Oil from Plastic Waste
One of my many interests is to read about alternative processes that turn waste into meaningful/reusable materials. For example: dog poop into methane to light a lamp. or turning plastic into fuel. In an earlier post I outlined a few attributes as to why perhaps we cannot completely do away with plastic. But what we can do is to find a means to have it not sit in landfills forever. Therefore, naturally, this article in the NYTimes about Reaping Oil From Discarded Plastic caught my attention. An Oregon-based start-up, Agilyx, has a system that can turn plastic into crude oil. They only have a small prototype system at the moment and are looking to start selling commercial systems soon. From the descriptions of the article, we figured that polyethylene was undergoing an incomplete combustion, then the resulting vapor (H2 and CO) is converted into hydrocarbons that can then be converted to diesel, jet fuel or other forms of oil. Pretty cool, right?! Well, we did some calculations with the numbers that were in the article and although a very good idea, it only about 64% efficient by weight. Which is comparable to other processes and actually might work, considering the input source is, in essence, free, if it is in fact coming from the local waste management. This process could perhaps be a way for municipal waste to fuel their own fleet. If they had the $5 million upfront to invest in the system.
* Special thanks to my labmate for the helpful discussion and unit conversion reminder. (thanks to article for not having easily interchangeable units.)