to speak to them. I'm quite sure it works well here.
http://pantamera.se/start.asp
http://pantamera.se/aluburken.asp
91% of our ~1 one billion aluminum cans get recycled.
Latest recycling refund is 1 sek = 0.15 US$
http://pantamera.se/pet.asp
88% of our 600 million plastic bottles get recycled.
Refund is 1-2 sek depending on size.
http://www.ftiab.se/
Handles more or less everything else.
5800 recycling stations spread around the country, but the you got local collection points as well.
Stations in my city:
http://se.ftiab.se/fti/sokavs/private/avsresult.aspx?kommun_id=11880&ort=%D6rebro
Items you can leave at the largest ones:
http://www.orebro.se/307.html
Myths: .. 8.500 houses.
http://www.ftiab.se/hushall/faktamyter/myter.4.405877db1168b3d892a80001405.html
Q & A:
http://www.ftiab.se/hushall/faktamyter/fragorsvar.4.405877db1168b3d892a80001426.html
"Did you know?"
http://www.ftiab.se/hushall/faktamyter/vissteduatt.4.405877db1168b3d892a80001412.html
* 9 of 10 recycle packaging and papers.
* 3 of 4 packages get recycled.
* 4 of 5 papers.
* 750.000-800.000 metric tones of packaging get recycled every year.
* 459.000 metric tones of papers 2008, 52 kg / inhabitant.
* One metric tone of hard plastic can become 84.000 plastic flower pots.
* Every day 'Fiskeby Board' manufactures enough carton of recycled paper packaging material to make a 3.7 meter wide roll long enough to cover the distance from Malmö to Norrköping.
* If you put all the glass packages collected in Sweden within a year on a row they would reach around the earth.
* Paper can be recycled seven times before the fiber is worn out and gets burned for energy.
* Recycling of steel saves 75% of the energy which would had been used if you had made new one instead. If all steel packages where recycled that would be enough energy to heat 5.400 small houses.
* Recycling of aluminum saves 95%
* Recycling of glass saves 20% of the energy.
* There is as much energy in 1 kg of plastic packaging as there is in 1 kg of oil.
* Manufacturing of recycled paper only need 1/3 the energy of new one.
* Recycling of 1 kg of plastic saves 2 kg of carbon dioxide release compared to manufacturing new one.
Recycling process:
http://www.ftiab.se/hushall/omatervinningen/atervinningsprocessen.4.405877db1168b3d892a800077.html
Statistics:
Reduce and reuse come first and second in terms of efficiency.
This is a commonly held myth that can be corrected with the following very simple thought experiment: as an individual, I use a certain number of plastic bags each month. If I am careful and pack the bags better, I'll use perhaps 10 or 20 percent fewer. If I use each bag just *twice* instead of once, I've reduced my consumption of bags 50%. If I manage to use each bag *three* times instead of once, my use drops to 1/3 of previous.
Re-use is a far, far more powerful method than conservation.
So, re-use those boxes from Amazon; re-use those bags from the grocery store; re-use the containers your food comes in! You'll save money too, for not having to buy empty new containers made of exactly the same stuff (besides, you've already paid for the containers that your Amazon delivery came in, or your grocery bags, or your food containers ... it's built into the cost of those goods).
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.