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Continuous System For Converting Waste Plastics Into Crude Oil
rtoz writes: A MIT spinout company aims to end the landfilling of plastic with a cost-effective system that breaks down nonrecycled plastics into oil, while reusing some of the gas it produces to operate. To convert the plastics into oil, this new system first shreds them. The shreds are then entered into a reactor — which runs at about 400 degrees Celsius — where a catalyst helps degrade the plastics' long carbon chains. This produces a vapor that runs through a condenser, where it's made into oil. Much of the system's innovation is in its continuous operation (video). This company aims to produce more refined fuel that recyclers can immediately pump back into their recycling trucks, without the need for oil refineries. Currently, 2 trillion tons of plastic waste is sitting in U.S. landfills, so there is a huge demand for this technology.
It said in the article that the plastic itself, once converted to fuel is used to fuel the process which is converting the plastic to fuel. In other words they pull off a little of the fuel converted from the plastic to fuel the process going forward. Other than the initial startup energy it should be energy independent.
Plastic is a nasty waste product (it doesn't biodegrade and it kills living things) that we need to find a way to either reuse or properly destroy. Converting the several trillion tons of plastic waste in US landfills into fuel oil not only saves the space in the landfills it recovers energy from a waste product. It's a good idea if the total economics of the setup are profitable enough to justify hauling it to a disposal site or small enough to build these at landfills. It's a damn good waste reduction technique that will ensure we don't end up with the planet in the movie Wall-E (which was buried in garbage like plastic waste).