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."
What can you actually do with 5Mil (Score:4, Interesting)
That just doesn't seem like it will build much of a "facility"
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You're absolutely right.
That aside, this seems too good to be true.
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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:What can you actually do with 5Mil (Score:5, Informative)
The way industry works is this: After a process is deemed to have potential, first you spend a small amount (5 million dollars is a drop in the bucket in the cashflow of a real company or process plant) on a proof-of-concept plant called a 'pilot plant'. If the pilot plant shows the process is both viable and economical, then you can convince investors to put a few hundred million dollars into a full-scale process plant.
This seems to be a new technology, it makes sense that it'd be a pilot plant right now.
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There is a lot of DC that I've never seen, but I was wondering where they found those vacant lots with trees where they were able to set up a couple tractor trailer loads of tanks and catwalks. I'll check the yellow pages for propane/LNG wholesalers....
Re:What can you actually do with 5Mil (Score:5, Funny)
There is a lot of DC that I've never seen, but I was wondering where they found those vacant lots with trees where they were able to set up a couple tractor trailer loads of tanks and catwalks. I'll check the yellow pages for propane/LNG wholesalers....
I'm sure it must get a mention in the latest Dan Brown book as some kind of conspiracy involving the Freemasons trying to undermine the Oil Cartels.
Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been thinking of something like this factory, on a boat equipped with fishing nets processing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Wonder how much oil is in there?
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:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:4, Funny)
And anchovies. Don't forget anchovies are the secret behind Mom's Old-Fashion Robot Oil, and they willon goion extinct around 2200.
http://theinfosphere.org/A_Fishful_of_Dollars [theinfosphere.org]
Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:5, Funny)
And dolphins.
But they're intelligent!
Except for the ones that spend all their money on instant lottery tickets. They're stupid, so it's ok to eat them...
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Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:4, Informative)
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Problem is that although the "Great Garbage Patch" does indeed contain quite a lot of refuse, it's spread over an enormous area (ie. 2x the size of the continental US). It's unlikely that collecting any meaningful quantity of garbage would be economical -- in fact, it would likely be quite expensive.
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Regardless, I think you're probably right - it would likely still be exceptionally expensive.
Probably not a bad way to generate some supplemental funding for a clean-up, though.
Re:Can we put one of these factories on a ship? (Score:4, Funny)
Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
That's what plastic is made of!
The summary left unsaid that it is the removed hydrocarbons that are retained, and the rest discarded.
Then the retained hydrocarbons (82% of the input) is reduced to an "oil product". Tfa linked to rather thin page which explained vary little.
Further digging at environ.com yielded this:
The reactor, a vital component of the unit, utilizes a heating system that converts plastic into oil through low temperature thermal cracking in a vacuum. Using this innovative approach, the Envion Oil Generatorâ produces oil and power safely, efficiently, and economically through an environmentally sensitive process that produces a net gain in energy recaptured.
A single Envion unit is capable of processing up to 10,000 tons of plastic waste annually, producing three to five barrels of refined petroleum product per ton of plastic waste.
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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.
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The law of conservation of energy only applies to a closed system. This isn't a closed system.
The plastic feedstock contains vast amounts of energy, where the point of the process is to change it from a solid to a liquid that can be used in vehicles. Since we've established that the feedstock contains a vast amount of energy, it's only reasonable that some of that energy can be burned to power the process of converting from a solid to a liquid.
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Luckily, DOW has a full team of imagineers on staff, or this whole oil based economy wouldn't exist.
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
TFA quotes up top 82% recovery, the envion.com website indicates an average of 60% conversion. 1400 lbs out of 2000 lbs that would be 70% conversion.
And the amount of energy needed for cracking is not much.
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of landfills as caches for the future.
The size of landfills are starting to attract attention of the metals recycling industry. There are concerns about reopening these landfills due to poor record keeping in the past; not knowing exactly what is down there.
But the plastic glass and metal will still be there when the econemic conditions are right for mining these places.
The US "system" of measures strikes again! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, it didn't say that.
Some people are intelligent enough to figure these things out by themselves.
Re:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
On the envion.com web site, PVC is mentioned as one of the major components of their feed stock. This indeed surprised me, you are right, the chlorine is an issue. If burned it may produce dioxins (very very poisonous stuff), or hydrochloric acid that wreaks havoc on any metal parts it comes in contact with, such as the internals of your engine.
Either they have a way to remove the chlorine later, or they take care of it in another way - this is not mentioned on the web site. At least I couldn't find it. If there is really chlorine in the product then I'd not want to use it at all. And I also doubt it could pass any environmental standards when used in engines due to the dioxin problem.
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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:Remove Hydrocarbons from Plastic???!!!! (Score:5, Informative)
The chlorine will not be "liberated" to Cl2 as it is not chemically stable in this case. As soon as there would be a Cl2 molecule in the mix, and it finds a hydrocarbon with a double bond, it will react with this hydrocarbon. And double bonds there will be plenty of considering it is a cracking process. So no chance to get Cl2 gas out of it without taking special measures beyond just thermal cracking of the plastic.
