How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Excalibur]

You did not say, but my guess is you are speaking about running a gasoline engine on stale gasoline (petrol) or kerosene, if the engine is hot to start with. This suggests that if one had access to cheap or free stale gasoline (petrol) or kerosene, then one could install a 2-tank-heated fuel system on a gasoline engine to get it to run on those marginal fuels, starting the engine on good gasoline, then switching over to kerosene once the engine is warmed up.

Yes, sorry I didn't clarify the engine type in my post. I was referring to a gasoline engine and in my case the vehicle was a Morris Commercial . This had a side valve 4 cylinder engine and was slow with a top speed of maybe 50mph. Also very hungry on the fuel.
Separate tanks were installed and a valve plumbed in to swap fuel feed for the carburetor. The kero fuel line was wound around the exhaust for preheating. Extra head gaskets were fitted to lower the compression. Running required that the engine be started on gasoline, then swapped to kero. Finally the engine needed to be run on gasoline before shutdown to ensure the next restart. This was about 1975 ~76 when kero was cheaper than gasoline. Now kero is a hideous price, more expensive than gasoline and in addition all the kero bowsers have disappeared from gas stations.

[lowriderzzz]

I am in contact with Asad by email but unfortunately his login to this forum has been blocked for some time. His good sense and wide knowlege is much missed.
I have produced some white spirit from plastic pyrolysis. As you may already know I take all of my fuel in one mixture and separate it later. I heat the mixture up to 90C and hold it there until the output from the still almost stops. This very light fraction is light naphtha. ( can be sold as cigarette lighter fuel).
I then increase the still temperature to 215C and hold it there until the output almost stops. This fraction is White Spirit. It contains mostly C7 to C12 alkanes.
As Asad mentioned there are almost no restrictions on producing, marketing and transporting White Spirits in most countries and it sells for considerably more than motor or heating fuel.

Hi IMBD/John. One quick question. What do you mean by heating still. You talk all the plastic fuel you got and bring it back in the retort for reheating ?

Thanks

[imakebiodiesel]

I am in contact with Asad by email but unfortunately his login to this forum has been blocked for some time. His good sense and wide knowlege is much missed.
I have produced some white spirit from plastic pyrolysis. As you may already know I take all of my fuel in one mixture and separate it later. I heat the mixture up to 90C and hold it there until the output from the still almost stops. This very light fraction is light naphtha. ( can be sold as cigarette lighter fuel).
I then increase the still temperature to 215C and hold it there until the output almost stops. This fraction is White Spirit. It contains mostly C7 to C12 alkanes.
As Asad mentioned there are almost no restrictions on producing, marketing and transporting White Spirits in most countries and it sells for considerably more than motor or heating fuel.

[sunilkm153]

white spirit or high spirit

Hello everbody .
NO NEWS is not a good news .

There is a complete silence at the forum , its very bad . I would request the community that We should keep it alive .

Anyway Nowadays i was experimenting with a different liquid product made from waste Plastic .
Following is its detail, In my next message I will explain how I did it .


White spirit
[CAS 64475-85-0][1][2][3], also known as Mineral spirits. It is a paraffin-derived clear, transparent liquid which is a common organic solvent used in painting and decorating.
In 1924, an Atlanta dry cleaner named W. J. Stoddard worked with Lloyd E. Jackson of the Mellon Research Institute to develop specifications for a less volatile dry cleaning solvent as an alternative to more volatile petroleum solvents. Dry cleaners began using it in 1928 and it was the predominant dry cleaning solvent in the United States from the late 1920s until the late 1950s.

It is a mixture of aliphatic and alicyclic C7 to C12 hydrocarbons with a maximum content of 25% of C7 to C12 aromatic hydrocarbons.
Initial boiling point of 149 °F (65 °C),
Dry point of approximately 156 °F (69 °C),
Specific mass of 0.7 g/cc.


