Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back to Oil
June 26th, 2007This is some interesting news. I wonder how much electricity the machine requires!?
Hopefully, the Indonesians will be at the top of the list of customers…
Via: New Scientist:
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas.
All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).
Key to GRC’s process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.
GRC’s machine is called the Hawk-10. Its smaller incarnations look just like an industrial microwave with bits of machinery attached to it. Larger versions resemble a concrete mixer.
“Anything that has a hydrocarbon base will be affected by our process,” says Jerry Meddick, director of business development at GRC, based in New Jersey. “We release those hydrocarbon molecules from the material and it then becomes gas and oil.”
Whatever does not have a hydrocarbon base is left behind, minus any water it contained as this gets evaporated in the microwave.
Related: Global Resource Corp
Research Credit: DJ
I recently read a supposed quote from Buckminster Fuller something like, “Pollution is just a resource we haven’t learned how to use yet.”
This may help, but it won’t do much for the plastics in the seas. And then there is all the pesticide residues.
Another variant of the thermal depolymerization scam. The original fraud created air pollution and above market price synthetic oil out of turkey scraps. After fleecing US investors, the company finally left the US in search of greater government subsidies in the EU.
If its worth two cents someone will take it. One the 10 wealthiest people in the world is a Chinese woman who took US recycled goods and well, I guess she recycled them. Who knows? I certainly hope it hits Indonesia. The picture posted on this site of the Indonesian river full of trash was one of the worst photos I’ve ever seen.
Just as long as the EROEI isn’t ridiculously negative, it will at the very least give us a means of “getting rid of” the ridiculous amount of plastic we throw away; only 5% of the stuff gets recycled, and we make so very, very much of it. And it will be turned into something we can use.
http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml
In my opinion, the only thing worth making from oil is plastic. Burning it up as fuel when there are other alternatives is just retarded. With all the oil we burn in cars, we could plaster industrial-strength solar panels onto every building, vehicle, and highway.
And that’s just one alternative.
Well, put me in the optimist camp here — as in, “I hope the F so.”
My chemistry background is limited to barely passing a freshman course, so who the hell knows. But converting petroleum to something that could never be turned back to a carbon energy source always seemed like a weird speed bump. Eventually it would be cheaper to develop a process for turning those mountains of stupid plastic back to energy.
But this is only a cause for optimism if the human population gets back to a reasonable 18th Century level of, say, 600 million worldwide.Although I’d be perfectly happy with 10 million worldwide. Who knows more than a few hundred people? What great city is anything but suburbs or slums beyond the happy pedestrian center?
The horror for those people will be plastics, unless there is a way to get rid of them and perhaps produce some energy here and there. To harvest the sea of plastics for heating oil would be grand.
Plastic came about just over a half century ago. I hope the people of 2075 — the few, the proud — are able to forget about it. Hell, the dog poop baggies I buy today are made of corn starch. They actually biodegrade! I tested one in my compost heap, and sure enough ….
I’m with Alek Hidell: I suspect it’s a scam. Good question, Loveandlight, about the EROEI!
Also, I am worried about those “residues.” No CO, fine, no CO2, fine but what about chlorine? Most–though not all plastics contain at least one chlorine in every hydrocarbon group. I’d sure like to know what they plan to do with it.
Also, what about dyes, aka, heavy metals? Can they separate them to make . . . um . . . more colored plastic? Or something?
More vaporware/investor fleecing, just as Alex alludes to.
Energy in > energy out.
I can see this being useful for extracting oil (and other chemicals) for feedstock purposes. Doing this then turning it into petrol and burning it is just retarded.
We showed a very hopeful “everything into oil” article published in a reputable science periodical to an engineer friend. He nodded and explained that every year he sees one or two stories like this. They never go anywhere and they are never followed up on. Hopefully the establishment has sense enough to at least keep prototype copies in some vault.
At best case, it’s still eating your own waste stream, ignoring the obvious EROEI problems. Without the ‘waste’ products to begin with (and the energy-guzzling endless growth paradigm system that created them), you have nothing. Delaying the inevitable.