Pyrolysis (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Pyrolysis (Score:5, Interesting)
Flash point isn't a problem in an inert atmosphere.
Various technologies have been around to do this; the problem has always been scale and water consumption.
Hope these guys get somewhere with the process, and I hope the process is indifferent to the type of plastic involved. The wide variety of plastics used has always been a major problem for plastics recycling.
Of course, you're still left with a nasty sludge - plastic contains non-hydrocarbon chemicals - and this is not a replacement for petroleum since the plastics were made from petroleum to begin with. But! This may make "mining" landfills a more interesting proposition... now you can get methane, various metals (in relatively pure form) AND liquid fuels from old landfills.
=Smidge=
Plastic Sludge (Score:3, Interesting)
The sludge would still be mostly hydrocarbons, just heavier stuff. It might be useful for putting into road paving asphalt.
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The sludge would still be mostly hydrocarbons, just heavier stuff. It might be useful for putting into road paving asphalt.
Or making plastic....
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Quoting the Envion.com web page:
You utilize a heating system that converts plastic into oil through low temperature thermal cracking in a vacuum.
Does that clear it up? If so, please explain it to me....
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Lol well, my layman's understanding (which, in this case, merely comes from the parsing of words here and in TFA), is that if you heat plastic in a vacuum at a low heat the polymer breaks down and most of the hydrocarbons are released.
It will be interesting to see if this can scale at all, a $5 million facility is nothing (modern processing facilities push the $1 billion with a "b" figure), the daily output of just one oil facility in the US would probably average several times the yearly output of this fac
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"This isn't exactly something new, pyrolysis is a perfectly viable way of generating fuel."
1. Build portable liposuction-pyrolyzer units.
2. Sell to fatass Americans who will then be able to power their SUVs using their fast-food diet.
3. Profit!
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Question is will it take more or less energy to heat the stuff in the first place? What would come out if the plant would only be allowed use its own fuel for the creation of that infrared light? Would it even output anything, or just eat even more?
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I've been compiling an electricity industry report over the last couple of weeks. One of the interesting things I ran across was Whispergen [whispergen.com], a company in New Zealand (I'm not affiliated with them). Quiet, low maintenance home generators based on multifuel Stirling engines. They've recently opened a new factory in Spain for high volume production.
Very interesting - if we can manufacture fluids from waste plastic that are reasonably energy-dense, the exact thermal profile of their burn may not rule out th
Infra red energy? (Score:2)
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Re:Infra red energy? (Score:5, Informative)
Nope - IR is a photon (i.e. an energy packet). This energy matches the vibrational energy levels of a molecule, so when it's absorbed it results in the same motions that we call heat. Heat can bleed in all directions, while light can only go in straight lines. Next time you're at a campfire/bonfire, hold up a hand and put your face in the shadow - you'll notice that you feel a small amount of heat on your face, but that overall it's much colder-feeling since you're not absorbing those IR photons.
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So that's how they snuck in that patent on fire.
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Hey, get an extinguisher, your patent is on fire!
Sure. You "irradiate" with IR until it melts... (Score:3, Funny)
...and then run the hot liquid through your radiators.
Envion? (Score:4, Funny)
I can't quite put my finger on it, but the name of the company scares me for some reason.
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What the problems were last time (Score:3, Insightful)
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I suspect the marketed fuel will be just fine. I mean they are processing the stuff I am sure they will turn it into something chemically like coal oil. The question is what do they do with all the industrial waste from the non petroleum components of the plastics they are recycling.
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Question answered (Score:2, Funny)
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/16/1440244 [slashdot.org]
I also saw this with great skepticism, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
...the key part of TFA for me was:
We'll find out soon whether Envion's process works as well as the company claims --- the $5 million inaugural plastic-to-fuel plant opened today in Washington, DC, and an undisclosed company has already agreed to buy Envion's product to blend into vehicle fuel.
So yes, we'll find out soon, I guess.
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What happens if this fuel turns back into plastic after sitting in a fuel tank for a while?
Re:I also saw this with great skepticism, but... (Score:5, Funny)
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I wish I had a mod point. That's the funniest quip I've read in a while.
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hoooooooot pocket!
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Why do you have owls in your pocket?
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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...
Washington DC based? (Score:2)
I also wonder what their scientist to lobbyist ratio is.
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.
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.
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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:Way cool (Score:4, Insightful)
$10 per Barrel (Score:5, Insightful)
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The point is they can _make_ it for that, therefore it's viable.
The point is they can _make_ it for that, therefore it's viable. Duh. And if it's only $10/barrel then it is very viable indeed!
However, since the plastic is made from a barrel of oil in the first place, I'm skeptical that it could end up cheaper in the long run. Perhaps it appears viable considering today's value for waste plastic, but it might not be after the increased demand for the material is realized.
