A Machine That Turns Plastic Back Into Oil

You have to remember that this won't be "real" oil like lt sweet crude, it will be a byproduct of oil, which is still oil but very very heavy crude. You would not be able to burn it for fuel...in fact it's basically just recycling it back into plastic...which we can already do.

reply to post by yellowcard

Actually, if the reaction from the heating produces the right components, the device appears to use fractional distillation to turn the components into gasoline, diesel, and kerosene directly. Fractional distillation is what produces these fuels form oil in the first place.

Watch the video in the link and toward the end in the demonstration you will see there are three output canisters.

TheRedneck

They just need to make all plastics 100% recycliable and put a fair deposit on it like soda bottles and now at least in new york water bottles. For all the bulk plastic like bags, wrappers, and other everyday products they could make a set weight worth a nickel.

Everything that is metal has a value of some sort and can be brought back to the junkyard and they pay you for the scap and recycle it and make money themselves. So everyone make something and its even cleaning things up in the process. The trick is that most metals can be recycled over and over again.

This guy has the right idea but it doesn't seem like you would get that much positive energy from it since you have to use energy to to convert it back to oil and gas. Plus that fact thier is gonna be waste and what sort of energy is it gonna take to dispose of that waste. I could see it being used in homes. Using the plastic to make gas for your car or heating oil. Then your just burning it up once again putting crap in the air that doesn't need to be there. The issuse with the left over waste gets me too. What would you do with that bury it, burn it? then you back to square one.

The best way to deal with this is to keep it in its current form and reuse it over and over and over and over again. Think, if everything was 95% reuseable thier would be 95% less waste. Even food waste can be processed to make soil better. Thiers a thought a natural fertilizer instead of chemicals. Just have to seperate the organic from the inorganic. Who in the world would do that. Its to dirty for the average American to do. Well i know a few million people that are willing to do all the dirty work MOST Americans will not do. Hint! Hint!

I actually enjoy the fact that when I put the soda and water bottles out next to my trash. I do well so i dont need the few bucks to bring them back to the store but someone may. within an hour all those bottles and can are usually gone cause someone took them. Why? Because they can turn in the waste product for some money and make meal out it if they choose to do so. they almost get something for nothing but time and I don't have the time to take those bottles back.

The point is we need to keep using what we have instead of plundering the worlds resourses and beauties it beholds. This guy has the right idea but he needs to refine it a little better, pun intended lol

We need more inventions like this!! All our garbage should be recycled. We can't keep on burying it. Instead of coming up with new inventions to kill people in wars, maybe we should use that creative thinking to help preserve our world for future generations.

The big questions:

1) Does it take more energy to refine vs. the oil (or other substance/s gained) produced? (in other words, is it cost effective for a company to do this?...If not, then still won't happen).

2) Is the end product usable in applications currently using natural oil?

3) Why hasn't this been done before? Must be some hefty reasons...obviously not the only one to think of it...

Where can i order this machine? what website, at what price? i dont see any references being made to sell this product. I really want to buy it. Anyone?

I doubt that this process really saves much in the way of carbon. fuels. After all it does electricity to power the machine. Why not just contiune to transform plastic back into plastic like we already do? The real issue is folks not disposing of their plastic properly.

Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by yellowcard

Actually, if the reaction from the heating produces the right components, the device appears to use fractional distillation to turn the components into gasoline, diesel, and kerosene directly. Fractional distillation is what produces these fuels form oil in the first place.

Watch the video in the link and toward the end in the demonstration you will see there are three output canisters.

TheRedneck

That is true, but the chemical compounds in plastic are what is left over from the initial distillation...so there is no way without changing the chemical make-up of the plastic to make it into fuel.

reply to post by TheOracle


The irony is that by the time this gets hold we'll be re wrecking the environment mining landfill sites for yogurt pots.

Wish someone would invent a machine to recycle some of the crap I buy back into cash.

On a more serious note, If we could get a machine to do this for every town or village now that would be a fresh air.

I wonder if, using this technology, you could make a for profit business removing plastic from the great pacific garbage patch and converting it into oil. Selling said oil.

Originally posted by WeRpeons
We need more inventions like this!! All our garbage should be recycled. We can't keep on burying it. Instead of coming up with new inventions to kill people in wars, maybe we should use that creative thinking to help preserve our world for future generations.

People are inventing stuff all the time that isn't tied to the military Usually projects like these fail, because while they are cool, they aren't cost effective...and are thus worthless to humanity and investors.

[edit on 23-8-2010 by yellowcard]

One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity. That is remarkable, however the next question is how much electricity can 1 liter of oil produce??

reply to post by yellowcard

I said 'components', not 'compounds'. Those are two different things.

