How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[lowriderzzz]

Yes, except mine are green. Last spring I upgraded my solar system, which brought the gain up to 120AMPs, two weeks after that my first inverter blew. I blew one every 2 weeks until I realized that I had too much gain and not enough batteries, so I installed 8 more batteries, and I have had no more inverters burn up since August 1st. Power Bright repaired them all, that is how I ended up with 3. You can read more about my solar system at this link.
Solar energy

I did't knew you use batteries. Do you think it will be possible to use direct solar energy via the pv panels to heat the retort in a bright sunny day without the use battery stack ?

btw link is not working...

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Thanks BB
I think its the coke and im going to clean it!
and another doubt,is it possible to fasten the process?
i am having a delay of 45 mins. to get to 350°C. any thing i could do to decrease this time?

45 minutes to get to 350°C is very fast. I expect that you are not measuring your fluid, but the heater. The heater is going to get to operating temperature quicker than the fluid. My WMO unit takes about 2 hours to get the fluid to 400c. That seems fast enough to me.

i can neither increase the number of heaters nor the power.i am currently running at 2KW and its what i think is safe to play with!

How much volume are you dumping 2KW into? I am using about 2KW for 20L. I could put more heaters on, but I do not have the power. So I use a lot of insulation to do more with less.

I mean any catalysts to do pyrolisis at low temparatures?

Cracking temperature is 400C. As far as I know there is no "low temperature" catalyst.

[ashiki]

Either you have a problem with your heaters, or your retort is getting coated with coke. Coke is an excellent insulator, so the thicker the layer of coke that forms on the inside of your retort, the more heat you will need to dump into it, until your cracking runs will just start to fail.

Thanks BB
I think its the coke and im going to clean it!
and another doubt,is it possible to fasten the process?
i am having a delay of 45 mins. to get to 350°C. any thing i could do to decrease this time?
i can neither increase the number of heaters nor the power.i am currently running at 2KW and its what i think is safe to play with!

I mean any catalysts to do pyrolisis at low temparatures?

[Beyond Biodiesel]

I have ran almost 6 baches of plastic bags till now. but the last batch was a bit problamatic.
it took more temparature to crack .

Either you have a problem with your heaters, or your retort is getting coated with coke. Coke is an excellent insulator, so the thicker the layer of coke that forms on the inside of your retort, the more heat you will need to dump into it, until your cracking runs will just start to fail.

and also left behind something like burnd paper in my retort.
i am sure that i havnt put any paper in it,only polyethene bags.some was so colourful.
would it be dye?or something else?

The "burned paper" might be a coating on one of those polyethylene bags, or it is a left over bag that did not melt.

[ashiki]

I have ran almost 6 baches of plastic bags till now. but the last batch was a bit problamatic.
it took more temparature to crack .
and also left behind something like burnd paper in my retort.
i am sure that i havnt put any paper in it,only polyethene bags.some was so colourful.
would it be dye?or something else?

[Excalibur]

Yes, the problem is common for those starting out and is because your reflux is either missing or ineffective. For you a study of the reflux principles is the key to understanding the problem and the solution. There are hundreds of posts on this very forum covering a variety of aspects on the subject of reflux.

Here is an example of a reflux vessel. In brief, a reflux's job is to recycle the vapors that have too long carbon chains by automatically allowing them to condense and subsequently run back to the retort for further cracking.

[octavio]

question

someone could tell me, why iam only producing wax?
tanks

[Beyond Biodiesel]

That sounds like a nice design. Is that the inverter that you are using ?

I assume it is pure sine wave.

Yes, except mine are green. Last spring I upgraded my solar system, which brought the gain up to 120AMPs, two weeks after that my first inverter blew. I blew one every 2 weeks until I realized that I had too much gain and not enough batteries, so I installed 8 more batteries, and I have had no more inverters burn up since August 1st. Power Bright repaired them all, that is how I ended up with 3. You can read more about my solar system at this link.
Solar energy

[lowriderzzz]

That sounds like a nice design. Is that the inverter that you are using ?

I assume it is pure sine wave.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Hi there. Does anyone uses PV solar panels as a source for electricity heating.

