How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[mjohnson1]

Excalibur

He stated in his post he was processing LDPE.

Beyond Biodiesel

My thermal pyrolysis yields are far less than my best catalyst formula even with a reflux. I find this interesting because a catalyst is just suppose to speed up the reactor or change the fuel types but i'm getting more fuel with catalysts.

I overlooked the fact that he was processing enough plastic to get 20l of diesel. Typical scales of that size aren't as accurate as the smaller gram based scales so a degree of error like you mentioned is reasonable.

I honestly just couldn't believe what I read because i've put in so much work getting my yields high.

All my initial tests I run in a rig made of black pipe and then take the winners and run them in a glassware setup.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

I've ran 150+ tests and never broke 90% by weight. Thermal pyrolysis alone doesn't yield 96% by weight which is why I ask. If he's putting in 10kg of plastic and getting 9.6kg of fuel then there's no reason why me and many others test catalysts at both the backyard level and commercial level.

In addition, there are hundreds of scientific journals on pyrolysis and none that i've found relating to thermal pyrolysis get to the 90% mark even with a reflux.

I thought 96% was a bit rich, but considering that most of us are backyard enthusiasts, then a 6% error was reasonable. In fact we could all expect a 10% in any of our measurements, so let us not be too critical of the less significant numbers.

Also, since you brought up that thermal pyrolysis will yield about 90%, that practice should be good enough for most of us. To get another 5% commercial petroleum refineries have to do back flips, but those back flips are worth millions of dollars when you are processing millions of gallons of petroleum.

However, for most of us here we are happy with 5 gallons (20L) of fuel production a day. So, I see no point in investing a great deal of time and effort to squeeze another quart (liter) of fuel out of my feed stocks.

You have missed the fact that rozier is currently cracking wmo.

Thanks, Excalibur, for paying attention to the small details. However, is message was as follows:

SUCCESS!!! I made my first 20lt of diesel today.pure gold in colour and runs in the car perfectly.This is after reading 1000 plus threads and in between the line's.Perserverance will make you a winner.
Note! no catalyst used yet, will try in future batches.Raw material used was LDPE black irrigation pipe.
Will keep post ongoing as we progress.

So, apparently he was indeed cracking LDPE; although he has posted on distilling WMO as well.

[Excalibur]

putting in 10kg of plastic and getting 9.6kg of fuel

You have missed the fact that rozier is currently cracking wmo.

[mjohnson1]

It would have to be by weight, because ti is mostly air between all of the pieces of plastics in the pyrolysis unit. 96% yield is about as good as one can expect. The rest will be coke, which is the byproduct of cracking, and some dirt that makes its way into the unit.

I've ran 150+ tests and never broke 90% by weight. Thermal pyrolysis alone doesn't yield 96% by weight which is why I ask. If he's putting in 10kg of plastic and getting 9.6kg of fuel then there's no reason why me and many others test catalysts at both the backyard level and commercial level.

In addition, there are hundreds of scientific journals on pyrolysis and none that i've found relating to thermal pyrolysis get to the 90% mark even with a reflux.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

96% yield by volume?

It would have to be by weight, because ti is mostly air between all of the pieces of plastics in the pyrolysis unit. 96% yield is about as good as one can expect. The rest will be coke, which is the byproduct of cracking, and some dirt that makes its way into the unit.

[jonathan]

Great work rozier 56 good luck if you can post photos .it will be help for others. Thank-you

[mjohnson1]

Thks guys,just making some changes to the burner system to improve efficiency.No catalyst but i believe the trick is my reflux column.Yield was a great 96%, not bad for a first timer.

96% yield by volume?

[rozier56]

Thks guys,just making some changes to the burner system to improve efficiency.No catalyst but i believe the trick is my reflux column.Yield was a great 96%, not bad for a first timer.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

SUCCESS!!! I made my first 20lt of diesel today.pure gold in colour and runs in the car perfectly.This is after reading 1000 plus threads and in between the line's.Perserverance will make you a winner.
Note! no catalyst used yet, will try in future batches.Raw material used was LDPE black irrigation pipe.
Will keep post ongoing as we progress.

Good work. Hydrocarbons just crack on their own if you get them up to 800F (425c), so that is why you did not need a catalyst to crack your LDPE. You may find using a catalyst in your pyrolysis unit is just too much work, or maybe not.

[mjohnson1]

rozier56

Nice work. Do you know what your % yield was by weight?

If you could post some pictures of your setup i'm sure we could all benefit.

Best of luck!

[Col]

First working batch

WOOHOOOOO!
Way to go rozier56. Cheering for you.