White spirit is used as an extraction solvent, as a cleaning solvent, as a degreasing solvent and as a solvent in aerosols, paints, wood preservatives, lacquers, varnishes, and asphalt products.

In western Europe about 60% of the total white spirit consumption is used in paints, lacquers and varnishes. White spirit is the most widely used solvent in the paint industry. In households, white spirit is commonly used to clean paint brushes after decorating. Its paint thinning properties enable brushes to be cleaned (by preventing the paint from hardening and ruining the bristles), enabling them to be reused.

The best thing about White spirit is that there is no restriction of producing it in my country .
Hopefully same would be the case in other countries also .

Love U all .

dear friend asad
I am from India & i recently joined the forum few days back I feel the forum escorted by jetijs , imakebiodiesel ,excalibre ,you and many other friends is an wonderful yet practicle one . And after going through discussion pages on it I feel you are a high spirited fighter and that's why I called it high spirit instead of white spirit as on this page of discission you mentioned about white spirit please explain the process in detail along with what percentage of white spirit you recovered from 1 kg of mixed plastic waste is the process commercially viable .

[jonathan]

retort

thanks excalibur l will try find a shop to buy copper l will try ebay thanks all of you

[Beyond Biodiesel]

My first thought was: surely you mean a diesel engine running on svo?... Then I read your original thread.

There is simply no way to convert vegetable oil to gasoline without cracking it, so pursuing it is going to be as fruitless as trying to find the "magic pills" that are used to convert a tank full of water into gasoline.

Perhaps the most famous televised homebrew svo concoction is this Top Gear video of 6 years ago. I see it has over a million views now.
Top Gear - Vegetable oil for your volvo diesel - BBC - YouTube

Thanks for the link, Excalibur. I do happen to disagree with the proposed blend of blending only 3ml of non-kerosene into 97ml of vegetable oil to make it work as well as diesel. I am surprised it even got the engine started, but it does show that blending light fractions with heavy fractions certainly works for making a perfectly functional diesel fuel. My preference, as you know, is 20% gasoline (petrol) to 80% WVO. I have been running it on my diesel engine for 6.5 years.

In an emergency situation normal standards are 'out the window'. Only thing that matters is whether it runs and can an emergency be averted.
If an engine was started and warmed up, then a much lower fuel could be substituted. For a few weeks I ran a vehicle on kerosene after it was hot. There was a lot of smoke and power was crap but it went.
Another example is that an engine will run on stale gasoline but it won't start on it.

I hope you find the video. It would be interesting!

You did not say, but my guess is you are speaking about running a gasoline engine on stale gasoline (petrol) or kerosene, if the engine is hot to start with. This suggests that if one had access to cheap or free stale gasoline (petrol) or kerosene, then one could install a 2-tank-heated fuel system on a gasoline engine to get it to run on those marginal fuels, starting the engine on good gasoline, then switching over to kerosene once the engine is warmed up.

[Excalibur]

There's quite a bit of talk about the use of copper on this thread with opinions varying. I have used it in the condensers without apparent issue.
Currently I'm fitting my new reflux with a copper gasket plus my thermocouples have copper washers, one of which is on the retort hatch.
I will be advising if any of these copper seals fail.

Note that copper is estimated to anneal between 426'c and 650'c.

Should copper gasket prove effective, it will be a cheap solution as it can be re-used by annealing with a propane torch, oxy torch or even stove top, etc.
Quenching is optional. Older air-cooled motorcycle engines typically had solid copper head gaskets but we'll see if it works with retort temperatures.

[jonathan]

retort sealant

l read about copper catalyst or piping is not good for pyrolysis system but did you thing for retort copper gasket is the same proplem? thanks

[Excalibur]

My first thought was: surely you mean a diesel engine running on svo?... Then I read your original thread.

