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I made this following comment to Excalibur via an Email to him. I have edited it slightly and posted it here, because I think it is important to understand.
Costs, will vary around the world with things like what people pay for what ever energy they use and that includes what they pay for Fuel from the Pump and what they Pay for Fuel to heat their Retort and if they have to pay for the feedstock or not.
If you look at it from a slightly different angle, it makes a little more sense.
Firstly, we will leave out the fact that we have to have fuel(energy) to provide the heat to get the process started. We will add that in later. Lets pretend that in this example, as soon as we create the heat under the Retort the Fuels(total outputs including Gas) instantly start coming out the output. Lets now take that Fuel output and use it to heat the Retort, so we have a Total 100% feedback of Retort producing Fuel to heat Retort. At this point we also need to pretend that there is no escape of heat energy anywhere, lets say everything is 100% efficient. We will bring those losses in later as well.
As you know, the process is not combustion (which is an Exothermic reaction resulting in oxidation) and produces energy. This process is called "Endothermic". It requires an energy input to create the work of turning the Plastic into it's various constituents. The heat energy in this case is not a result of a reaction, it is the cause of the Reaction and we are the ones providing the Energy.
So if we take all that fuel and combust it under the Retort to heat the plastic, the process will actually slowly decrease. The fuel output will slowly drop away. The energy we are trying to supply to the Retort will decrease till the process eventually stops completely. It's a law of physics. If by some chance it could sustain itself, you have just created Perpetual Motion and we know that can not happen.
Even in an abnormal World of Physics, such as creating a super conductor by taking an electrical conductor down to absolute zero, you can place energy into a loop and it will keep running around the loop, but the best we can hope for is that it can only ever sustain itself. If we maintained our supercold absolutely no loss environment, then the best we could ever hope for is that the Energy output would equal the energy input and the process would sustain itself, but it could never produce excess energy. As soon as we took energy from the device, it would fail.
Following so far??
Back to our Pyrolysis machine.....Now we can bring in our losses and oh boy are there lots of them. So firstly, there is energy loss in producing the Heat. The laws of Physics means that producing energy takes energy. A simple explanation is say Friction. The reason why you burn Fuel to move your Vehicle along the Road is due to resistance. Resistance from the mechanical Movement through to traction on the Road. If you could remove all friction from the Vehicle o the Road, the Fuel consumption would dramatically reduce. But you would not be able to get moving, because the Wheels won't grip. If you did manage to get moving, you would not be able to turn, or Stop. So resistance is a necessary Evil. So moving along,
Transferring energy from heat source to Vessel will have a loss. Then there is energy input into heating the Steel Vessel itself. Then a loss due to transmission through the vessel, because it is not super efficient at transferring heat. Then there is energy loss between Vessel and Plastic, because they don't have a perfect interface. Plastic is quite insulative, or poor at Heat Transfer, so the Plastic melt wastes a lot of energy. There is loss due to the fact that the Plastic may not be 100% pure and 100% clean, so some particles are not going to be plastics turned into fuel, but will still be robbing energy. Then we have losses through insulation etc.
Then the Plastics finally give up their Ghosts and head off in the direction of the pipe. Along the way, the Gasses are loosing energy and the first thing it meets is the Reflux, where it cools even more and some of it is returned to the retort to be heated again, thus taking some more energy to bring that cooler Gas back up to temperature and back to the reflux.
Then there is the left overs. So we already know that in the best cast scenario, we get .86grams of Liquid Hydrocarbon product from 1Kg of Plastic, so we have a loss there. We have Carbon and other impurities lying in the bottom or the Retort, which is part of the missing weight and then we have Gasses we can't use and expel to atmosphere, so out the exhaust that energy goes, but lets hope we can use it to help heat the Retort.
Then we add in the external to the process costs. So first of all, we all need to look at what is spent on materials to make the Machine in the first place and future costs of replacement of anything as it wears. Most likely the Retort and elements etc.
Plus this is where we add in the cost of energy to heat the system. Then additional equipment and labor for things like Filtering for example. Whatever may need to happen to the end products to make them usable. That is going to take both Consumables, equipment and Labor, of which in some situations, Labor needs to be considered. So "energy" can also be measured as a financial Cost.
So in the end, it takes more energy to make our Energy, than what we can possibly get back out of it. A simple law of physics and from one University Test Result, they worked out that there is a efficiency of only about 20% to maybe 30% at the most. So if you put that into Barrels of Oil, (which is what they did), it takes about 4 to 5 Barrels of Oil worth of energy to get 1 Barrel of Oil of reclaimed energy back. Whether that one Barrel of Oil can cover the costs of the 4 to 5 barrels of energy expelled to produce the 1, depends on what you pay at the Pump for a ltr of Fuel. Here in NZ, we currently pay NZ$2.17/ltr for 91 Oct Petrol/Gasoline and NZ$1.57/ltr for Diesel.