In the long run it will be evaluated
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:$10 per Barrel (Score:5, Funny)
Life's harsh, but we manage to make it through the night.
oil from tires (Score:3, Interesting)
what ever happened with that technology?
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]
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Won't this upset the natural order of things? (Score:2)
Just when we were getting used to the paradigm of "Earth plus Plastic," someone wants to go use up the plastic!
Not Recycling (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not Recycling (Score:5, Informative)
I'm working in the plastic recycling industry.
You are correct for the fact that many plastics can be recycled. Almost all plastics can be recycled. But they have to be pure, and that's where the problem is.
Many packing films are multi-layer products: one layer for strength, one on top for gloss, another on the bottom to make it sealable, one more as moisture/oxygen/smell barrier, etc. This kind of plastic product is very hard to recycle, and often only to very low-end products. Fuel recovery is not that bad an idea.
Another issue is that it is often not known what plastic a product is made of. That becomes even more an issue when it is all mixed, such as post-consumer waste like we are now dumping in landfills or burning in incinerators. Those plastics need sorting (difficult if you have no way to tell what it is), washing, etc. A lot of work, very expensive to do, and as sorting is never 100% you will again end up with relative low end applications for the recycled plastic.
A lot of the plastics collected in USA and Europe is shipped to China for recycling, especially the post consumer waste. These fractions often have a negative price at the source: Chinese users pay a little bit for the material, but less than transport cost let alone collection cost. Sorting cost is high, recovery rates low. Pyrolysis may well be a cheaper and even environmentally favourable solution for these mixed plastics compared to shipping them to China or India for recovery.
Any higher-value stream will not go for pyrolysis. Higher value as in post-industrial wastes (they are generally clean and pure), or sorted fractions from domestic (think PET bottles (soda, water), HDPE bottles (soap, milk), PE film (wrapping film, shrink film, carrybags) or agricultural film). Those fractions are now being traded and recycled on a commercial basis.
In the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In the future... (Score:5, Informative)
You've failed basic research.
Wood gas generators, called Gasogene or GazogÃne, were used to power motor vehicles in Europe during World War II fuel shortages. These are just gasification devices which can use pretty much any organic fuel. Gasification is a common process technique for power plants around the world.
the Fischerâ"Tropsch process was invented in WWII by chemists in fossil-fuel poor Germany, and can convert the synthesis gas from gasification devices into low-sulphur diesel fuel. Companies in the United States, South Africa, Malaysia, Germany and Finland all either have functioning process plants or companies planning on creating process plants.
It hasn't been suppressed or killed, it's in use today. Don't mistake "Gas and oil prices are too low to justify investing in this stuff" for "we don't want this technology to exist".
Re:And In Other News (Score:5, Informative)
And in other news, a new law was finally passed making it legal to beat fraudsters to death with copies of their SEC filings.
RTFA: This company has already built a facility, and has already landed a contract for the fuel. They are using a well known technology, just with a slightly different take (IR instead of chemical catalysts). This doesn't exactly look like vaporware to me.
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Call me a skeptic, but when someone starts talking about $10/barrel oil made from trash, well let's just say we have a saying here in Missouri: "Show me".
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Alright, I've left the wife's tupperware in the microwave for 12 hours now, and nothing is happening. What gives? RTFA AGAIN!! Oh, wait - IR, not microwave. Hmmmm. It's gonna take a long time with this little 'mote control thing, isn't it? I need a bigger 'mote....
Google "remote control infrared" - no, nothing there, how about "Huge remote control inrared" - hmmmm, one more time: "FUCKING HUGE REMOTE CONTROL INRARED"
Ahhh, screw it [flickr.com]
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It's not exactly 10$ 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!
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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.)
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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:And In Other News (Score:5, Informative)
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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
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is that also the saying you guys use when some bud says he has nekkid pictures of your mom? :P
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And in other news, a new law was finally passed making it legal to beat fraudsters to death with copies of their SEC filings.
RTFA:
This company has already built a facility, and has already landed a contract for the fuel. They are using a well known technology, just with a slightly different take (IR instead of chemical catalysts).
This doesn't exactly look like vaporware to me.
So the hydrocarbons come off as a liquid?
*rimshot*
Thanks all, I'll be here all week! Remember to tip your waitress!
Re:And In Other News (Score:5, Informative)
As much as I hate fraudsters and vaporware, they actually opened the facility (RTFA required)... time will tell if it's working, but it's not vapor or pie-in-the-sky... it's here.
Re:$4.9 million spent on Frank Carlucci (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, nothing new can ever be (or have the potential for becoming) cost effective, because if it was, it would already be done by everyone, everywhere, already. Everything that can be done, is already being done. Semptember 16, 2009, is the official end date of human progress.
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i can't wait to get an aeron chair again.
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.