I plan to buy 10m2 of PV panels (6 pieces of 240Wp each = 1440W), and I'm trying to estimate how big unit it could power up.

According to the original Jetijs device he states that for 60kg unit he uses 6KW.
So for me for 1440W=1.44KW will be able to power a 1,4kg unit. According to the simple math. Am I correct ?

However I've not deducted other energy losses from inverter etc.

Does anyone has some more experience with solar or electrical heating in general ?

Thanks

Yes, I have been running my WMO distillation unit for almost 1.5 years on solar. I have 30 130w unisolar panels, and now 3 3500watt PowerBright inverters and 12 220AH 6 volt batteries making up a 24 volt battery bank.

My WMO distillation unit has run on about 1500watts, and it takes about 4 hours to complete the distillation of 5 gallons (20L) of WMO.

Peek power gain with my 30 130watt solar panels during the summer has been 120AMPs, or 3000watts during the 4 hours of peek gain from 10AM to 2PM.

After the spring equinox the gain fell off to 90AMPs, which is about 2000 watts during the peek gain hours of only 11AM-1PM, so there is simply not enough gain now to run my WMO distillation unit, so I have dismantled it and I am rebuilding it. I also have plans to improve my solar system so that I will have enough gain even in the winter to run the unit.

Also, my future upgrades for my WMO distillation unit are likely to require 6KW, and possibly as much as 21KW in short bursts, this is in part why I have 3 3500watt inverters.

One strategy that I plan to employ is staged heating of my condenser traps. The boiler will be the first system to receive heat. Once it comes up to its control point, then the PID controllers will introduce a duty cycle that will quickly become 50% or less on/off. At that point I plan to turn on the heaters for my first trap. This means at points in this cycle the watt demand could be 3000 watts.

All of the heated condenser traps will have been heated by the vapor stream coming from the retort/boiler, so that bring the first trap up to its control point should not take a lot of power, or time. Once the first trap is at its control point, then the boiler PID controllers will be reduced to the first traps control point. At this point the heaters for the second heated trap will be turned on, and so forth until the last heated trap has achieved its control point, then turned off.

I have 3 heated condenser traps. each 5-gallon (20L) boiler and condenser has 1500 watt heaters. This means at any given point all of the heaters could be on for a second or so, which means a momentary power demand of 6000watts.

[lowriderzzz]

solar panels to use as energy source

Hi there. Does anyone uses PV solar panels as a source for electricity heating.

I plan to buy 10m2 of PV panels (6 pieces of 240Wp each = 1440W), and I'm trying to estimate how big unit it could power up.

According to the original Jetijs device he states that for 60kg unit he uses 6KW.
So for me for 1440W=1.44KW will be able to power a 1,4kg unit. According to the simple math. Am I correct ?

However I've not deducted other energy losses from inverter etc.

Does anyone has some more experience with solar or electrical heating in general ?

Thanks

[ladanivaca]

fabrica de reactores caseros

hello friends, while I finish making my reactor I found this website and I think it intersante, I have been in contact with the head in my country and I'm waiting for answers.
Greet everyone.

Plastic to fuel - Portable Pyrolysis plant

[Col]

Auto ignition temperature

Sorry guys, I misunderstood this principle. The auto ignition temperature is the minimum temperature at which a vapour will ignite without an external source of ignition in a normal atmosphere / in air. Our application is in the absence of oxygen so this principle may not be applicable to our systems.

Col

[Excalibur]

I think the basic plan is great and well worth experimenting with and building on. The more we talk and bounce ideas back and forth, the more likely it is that something really good will come up.