Costs, will vary around the world with things like what people pay for what ever energy they use and that includes what they pay for Fuel from the Pump and what they Pay for Fuel to heat their Retort and if they have to pay for the feedstock or not.
If you look at it from a slightly different angle, it makes a little more sense.
Firstly, we will leave out the fact that we have to have fuel(energy) to provide the heat to get the process started. We will add that in later. Lets pretend that in this example, as soon as we create the heat under the Retort the Fuels(total outputs including Gas) instantly start coming out the output. Lets now take that Fuel output and use it to heat the Retort, so we have a Total 100% feedback of Retort producing Fuel to heat Retort. At this point we also need to pretend that there is no escape of heat energy anywhere, lets say everything is 100% efficient. We will bring those losses in later as well.
As you know, the process is not combustion (which is an Exothermic reaction resulting in oxidation) and produces energy. This process is called "Endothermic". It requires an energy input to create the work of turning the Plastic into it's various constituents. The heat energy in this case is not a result of a reaction, it is the cause of the Reaction and we are the ones providing the Energy.
So if we take all that fuel and combust it under the Retort to heat the plastic, the process will actually slowly decrease. The fuel output will slowly drop away. The energy we are trying to supply to the Retort will decrease till the process eventually stops completely. It's a law of physics. If by some chance it could sustain itself, you have just created Perpetual Motion and we know that can not happen.
Even in an abnormal World of Physics, such as creating a super conductor by taking an electrical conductor down to absolute zero, you can place energy into a loop and it will keep running around the loop, but the best we can hope for is that it can only ever sustain itself. If we maintained our supercold absolutely no loss environment, then the best we could ever hope for is that the Energy output would equal the energy input and the process would sustain itself, but it could never produce excess energy. As soon as we took energy from the device, it would fail.
Following so far??
Back to our Pyrolysis machine.....Now we can bring in our losses and oh boy are there lots of them. So firstly, there is energy loss in producing the Heat. The laws of Physics means that producing energy takes energy. A simple explanation is say Friction. The reason why you burn Fuel to move your Vehicle along the Road is due to resistance. Resistance from the mechanical Movement through to traction on the Road. If you could remove all friction from the Vehicle o the Road, the Fuel consumption would dramatically reduce. But you would not be able to get moving, because the Wheels won't grip. If you did manage to get moving, you would not be able to turn, or Stop. So resistance is a necessary Evil. So moving along,
Transferring energy from heat source to Vessel will have a loss. Then there is energy input into heating the Steel Vessel itself. Then a loss due to transmission through the vessel, because it is not super efficient at transferring heat. Then there is energy loss between Vessel and Plastic, because they don't have a perfect interface. Plastic is quite insulative, or poor at Heat Transfer, so the Plastic melt wastes a lot of energy. There is loss due to the fact that the Plastic may not be 100% pure and 100% clean, so some particles are not going to be plastics turned into fuel, but will still be robbing energy. Then we have losses through insulation etc.
Then the Plastics finally give up their Ghosts and head off in the direction of the pipe. Along the way, the Gasses are loosing energy and the first thing it meets is the Reflux, where it cools even more and some of it is returned to the retort to be heated again, thus taking some more energy to bring that cooler Gas back up to temperature and back to the reflux.
Then there is the left overs. So we already know that in the best cast scenario, we get .86grams of Liquid Hydrocarbon product from 1Kg of Plastic, so we have a loss there. We have Carbon and other impurities lying in the bottom or the Retort, which is part of the missing weight and then we have Gasses we can't use and expel to atmosphere, so out the exhaust that energy goes, but lets hope we can use it to help heat the Retort.
Then we add in the external to the process costs. So first of all, we all need to look at what is spent on materials to make the Machine in the first place and future costs of replacement of anything as it wears. Most likely the Retort and elements etc.
Plus this is where we add in the cost of energy to heat the system. Then additional equipment and labor for things like Filtering for example. Whatever may need to happen to the end products to make them usable. That is going to take both Consumables, equipment and Labor, of which in some situations, Labor needs to be considered. So "energy" can also be measured as a financial Cost.
So in the end, it takes more energy to make our Energy, than what we can possibly get back out of it. A simple law of physics and from one University Test Result, they worked out that there is a efficiency of only about 20% to maybe 30% at the most. So if you put that into Barrels of Oil, (which is what they did), it takes about 4 to 5 Barrels of Oil worth of energy to get 1 Barrel of Oil of reclaimed energy back. Whether that one Barrel of Oil can cover the costs of the 4 to 5 barrels of energy expelled to produce the 1, depends on what you pay at the Pump for a ltr of Fuel. Here in NZ, we currently pay NZ$2.17/ltr for 91 Oct Petrol/Gasoline and NZ$1.57/ltr for Diesel.
Am chilling the beer in anticipation... 
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