Plastic to oil - what am I missing?

[Shadow]

 

Why isn't there one of these in every household? Why haven't I heard anything about this up until now?

[Phi for All]

What you're missing is:

 

1) How long does this process take?

2) How much does the machine cost?

3) How much energy does it take to run the machine vs the oil it reclaims (use the answers to #2 & 3 to figure return on investment)?

4) If it were scaled up from a household model to one that could serve a community, would it be more efficient?

 

I could see a community investing in a larger model and then selling the fuel back to its citizens to pay back the investment if the cost was less than at a gas station. I think a single household model seems inefficient, but without the answers to questions 1, 2 & 3 there's no way to know.

[Horza2002]

He says that you are basically distilling the plastic...you melt it and the make it evapourate before your condense it again in the water. I would hazard a guess that this is not very energy efficient....you are going to need a lot of energy to melt the plastic and get it into the gas phase. In terms of that, I dont think it would be very good. However, on a larger scale (say town sized) it could work.

 

Once problem them doesn't fix though, is getting out any impurities. There is such a HUGE number of different plastics that yo can't just melt them all down and get oil back from it...so it would probably involve alot of sorting out prior to actually using this.

[michel123456]

Why isn't there one of these in every household? Why haven't I heard anything about this up until now?

 

It is not for sale for households. It costs around 1,000,000 yen,(9200 Euro, 12800$).

 

1) How long does this process take?

2) How much does the machine cost?

3) How much energy does it take to run the machine vs the oil it reclaims (use the answers to #2 & 3 to figure return on investment)?

4) If it were scaled up from a household model to one that could serve a community, would it be more efficient?

 

1) i found no information on the company's site. edit: around 3hours for 0,7-1 kg of waste.

 

2) 1,000,000 yen,(9200 Euro, 12800$).

 

3) no information. there are provided datas, but not about that. Somewhere they say their operational temperature is around 400-450 centigrades. here in question 6. edit: Running Cost 1KW／h (Only as a guide) from here.

4) they do produce larger models.

Edited December 3, 2011 by michel123456

[Shadow]

I originally got the link from here, which says:

 

The machine produced in various sizes, for both industrial and home uses, can easily transform a kilogram of plastic waste into a liter of oil, using about 1 kW·h of electricity but without emitting CO2 in the process. The machine uses a temperature controlling electric heater instead of flames, processing anything from polyethylene or polystyrene to polypropylene (numbers 2-4). Comment: 1 kg of plastic produces one liter of oil, which costs $1.50. This process uses only about 1 kW·h of electricity, which costs less than 20 cents!

 

There is also a brochure you can download, which may or may not go into further details; I'm not a chemist so I'm not entirely sure. This seems to be the company's website; experimental data in particular may be interesting, but again, I have no way of judging the quality of the information they present.

 

Does any of this change anything?

[michel123456]

From what i understand, the result is not refined oil. It is crude oil.

[John Cuthber]

How does it compare to simply burning the plastic and recovering the energy from that?

[Shadow]

No idea, but I seem to recall he said something about that in the video.