How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[snowinidaho]

Another idea to seal lid?

Thank you Jetijs for sharing.

Would it be possible to use a copper/asbestos head gasket seal as a cheaper alternative to machining the grove and wedge? I run a simple 6-1 slow speed Lister that has these head gaskets with a 5" hole opening. Would the whole be large enough to do the necessary cleaning of ash at the end of a run? Your ring and lid appear to be about 3/4 to 1 inch thick each?

Also I noticed the lid exposed while running. Are you able to insulate the top lid to save some of the heat from escaping?

What is your indicator the product is complete in the reactor? Is the gas flame burned out tell you?

I too am eager to build such a device. Thank you for your kindness.

Andrew

[dutchdivco]

jetjs

Kudos,Kudos, Kudos!! Great job and thread!!!Didn't answer; how do you get the O2 out? Does it just get used up early in the heating up process?
And, wondering if exhaust heat could be used, say from a diesel generator. Then the gen. could be used to make electricity.Jim

[Jetijs]

Jetijs thanks again for your information sharing. I know I am asking like there is no tomorrow.

Could you elaborate on how you would make the condensers so you have diesel and gasoline separated when they are being created?

Let's say that you want to cancel electricity and gas in your home. How would you use the diesel to have electricity, warm your house and your water?

Could the vegetable oil pump burner be also used to burn HHO (I am thinking in having a HHO machine some day).

Thanks. You are very generous helping those like me without experience at all.

I will draw a small picture of how the condensers should look and work later today. For using this fuel I would buy me a 10kW diesel generator to provide all the electricity to my house. Heating would be done using a diesel burner that would heat water that then flows through radiators in my home. It is obviously not practical to heat your home with electricity from the diesel generator, that would be not very efficient. That is all you really need to go off grid - plenty of plastic waste, a pyrolysis device, a diesel generator and diesel burner HHO wont work with oil or diesel burners, they are intended for fuels with slow burning speeds, HHO burns very very fast.

I thought of one more question, Jetijs. How difficult is it to clean out the leftover charcoal/byproducts? Do they have a tendency to stick to your container or does it come out fairly easily? I'm just wondering if there needs to be some kind of interior coating or alternate way to break the char away from the cylinder walls. Thank you for any information.

No extra coating is needed. If the process has completed fully, the charcoal on the cylinder walls will be dry and one tap with a hammer on the container will make them fall to the bottom. Very easy and fast. Also there is usually very small quantities of charcoal left, maybe a kilogram at most for every 25 kilograms of plastic, of course that depends on the plastic type and if there is any other materials in the mix along with plastic.

Thank you Jetijs for sharing.

Would it be possible to use a copper/asbestos head gasket seal as a cheaper alternative to machining the grove and wedge? I run a simple 6-1 slow speed Lister that has these head gaskets with a 5" hole opening. Would the whole be large enough to do the necessary cleaning of ash at the end of a run? Your ring and lid appear to be about 3/4 to 1 inch thick each?

Also I noticed the lid exposed while running. Are you able to insulate the top lid to save some of the heat from escaping?

What is your indicator the product is complete in the reactor? Is the gas flame burned out tell you?

I too am eager to build such a device. Thank you for your kindness.

Andrew

I don't know about copper, probably would work fine, asbestos works good, but it is hard to get nowadays. Russians use it for their tire pyrolysis devices with good success. 5" opening should be enough to clean the charcoal out or fill the reactor. The ring and lid is 10mm thick, thinner material would deform the lid as the bolts are tightened, because even when the wedge is fully inside the groove, there is still a small gap between the ring and the lid.
The top part of the lid can be insulated when the device is running, we just leave it open to see any leaking between seals or poor welds.
When the process starts, at first only the reactor and the lid heats up, as the plastic melts into boiling liquid and starts to evaporate, the condensers start to warm up also. A good sign that the process is ending is when the condensers start to cool down. When they are cool to touch, or even at room temperature, the process should be finished. There is a small outlet valve on the bottom of my condenser which I use to drain the fuel, this can be done also while the device is running. You will see that in the middle of the process a certain amount of fuel can be drained in certain amount of time. When the process is ending, less and less fuel will be coming out at the same time intervals

[Jetijs]

Kudos,Kudos, Kudos!! Great job and thread!!!Didn't answer; how do you get the O2 out? Does it just get used up early in the heating up process?
And, wondering if exhaust heat could be used, say from a diesel generator. Then the gen. could be used to make electricity.Jim