Perhaps the most famous televised homebrew svo concoction is this Top Gear video of 6 years ago. I see it has over a million views now.
Top Gear - Vegetable oil for your volvo diesel - BBC - YouTube

In an emergency situation normal standards are 'out the window'. Only thing that matters is whether it runs and can an emergency be averted.
If an engine was started and warmed up, then a much lower fuel could be substituted. For a few weeks I ran a vehicle on kerosene after it was hot. There was a lot of smoke and power was crap but it went.
Another example is that an engine will run on stale gasoline but it won't start on it.

I hope you find the video. It would be interesting!

[res0wc18]

WVO/ veggie oil to gasoline alternative

so this may sound crazy but its fact so please take it seriously. and i realize this is a little off topic but i was told to ask here.

here is my original thread http://www.energeticforum.com/renewa...tml#post237032

When i was a kid the local public station (KCTS Seattle) had one of these science for kids/teens shows on and i cannot recall what the heck it was called but anyways they took brand new veggie oil of the store shelf and made "an emergency gasoline alternative" by blending it in a blender with some common chemicals and then proceeded to pour it in an fj62 land cruiser and it ran without issue!


For the life of me i cannot find this video anywhere on the net etc. But me and my cousin distinctly remember it when we were kids watching it.

Anyone have an idea what im talking about?

[Beyond Biodiesel]

l find gasket like paper its about 1.2mm thick but l am worry about leakage

I do not believe that a paper gasket can handle cracking temperatures; however, a graphite gasket can.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
BBD - So, the right catalyst will not react with the gas, naptha and majority of the vapourised diesel molecules passing through it below cracking temperatures? I remember now that has been mentioned here previously. So I need to find a catalyst to cut molecules which are longer than diesel and confirm by test that it will begin cutting at temperatures above say 330C (boiling range of BP Automotive Diesel is 180-380C) so 75% of the vapourised diesel molecules will pass by unaffected (not be cut into naptha or gas). These vapours should pass by the catalyst without coking it up right?

Cracking temperature is 800F (425c) the vapor pressure for the light fractions is well below that, so if you take your retort up slowly, then all of the light fractions will leave the retort long before cracking takes place.

Also - if you mix 20% gasoline with 10-40 motor oil I understand you can get the viscosity spot on but won't it lower the flash point down to below that of diesel? Or are F.P. and S.G. it not too important in an older diesel (like mine)?

Flash point is irrelevant in any diesel fuel run on any diesel engine. All you need do is get the viscosity/specific gravity close to that of diesel fuel and you will be able to run your fuel blend on any diesel engine.

IMBD - you mentioned Zeolites including synthetic ones have a single fixed pore size and will crack a very narrow range of molecules. So if I find the right Zeolite / catalyst I can expect to run a single reflux with one gas phase contact catalyst passing all the vapourised fuel through it with no catalytic activity until the temperature is reached which corresponds to the length of molecule which boils off at that temperature? and the narrow cracking catalyst won't be fouled / coked by lighter vapours early in the boiling?

Cracking takes place at 425c, all of the light fractions will have long passed the refluxing zone, so your question is irrelevant.

Also - the reason you add a portion of high activity catalyst is to get the cracking started as soon as the retort temperature has reached cracking temperature right? This way you're not wasting heat waiting for the cracking to start. But on consecutive fills of the retort, while using the same batch of catalyst, you wouldn't need the high activity catalyst in the mix because the low activity catalyst is already activated right? (and the high activity catalyst is exhausted by this stage).

Thank you for your help and patience.

Col

Catalysts are "activated" by driving off water, which they absorb from the atmosphere and carbon,which they acquire through cracking. Therefore, all you need do to "activated" a catalyst such as zeolite is to heat it in the presence of oxygen to 1200F (650c).

Also, catalysts can be bought for various uses. They are typically sold by the Angstrom, which is the pore size. The smaller the pore size the smaller the molecule that they will crack your large molecules into.

[imakebiodiesel]

Coking is a direct result of cracking. If fully cracked fuel molecules are passed through a catalyst no coking will occur.
When cracking plastic most of the work is done thermally , however the thermally cracked plastic molecules vary widely in length C25 to C150 so a catalyst with a wide range of pore size, and acidity is needed.