[rozier56]

SUCCESS!!! I made my first 20lt of diesel today.pure gold in colour and runs in the car perfectly.This is after reading 1000 plus threads and in between the line's.Perserverance will make you a winner.
Note! no catalyst used yet, will try in future batches.Raw material used was LDPE black irrigation pipe.
Will keep post ongoing as we progress.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Hi:
I found this setup for WMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgHX0wTYzE

Thanks for the links, fibuslitero. It looks like that WMO distillation system will process about a quart (L) of WMO in a day. My WMO distillation system will process 5 gallons (20L) of WMO in 4 hours. Here is a link to my work building a WMO distillation unit.
Batch Process Distilling WMO

I also found this "diesel polishing" system.
Seems interesting for our experimental fuels since I think it is no always possible to avoid finding particles, water and sludge from oxidation in our experimental production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKkTM1jwp8I

I agree. I find a lot of odd particles that make it through my WMO distillation system. Here is a link to my fuel polishing system, which can process fuel at the rate of about 1 gallon per minute, or faster.
A tour of a waste oil diesel fuel blending system
Welcome engrmalik. There are lots of videos and links on plastic pyrolysis.

[engrmalik]

The process is really simple, it is similar to how alcohol is made. If you heat plastic waste in non oxygen environment, it will melt, but will not burn. After it has melted, it will start to boil and evaporate, you just need to put those vapors through a cooling pipe and when cooled the vapors will condense to a liquid and some of the vapors with shorter hydrocarbon lengths will remain as a gas. The exit of the cooling pipe is then going through a bubbler containing water to capture the last liquid forms of fuel and leave only gas that is then burned. If the cooling of the cooling tube is sufficient, there will be no fuel in the bubbler, but if not, the water will capture all the remaining fuel that will float above the water and can be poured off the water. On the bottom of the cooling tube is a steel reservoir that collects all the liquid and it has a release valve on the bottom so that the liquid fuel can be poured out. Here are some pictures to better understand the design:









This device works on electricity (3 phase), it has six nichrome coils as heating elements and consumes a total of 6kW (1kW each coil). The coils are turned on and off by three solid state relays, one for each phase, the relays are controlled by a digital thermostat with a temperature sensor just a bit below the lid, so that the vapor temperature can be monitored. You need to heat the plastic slowly to about 350 degrees and just wait till it does the magic. Our device has a capacity of 50 liters and can hold about 30 kg of shredded plastic. The process takes about 4 hours, but it can be shortened considerably by tweaking the design a bit. As I said, this makes a liquid fuel that can be used as multifuel, that means it can be used on diesel engines and also on gasoline engines, but we still need to test it will work on gasoline. It works for diesel engines just fine, that has already been tested. There is a difference in what plastic you use, if you use polyethylene (plastic cans, plastic foil, and all kind of flexible non break plastics) you will get out liquid fuel that will solidify as it cools into paraffin, it is still good for diesel engines as long as you use a heated fuel tank, because it needs to be heated just about at 30 degrees celsius to be liquid and transparent. If you don't want that, you can put the paraffin through the device for one more time and you will chop those hydrocarbons even smaller and half of the paraffin will turn to liquid fuel and other half will remain a paraffin, but much denser and will melt at higher temperatures, this is the stuff you can make candles out of and it does not smell at all when burned, maybe a bit like candles. But if you use polypropylene (computer monitor cases, printer cases, other plastics that break easily), you get out only liquid fuel, no paraffin at all. All you need is just filter the fuel out of solids and you good to go and put it in your gas tank. We have made the analysis and it is almost the perfect diesel fraction. It has no acids or alkalines in it, like fuel from tires does. The unit in the pictures can convert about 60 kg of plastic into 60 liters of fuel in one day. Other methods of heating the reactor can be employed, electricity is just easier to work with and control. Some Japanese companies manufacture such devices, but their prices for this size unit is more than 100 000$, our home made device cost us 900$ max. We use aluminum oxide bricks to insulate the heat, they are light as foam and can be easily cut in any shape, but any kind of insulator can be used. The bricks make the highest costs for this device. It can also be made using liquid fuel burners to heat the reactor, this will enable to make the device self sustainable by using about 10-15% of the produced fuel along with the produced gas. A small farm can use a device this size and make fuel for itself by converting plastic waste to fuel, farms have very much plastic waste and it is a big problem, at least in my country. Our next goal is to make the same thing possible using biomass, every farm could then use old leafs, wet grass, saw dust and all kind of biomass and gasify it into tar like substance that can then be put through the pyrolysis device and turned into biodiesel. But we will see about that. Here are some fuel samples:

These are samples from polyethylene, in the first run out comes mostly paraffin like liquid that solidifies at temperatures below 20 degrees celsius, the other clear sample is from the same paraffin that is gone through the process one more time. Will post more pictures and a video later.
Thanks,
Jetijs

Hey Jetjis amazing show of dedication and innovation you put up there ....
Just for a better understanding can you upload any video in which you are using this Plastic waste converted fuel into a Diesel Engine.

[fibuslitero]

Hi:
I found this setup for WMO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgHX0wTYzE

I also found this "diesel polishing" system.
Seems interesting for our experimental fuels since I think it is no always possible to avoid finding particles, water and sludge from oxidation in our experimental production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKkTM1jwp8I