Hi
Yes, I forgot that. When the reactor starts to heat up, the air inside the reactor will increase its volume and most of it will be expelled, then as the plastic starts to melt, the remaining air will be used up in the process. So that has never been a problem
Exhaust gasses can be used for a diesel generator, but there is not much of the gas. I suppose that in order to run a say 3kW diesel generator, enough gas would only be produced with a unit 2x the size of ours. Also at first there is small amounts of gas, then it peaks and remains at that output for some time and at the end it goes down again. Not very reliable for a diesel generator. But if you use the produced fuel as main fuel for the diesel generator and attach the gas outlet to the air input of the generator so that air mixes with the gas and then with the fuel in the combustion chamber, it will aid the combustion and the generator will use less fuel. You will be using the gas up fully and it will work reliably

[avro539]

Hi Jetijs..Thanks for the reply...Your plastic converter has solved a problem about the cost of running the generator...probally about 30 minutes every 3 days to clean out..refill and setup per batch..I still have to find out how much diesel the generator will use per hr .. its 15 HP......I will be going ahead this year with the installation of the 10KVA generator..The generator will be both 415v 3 phase and 3 240v outlets with a sine modulator so we dont have problems with voltage spikes...makes it computer safe.....I'm going to install a time switch which will be able to switch mains on and off and start the generator automaticly...
While the generator is running would the exhaust manifold heat be hot enough to use as the secondary heating circuit condenser to process the gasoline and refine the diesel ....Bugler has been asking a lot of the questions I was wanting to know ....looking forward to the condenser drawings...Avro

[avro539]

Running a diesel generator

Hi Jetijs....Have a reply from the agent that supplies generators..it uses 1.5 liters per hour depending on the load....with a gas add to the intake manifold it probally would reduce the diesel comsumption...Avro

[mbrownn]

What an excellent thread. Ill be trying this in the next few weeks.

The only thing I could add is to use the waste heat to power a sterling engine and generate a little electricity too.

[bugler]

Jetijs could you please tell your friend to take a close picture of the interior of the external white box with the thermostate, etc?

The tank is qutie thick (external tank, insulation, bricks) so how and where is the thermocouple set?
What material is the insulation between brikcs and external tank?

What I don't see is why the cage is so big. Wouldn't be enough to have just the upper part of the cage that is resting on the top of the tank and holding the reactor?

Regarding the use of a generators they are too noisy for a flat. In a house with a little garden is ok cause it can be placed outside (even buried). Any other more quiet way?

Thanks.

This thread is so interesting!!!

[Jetijs]

Hi bugler
I have trouble with my computer so no drawings, but the thing is that in order to separate the diesel from gasoline you need two condensers one right after another. The first one that is just after the reactor should be kept at about 120-140 degree celisus as the diesel boiling point is around 150 degrees. You need to keep it hot but not too hot so that it does not evaporate. If it is hot, then it will stay liwuid, but anything that boils at lower temperatures will evaporate, that includes gasoline which will then condense in the second condenser which is not heated. This way you should be able to separate the fuels. This still needs to be tested, but should work fine. Temperatures might be a bit different to some degree, but that is a matter of testing.

If you look at the lid in my cad drawing, you will see that it has an outlet and another small hole in that a small metal tube is welded or hermetically bolted in. The bottom part of that tube is shut. This is used for measuring the vapor temperature, you just take the thermocouple and slide it in the tube and it will take temperature readings from there.

Yes, generators are noisy, but you can put it in a separate shed and insulate the walls with glassfieber insulation, should kill the noise nicely

The space between the bricks and outer drum should be stuffed with the same glassfieber insulation.

