Transforming Waste Plastic Into $10/Barrel Fuel 315
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."
In the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the problems were last time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:$4.9 million spent on Frank Carlucci (Score:1, Insightful)
> If turning waste plastic into fuel was cost effective, they'd be doing it already.
There's a first time for everything.
Re:And In Other News (Score:3, Insightful)
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".
Re:I also saw this with great skepticism, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really new tech... (Score:5, Insightful)
Way cool (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, we are talking about converting this plastic to cheap fuel. Sounds like a winner to me. My only question is, there tend to be contaminants in many of these products (lead, mercury, etc). Will this drop it, or will these make it back into the fuel. If so, then not a great thing. OTH, if not, sounds like a wonder way to get cheap energy.
$10 per Barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Way cool (Score:4, Insightful)
You think the stuff we get from China's overpriced? You should see the cost of stuff made in America.
Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
I Love Magic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely this magic non-polluting gasoline from plastic would trump even the magic non-polluting electricity that will power all of the magic non-polluting electric cars!
In related news, they've solved the dilemma of getting rid of toxic waste. [aljazeera.net]
Re:And In Other News (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not exactly 10$ a barrel.
The plastic was made for a purpose and sold accordingly. The fact that it is now worthless junk is just because it has no additional purpose. That 10$ a barrel will go up when you are buying people's plastic!
Re:And In Other News (Score:1, Insightful)
That 10$ a barrel will go up when the oil companies buy up all the technology to bump up the prices and protect their profits!
Fixed that for you.
Re:And In Other News (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I Love Magic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
2000 pounds of plastic gives 126 to 210 gallons of gas... at 6.7lb/gal, that's maybe 1400 pounds.
Dare I ask how much energy is expended in this conversion?
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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:$10 per Barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Way cool (Score:3, Insightful)
You think the stuff we get from China's overpriced? You should see the cost of stuff made by people paid reasonable wages.
Fixed that for you.
Re:I also saw this with great skepticism, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? These companies make money selling oil, not drilling it. If they can get more oil to sell from other sources, surely they will jump at the chance of doing so? Especially when there's a definite "green" angle to spin for the sake of PR...
Re:Already... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:$10 per Barrel (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the production cost.
Re:Way cool (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming (and I realize that it is a grand assumption) that the chlorine is liberated as a part of the process: Isn't that chemical just another marketable byproduct?
Re:$10 per Barrel (Score:1, Insightful)
When oil hit $130 a barrel, no one stopped consuming oil.
Sure, if you ignore the people who moved closer to work or got lower mileage cars. Consumption did go down, but don't let those facts get in the way of your belief that the world has it out for you.
If you triple the prices of TVs, people will just flat out stop buying them. That's elastic. If you triple the price of oil, people will cut corners to consume 10-15% less. Unelastic.
If this technology would begin to impact prices by increasing supply, OPEC will cut production to keep the supply low.
Over the last couple years OPEC has shown itself surprisingly incapable to actually control the price. Of course supply is a factor in the price equation, but it is not the only factor.
No, they don't have soviet-style absolute control over the price of oil, but even you admit that they do have power over it and do exercise it. This means that the oil market is not free.
Re:And In Other News (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the sweet smell of capitalism working as it ought.
(BTW, I work in the oil industry, and I have no doubt what so ever about their standards of behaviour.)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe all the buried oil and metals are landfills from previous civilizations...
Re:What can you actually do with 5Mil (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And In Other News (Score:3, Insightful)
Make plastic into other plastics (recycle!)
That sounds good, but isn't 100% efficient either. Many kinds of plastic have no recycling market because it's hard to reconstitute it into high-quality material. So what you often get is the recycling center wasting resources on sorting out certain plastic types then dumping them in a landfill.
Moreover, a lot of other plastics are only turned into low-grade products. Take plastic decking boards. How many gallons of oil are tied up into just one of those huge solid chunks of junk plastic? Will that in turn get recycled again? Doubtful, because they usually mix in non-plastic fibers to give it what little strength it has. All that petroleum will probably get pitched in a landfill after the single recycling pass.
As long as anybody in the world is burning oil as fuel, it makes just as much sense to get the oil from junk plastic as from direct crude oil. If you want to complain about using petroleum, you need to *first* get all fuel use eliminated, *then* you can worry about plastic recycling. You're putting the cart before the horse.
Re:And In Other News (Score:3, Insightful)