The device is essentially a polymer 'cracker', just like crude oil is 'cracked' to increase the amount of lighter hydrocarbons for gaseous fuel/gasoline usage. All a polymer is, is a long chain of (primarily) hydrocarbon and carbon bonds. If you start separating this chain, you end up with links, each link being a hydrocarbon compound. Depending on how well-'cracked' the polymers are, you end up with lighter plastics, tar, oil, diesel fuel, gasoline, propane, or natural gas.

Of course, if there are other bonds in the plastics (say chlorine as in poly-vinyl-chloride or PVC), those will react to the 'cracking' process in different ways. That is my only real concern about this.

TheRedneck

Heh, time to take out the garbage to the curb...where my vehicle is waiting to be refueled. Just go on ahead and insert your plastic bottle into the bottle/small plastics shute, pour your used cooking oils into the "oil tank", and dump your organics into the methane converter, and don`t forget to hook up the hose from your "used shower/toilet/sink water" reservoir stored under the house onto the H2O power converter, its right next to the "veg oil" tank. Ok... and you`re all set for the month, so don`t forget to arrange your pickup for the next 3 weeks out of the month, so you can sell your trash&used water/oil for the rest of the month to the city so they can use it to fuel the firetrucks and other emergency vehicles and, in turn, sell their surpluses to the megatropolis 35 miles down the freeway, using the money to pay the saleries of the aforementioned emergency service personel and other city/state administration. Biodegradables are of course pursued but not absolutely necessary and so not used in cases where certain structural properties are required. The hugest plus, of course, was finallyy being able to do something with the existing trash polluting our oceans and cities. Landfills are "mined" into non-existance... with all the extra profit/free energy, collecting the unrecyclable waste including chemicals and toxic waste which corporations used to dump illegaly to avoid the high cost of disposing of properly.

reply to post by mysticvibes

The energy density of crude oil is about 37·10^6 J/L. A Joule (J) is equal to one Watt-second (W·s). So a liter of crude would contain 37·10^6 W·s/L.

Time required is an issue here, and the link says nothing about the number of kWh required (I would assume this guy is not from MIT or UAH... he also uses the term 'oil' when actually he is talking about fuels). But we can look at it another way. Gasoline (which is what he is actually talking about) contains 34.2 J/L of energy. So if we look at it as a break-even point, 3.42·10^7 W·s/L / 1000 W = 3.42·10^4 s/L = 34200 s/L = 9.5 hr/L.

If it takes 9.5 hours to produce a liter of gasoline from plastic, then it neither uses nor loses energy compared to what the electricity needed already contains. If it takes less time, it uses less energy than it produces; more time means it uses more energy than it produces.

It would be nice if we had that time factor...

TheRedneck

Energy density source

This is what I think we can do:

Parabolic solar reflector aimed at a tank of plastic to melt it down.

I think this will be the most effective way to use this idea.

To tell you the truth, I like it. All this trash will need to be eliminated in the future. My future.

For the life of me, I can't find information on the Blest company the video is about. Google, Ask, Wiki, etc., etc. The japanese stock exchange, nuthin! Anyone else find out about the company? I might want to buy some stock! I own some GBRC which has an interesting technology for microwaving tires and such, back into fuel oil goo but the company hasn't done much at all despite Best Invention from Pop Sci and other accolades. If I can use a windmill to power a system to reduce plastic so its free electricity, so much the better! If anyone can find anything, please let me know for curiosity's sake!

Or, recycling centers can just make one massive machine based off the prototype and collect plastic, they would in turn be making profit off oil.

This machine was made for three purposes.

1) To reduce the amount of plastic going into landfills. For areas with limited space for landfills this machine solves that problem.

2) To reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. The amount of carbon that is generated to create usable oil is 80% more than what this device uses.

3) To remind people that what they throw away can still be useful.

It's not a money maker at this scale, but I suspect it could be used to make money. At this point, it's just something to prevent plastic waste from causing more harm to the environment and to make something useful.

I'm positive, there is a net loss in energy with it's use, but overall, it's a net gain when it comes to space and carbon footprint and sometimes that costs money.

Where I live, power is about $.10 per KWh. Looks like you'd probably break about even at the current cost of gasoline where I live now if you refined the oil twice more to make usable gasoline.

Not sure what kind of byproducts you'd have to dispose of, but I can bet you it'll be a lot more compact than the plastic that was originally being sent to the landfill.

On this site specifically, people can't see the forest through the trees. They're too busy looking for free energy or the next conspiracy that they don't see something to make the world a better place without being something earth-shattering. Gotta chip the jade off these folks.

reply to post by jaxnmarko


Here's their website...

I like it.

www.blest...%2Bjpn%25E2%2580%258B.com%26hl%3Den" target="_blank" class="postlink">LINK