Thanks,
Jetijs

[dutchdivco]

Exhaust heat

Am wondering if exhaust heat could be used from a diesel engine, as the heat source for the processor. I have a diesel step van. Thinking use a gas water heater, remove gas lines, burners, top and bottom of outer shell. Now i have a 4' tank, shaped like a donut in cross section, and insulated.Mount it vertically at the back of my truck, run the exhaust up thru the center 'donut hole', and out the roof.Fill the tank with plastic.Already has a seperate 'vent line' at the top of the tank, I could use to pipe off vapors to condensers,and a 'spigot' at the bottom, to drain 'diesel fuel. etc. (Or am I misunderstanding; is all the diesel fuel recovered from the condensers, with only ash left in the tank?
On Buglers question; Why is cage so long? Another way to ask is "Why is tank so short? I realise you went with off the shelf coponents, but seems like tank could be taller, to go down closer to bottom of 'kiln'.Would increase capacity, of coarse.
Bugler; Research 'sound proofing'. It sounds crazy, but it works; A double walled box, with the inner wall 4"-6" from the outer wall.Nothing but air in between.Drill or cut 1"-2" holes in both the inner and outer wall, placed so they DON'T line up with each other.You won't believe how much it muffles the sound. Jim

[snowinidaho]

Hello Jetijs,

Thank you for your so many replies to others as well as myself.

As I was studying the short movie, I noticed the condensing side was slightly modified from the still photos at the beginning of the thread. Did adding three separate chambers allow for the diesel to separate from the gasoline? Were the products similar in all three vessels? Would possibly just insulating the first condenser chamber allow enough retained heat to condense the diesel yet continue to vaporize the gas to a non-insulated condenser?

I'll be calling our "big" city to find recycled plastic tomorrow. Thank you loads for your contributions.

Andrew

[mbrownn]

Fractional Distilation

To separate the different fuels we need fractional distillation.

If we use the fuel to power a diesel generator, could we use the hot water in the cooling system as a method to keep the first separator at 90 degrees? Would this be hot enough to fraction off the major component in gasoline?

Fuel Boiling Point (oF)
Acetaldehyde 70
Acetone 134
Acetylene -119.2
Benzene 176.2
Butylene 21.2
Ethyl Alcohol 172
Ethan -127.5
Ethylene -154.7
Fuels Oil No.1 304 - 574
Gasoline 100 - 400
IsoButane 10.9
Isobutene 19.6
Isopropyl alcohol 181
Iso-Octane 243.9
IsoPentane 82.2
Kerosine 304 - 574
Methane (Natural Gas) -258.7
Methyl Alcohol 149
n-Butane 31.1
n-Heptane 209.1
n-Hexane 155.7
n-Octane 258.3
n-Pentane 97.0
n-Pentene 86.0
Naphthalene 424.4
NeoPentane 49.1
NeoHexane 121.5
Propane -43.8
Propylene -53.9
Triptane 177.6
Toluene 321.1
Xylene 281.1.

Of course we are getting more sophisticated now which does add cost to the basic device. I think Im getting ahead of myself.

Of course with all this heat around some of it could be used for domestic heating in cooler climates.

[snowinidaho]

I have a question about the excess gas

Helo Jetijs,

On your set up, what is the btu amount that is being exhausted into the air? I was trying to figure out how many btu's I would need to supplement in additional heating. I thought perhaps if I place a 10,000 btu heater to start the process and then as it progresses I would have the additional torch to make up the difference necessary to heat the reactor. I thought to just place enough fuel in the heater to run for the 4 hours or the appropriate amount of time necessary to finish the batch.

How do you do the end to make your torch?

Many thanks,

Andrew

[mbrownn]

Do the molecules of the fuel oil break down every time it is boiled in the reactor?

[mbrownn]

Further research into Gasoline production suggests that the major component can be fractioned off at 95c+: however this will be a fuel that is prone to pre-ignition (Dieseling) in engines. So if this was used in a normal gasoline engine you would have to alter the timing of the spark and may experience a change in power output.

A diesel engine can run on almost any oil although some will be better than others.

Cracking PE will give mainly paraffins (Kerosene is a paraffin). A diesel engine will run on this when it is warmed. The paraffin wax can be separated out by cooling and straining though it is not absolutely required. (meting point is 60c, boiling point is 370C)

If putting the paraffins back into the reactor breaks down the molecules further then more petroleum products will result and some sort of fractioning will become more important and viable.

Large diesels run on heated bunker oils with little problem.

Smaller diesels have been run on cooking oils without any cracking although the power is lower.

Maybe the best compromise is a two stage cracking process with three fractioning vessels.

That is the product of the first vessel, held at a temperature of 275c be fed back into the reactor, the second vessel is held at 100c to produce kerosene and the third at room temperature will collect petroleum distillates in the gasoline region.

I hope I got all these figures right hehe, it came from wikipedia. I’m sure someone in the petroleum industry could give us better info.