How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[AetherScientist]

While I am aware that methanol can be extracted from wood, I was not aware of other ways to extract it, nor ways to turn methanol into gasoline, other than burning it straight. So, please tell us more.

Chemical composition of methanol is CH4O. The chemical components needed are carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. You can extract hydrogen from water electrolysis and C and O from CO2, carbon dioxide. To get carbon dioxide you need a chemical filter to capure it. H2O + NaOH (cautic soda). Reacting them in a well configured chamber will give as a result CH4O.

[AetherScientist]

hi
We can use all type of plastic in this device?

No, the chinese man said that you can use only 3 or 4 types of plastic:
polyethylene, polystyrene and polypropylene.

[mnp346]

hi
We can use all type of plastic in this device?

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Has anyone here tried to make synthethic methanol?
There is also a way to convert methanol to gasoline.

While I am aware that methanol can be extracted from wood, I was not aware of other ways to extract it, nor ways to turn methanol into gasoline, other than burning it straight. So, please tell us more.

Hi
I'm a technician at a technical college and we have come across this thread
I'm hoping that we can make a small demonstration unit that will allow the students to see this process in the classroom, using the fuel to run a small diesel engine.
First question, is it possible?
I have a section of 6" steel pipe that I thought we could use and heat it with a gas ring underneath.
With out going into any further dialog could you tell me if this is possible?

Thank you

Alan

I agree with Excalibur, a Pyrex demonstration unit might reveal the most to students, but you will need 5-gallon (20L) capacity to get about 1-gallon (4L) of fuel. So, your idea of using a section of 6" pipe is a good one.

[Excalibur]

That is the basics of it , yes. You need heat the plastic to evaporation temperature in an oxygen free environment. There are numerous cases on this thread that show it working at that most simple level.

Some months ago there was talk about lab pyrex for observation purposes of the principles of plastic pyrolysis. Sadly there hasn't been any video or pics posted showing the phenomena but hopefully at some stage we can all see such a thing.
A picture would be a thousand words, a video would be a million.

[kerrsy]

making a school size heater

Hi
I'm a technician at a technical college and we have come across this thread
I'm hoping that we can make a small demonstration unit that will allow the students to see this process in the classroom, using the fuel to run a small diesel engine.
First question, is it possible?
I have a section of 6" steel pipe that I thought we could use and heat it with a gas ring underneath.
With out going into any further dialog could you tell me if this is possible?

Thank you

Alan

[AetherScientist]

Has anyone here tried to make synthethic methanol?
There is also a way to convert methanol to gasoline.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Dear all
...I heard a story about some body who was operating a retort and it exploded and killed him. What would have happened??

Most probably a plug in is refluxing column. The reflux needs to be the same temperature as the boiler or trap before it.

[Excalibur]

My new retort is 8mm wall though I would have settled for 5-6mm if I could have found some. My flange is machined from 25mm plate. In my opinion, flame heated retorts would require a thicker wall thickness than electrically heated ones.
An oil drum wouldn't be substantial enough. Also I noticed that plastic film was used to seal a drums' rolled edges so the first thing that would happen is that plastic would melt and create a leak. Whether all drums are like this one I saw is unknown. Either way they are too thin.
An old retired gas cylinder would be a much better candidate.

[khouchaymi]

Retort wall thickness

Dear all
what should be the thickness of the retort wall. I noticed that the cover is more than 10mm in thickness and the screwes and bolts are very strong.
Can an oil barel by it self do as retort with fire underneth.
I heard a story about some body who was operating a retort and it exploded and killed him. What would have happened??

[greenpower37]

plastic to diesel

DearJetijs,

Greetings from south sudan .Can i get yr email ..cel..we are keen on plastic to diesel as we have daily acess to 2 mt cleaned plastic shrrrreded scrap which comprises of pet /hdpe /ldpe mostly.we are doing it maily to keeo city clean.can to kindl;y let me know if you can offer us a bigger machine please.A reply shall be highly appreciated best
kogikap@gmail.com;123454]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[/QUOTE]

[mercedes 308]

does anyone of you guys know if plastic from farm use can be used? i think about the plastik from bale wrap. black and green plastic. or can anyone tell me what it's made of?

LLDPE#4
Agricultural films
(silage bags, greenhouse films, wraps for hay bales)
Note:
Because agricultural films often come in contact with the ground
or most farm products, many recyclers currently reject this material due
to contamination. Chemicals and paint used for UV protection are other
contaminants often found on agricultural films


http://www.plasticbagrecycling.org/02.0/Worksheet1.pdf

[mjohnson1]

Pyrolysis of plastics is relatively safe if you feed hdpe, ldpe, pp only. A simple sink/float tank is all that's needed to test plastics. I've never ran into problems using every plastic that floats in water.

I believe your blockage is caused by something in your feedstock which you already said you knew. With the appropriate catalyst you can process many more types of plastics.

[waterboost]

How very dare you?

I consider that an insult....

I think one of the reasons people drop of this thread is they cant be bothered to do things properly... or they are busy and have moved on...

A picture of a plugged reflux (3" wide) on a 50litre reactor should be a warning to those using 1" pipe... Pressure gauges cost v.little and we have two blow off valves, which despite the blockage have never gone off...

My intuition is better than my safety equipment

[Beyond Biodiesel]

My guess is one of the main reasons why regulars drop off this thread is they end up with a plugged reflux, like above, it blows up their retort, and if it does not kill them, or put them in jail for causing death and/or injury to others, then they are hopefully too scared to try making another pyrolysis unit, because a plugged retort will make a big boom when it goes.