With regard to the non-condensable gas feed to the burner, the fact that you have a second condenser trap, then bubblers, I think you will probably produce less gas than will create runaway burner heat. I say probably but it's not an absolute given and I'll give you an example. On my previous prototype which I refer to as mk5, I did a run with a 20 liter retort fill. It got to the point of where I thought I'd probably extracted most of the "easy diesel", so I killed the heat. To my surprise the flame continued to burn from non-condensable gases for 38 minutes!!... and it maintained retort heat at approx. 400*C throughout. It would be so good if we could see into the retort and know exactly what is happening. My best guess is that the lower level of liquid meant that more gases were being created as opposed to distillate. The mk5 had 2 condensers in series and a bubbler.
With the mk6, at one stage the fresh feedstock was making a large amount of gas within seconds. My servo automatically closed off the feed to the burner which then diverted it to the gas jar. Each time I fed more feedstock, it made more gas than required. The puzzle is why. Possibly it was that the retort level was low and fresh wmo dropped in equals lotsa instant gas. This is where your idea could be a winner. If you can get the wmo feed to work stably....

[chipsnpips]

chipsnpips

A few constructive thoughts...

I made 2 prototypes using the level equilibrium idea. The first was a very small retort and I noticed a reluctance for oil to flow toward the hot zone, almost as if the heat created a kind of pressure barrier. The very small size of piping may have distorted the effect though.
The second prototype showed how sensitive the levels were to pressure differences. In your case, the bubbler water height is going to create back pressure. A possible or partial solution could be to reduce the effective bubbler water level to 50mm (2"). Also I speculate that because you are incinerating the non-condensable gases, the second bubbler is unnecessary. I think I'm right in saying that eliminating the 2nd bubbler will halve the back pressure.

The non-condensable gas feed to the burner needs a method of diverting gas when/if the volume becomes excessive, otherwise you risk a runaway retort situation. More gas = more heat = more gas = more heat... you get the picture? Think safety! You cannot simply close off the feed dead as there will be major pressure build up. A gas-jar or a way to flare off the surplus could be the answer.

Are those level sight glasses on the condensers? If yes, then they need to be vented at their tops, back to the vessel itself. You can't vent to atmosphere otherwise gases or distillate will escape and they won't work without any vent.

BTW, what burner head are you planning use? I see you have a blower

I'm excited to see how you progress and hoping my ramblings are helpful

Rambling's are always helpful to me as most of my thought process is driven this way. ha ha

Firstly to answer Col, yea mate the bits on the side are sight glasses. You make a good point, I'll be definitely venting them back to the condenser, I just didn't put to much effort into the sketch. I will eventually be using level switches and a bit of logic with my valving and process control so I don't have to monitor it so often. 1000L might take a while to get through and if I sat there watching it and passing time by drinking beer it would cost me more in beer then just paying for Diesel ha ha ha

Now to Excaliburs constructive criticism's,
I am curious to see if this equilibrium idea holds up. I would assume the oil would want to almost draw the cooler oil in and I was actually more worried about the opposite effect that you mention.

You definitely do have a valid point about the bubbler creating back pressure, don't forget my sketch isn't to scale so I have no idea what size I'm making them/it but I wouldn't have thought a 250mm long dip tube would only produce about 2.5KPa or = to 0.3625 PSI. That's calculated anyway.

The second bubbler I thought I may need to keep neighbours happy. I have a bit of property but my neighbours are nice and wouldn't want to up set them so I thought perhaps burning H2S might smell a bit. I have never worked directly with containing such vapours so I was just going off of research ;-)

Regarding the gas burn and having the run away boiler. I had an idea with that. I may be wrong so I'll definitely watch it when I'm doing my trials but I had this thought.
If the variables are no longer variables then they should stay constant.
Assuming this is a continuous process and once your plant is warmed up and operating continuously, temperatures should be maintained and controlled steadily. This should in theory give you an accurate and steady feed rate from your condensers and a steady and accurate flow of gas. Thus after the initial 2 hours or so it may take me to get my plant up to operating temp of 450 deg and running steadily I should be producing a rather steady and consistent flow of gas. Then I can make changes to my primary fuel (LPG) flow to match.

The burner I'm using for my trials is just an LPG ring burner. Like a gas stove top but bigger. After I have nailed down the process and can actually produce diesel I'll look into buying a liquor burner/waste oil burner set up. That's why i have a blower in the sketch ;-) but for now it'll just be a gas ring. should work effectively enough for trials. Just a bit expensive to run.

Thanks heaps for your suggestions, they are appreciated