Im not sure this is the case with wmo. From BBs experience it would seem that quite a lot of fuel can be extracted with simple distillation. The residue after that stage will be motor oil which is a narrow range of hydrocarbon C25 to C40? I think this could be efficiently cracked by one carefully matched catalyst but dont take my word on this as I have little experience with wmo.

[Excalibur]

won't it lower the flash point down to below that of diesel? Or are F.P. and S.G. it not too important in an older diesel (like mine)?

Yes, it will lower the flash point but that's not always going to present too much of a problem. What's more likely to be an issue is the restarting of the engine once it's shutdown hot and left for 5minutes+. It appears heat-soak can create bubbles in the IP and injectors.
There's a number of if's and but's, but much would depend on the boiling point of the gasoline, climate, vehicle design etc. Recently I tested my local gasoline boiling point and found it was 40'c while the US gasoline is 80'c. This is one reason why experiences can vary.

[Col]

some clarification...thx

Col, it is a non-issue, because most of the diesel fuel will have evaporated off from your WMO feed stock before you reach cracking temperatures. So, just put the catalyst in the retort with your WMO, and bring up the temperature, and never bring up the temperature too fast, or you will just have boil-over. I take 2 hours to get ot cracking temperature, and it seems to work fine for my 5-gallon (20L) batch WMO retort.

I am also not at all interested in cracking WMO, because I just mix the light fractions with the heavy fractions to make a middle fraction blend that is equivalent to diesel fuel. For example 10-40 motor oil, plus 20% gasoline equals diesel fuel.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
BBD - So, the right catalyst will not react with the gas, naptha and majority of the vapourised diesel molecules passing through it below cracking temperatures? I remember now that has been mentioned here previously. So I need to find a catalyst to cut molecules which are longer than diesel and confirm by test that it will begin cutting at temperatures above say 330C (boiling range of BP Automotive Diesel is 180-380C) so 75% of the vapourised diesel molecules will pass by unaffected (not be cut into naptha or gas). These vapours should pass by the catalyst without coking it up right?
Also - if you mix 20% gasoline with 10-40 motor oil I understand you can get the viscosity spot on but won't it lower the flash point down to below that of diesel? Or are F.P. and S.G. it not too important in an older diesel (like mine)?
IMBD - you mentioned Zeolites including synthetic ones have a single fixed pore size and will crack a very narrow range of molecules. So if I find the right Zeolite / catalyst I can expect to run a single reflux with one gas phase contact catalyst passing all the vapourised fuel through it with no catalytic activity until the temperature is reached which corresponds to the length of molecule which boils off at that temperature? and the narrow cracking catalyst won't be fouled / coked by lighter vapours early in the boiling?
Also - the reason you add a portion of high activity catalyst is to get the cracking started as soon as the retort temperature has reached cracking temperature right? This way you're not wasting heat waiting for the cracking to start. But on consecutive fills of the retort, while using the same batch of catalyst, you wouldn't need the high activity catalyst in the mix because the low activity catalyst is already activated right? (and the high activity catalyst is exhausted by this stage).

Thank you for your help and patience.

Col

[sunilkm153]

pictures of asad plant

Thanks for sharing pictures and congrats for your work !

Stainless steel nuts may seize more easily than regular steel ones . Using copper grease (anti seize grease) could be a good thing for high temp use.

I am experiencing incredible strong deposits into my first diesel batch, it was sitting here for about 3 to 4 weeks.

I really need to find a good anti-oxidant, not easy to get here.

I've got an lubricating oil factory nearby, they have antioxydant for oil, not diesel. They want to ask a lot of questions about my use for that, of course I'd never tell.

I wonder if the antioxydant they use for oil could work fine for my home made diesel ?

i nowhere found pictures for asad's unit please let me know where the pictures are
regards
sunilkm153