How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Asad Farooqui]

White spirit from waste plastic

My old family business is Paint manufacturing since 30 years .
I joined the family business & was posted in R&D section for 10-years. Here I use to experiment a lot with various solvents used to make PAINT,as well as to thin them as "THINNERS".
I had a chance of traveling a lot to Germany, Holland,Italy & Uk . Where I use to work in the labs of world renowned Resin producers like Bayer, BASF , ICI , DSM & Akzo Nobel Paints .


Waste plastic derived white spirit (WS) I tested for thinning Alkyd based oil paint & found the following results .

The paint thinned easily as usual.
The smell of my WS intermixed with the paint smell.
Brushing of thinned paint was as per normal .
There was no extra or peculiar smell during the drying of the paint .
Drying time of the paint was same as the standard .
No brushing marks
No loss of gloss

Now I can say that this pyro-WS is as good as standard-WS.
Producing & selling White Spirit (WS) as ALKYD based-OIL PAINT-THINNERS IS LEGAL in every part of the world .

After meeting my own Paint factory requirements, I plan to pack it in 04-liter cans & supply to Paint resellers as OIL-PAINT THINNERS



If anyone interested in purchasing such a pyro unit can contact me .
ahl_asadfaroouqi@yahoo.com



ASAD FAROOQUI

[Mos52]

Continous Feed Fast Pyrolysis?

Jetijs - as with everyone else, this forum is awesome, thank you!

Whatever happened with your continuous feed-fast pyrolysis idea? Last I can tell you were monkeying with the extruder but I haven't seen any updates.

[Alec]

W.M.O. Burner

Gas fired reactor can be expensive, so I am playing around with a waste oil (w.m.o) burner to heat my reactor.
Its just a long long pipe with a T piece where oil drips in and a blower at the other end. It seems as if the trick is that the oil must be hot enough to evaporate before ignition.

[Kokomoj0]

I attached the basic sketch of the system.

why not run it directly through a water bubbler and skip the condenser entirely?

[imakebiodiesel]

Asad, I think you are on to a winner with the white spirit idea. Here in Ireland 2 litres of white spirit costs 5.35 euro, 2 litres of petrol is 3 euros and thats mostly tax. The profit margin with white spirit is much better. For use in paints it must be colourless, how do you manage that?
Up to now I have been collecting all my fuel output in one condenser. I recently was able to distil a litre of my fuel using a fractional still. The result was 5% light distillate (petrol), 33% middle distillate (kerosene) and 62% heavy distillate ( diesel). This is good news for me as it is diesel I want to produce. Im now considering using the kerosene fraction to heat my fullsize reactor rather than propane.
I tested the diesel fraction in my car today. I disconnected the fuel lines and connected them to a plastic bottle full of my diesel from plastic. The engine started first time and ran smoothly and cleanly.
Alec, you should have a look at an oil burner called an ozert burner. Its very powerful and does not need a blower. A friend of mine is using one at the moment and it works very well. Search on google for Spikes Ozert oil burner. There are detailed plans available for free on his website.

[dutchdivco]

Woke up with a crazy idea,

I can't use, so thought I would post it here.After all, thats what 'open sourcing' and 'brainstorming' is all about, right? This is 'scaled up' somewhat; would be for a restaurant, institution (prison, school, hospital, etc.) or a small community. The idea revolves around a kitchen trash compactor; 2 actually. One is loaded with anything paper, and any plastics innapropriate for making fuel out of. The other is loaded with fuel making plastics. Could have a desktop paper cutter, and cut milk bottles, etc. up in pieces, to get it to compact more densely.
Point is, you end up with uniform sized 'bricks', that are easily handled and stored, and you can then design your system around them. The idea is, you have an incinerator type processor; you load the paper 'bricks' in the bottom, where the stack on a gtate, with gas burners underneath, (to get the burn started, and maintain temp.) You load the upper chamber with 'bricks' (plastic) and seal the 'door'. Use the vaporous product from the reactor to fire it up and maintain temp.Perhapseven moisten the paper as its being loaded into the compactor, similar to the way they make paper 'logs' for burning in fireplaces.The main advantage would be having a standard size,both for the 'bricks used as fuelto fire the unit,and as the 'plastic' bricks.
I realise it would take more heat, to melt the plastic, with it in big blocks, than in pellets, but, just think of them as really big pellets! (Besides, since your using the waste paper as the primary heating fuel, thats less critical). Once the paper wrapper (from the trash compactor) burned off, displacing the oxygen in the process) the compacted plastic would want to expand a little, and then would melt, releasing the gas. If the process involves an additive to the plastic, (wood ash, lime, etc.) that could be added during compacting.From this point on, the process would be as described elsewhere, with a catalyst chamber, and condensers at different temperatures, etc.

I scored a real find, the other day! On craigslist I found, locally, a guy selling "High temp. pipe". He's a contractor, with a big yard full of 'left-overs' from various projects. With the down economy, he is selling all this stuff off. This material is actually used to insulate high temperature pipe; it comes in 3' long sections, and is 2 pieces of 1/2 pipe, split longitudinally, so it can be installed aroiund high temp. pipe in boilers, etc. he had 2 diameters, one arounf 16" inside, one around 21". He was selling it for $10 per box! The smaller size had 4 pieces per box, the larger had 2 pcs per box! I bought 2 boxes of each. Its rated at 1200 degrees F. Sorry, he didn't have any more, that wasn't broken. Haven't researched it yet, to see what this stuff costs new, but since it doesn't require the cutting to angles of regular fire brick, it is something to keep your eye out for. With this material to start, I'm anxious to get going on this project, finally. Unfortunately, I've got another of others going, as well. I'm hoping to use exhaust heat, from and infernal combustion engine (Genset) as the heat source for my reactor, and electric heat for the condensers. Figuring I'll wrap and old gas water heater in this material, and run the exhaust thru the center tube, of flue, of the water heater.The genset can supply the electricity for the band heaters, and can run off fuel from the processor. As I live in an RV, and have a diesel truck (for pulling my trailer) and a small gasoline vehicle for running around, I can use Gasoline, Diesel, AND propane.;-) Jim

[dutchdivco]

By the by,...

"Lamp oil" is just kerosene, with a small amount of pure 'essential oil' added, and yet it costs considerably more than 'regular' (unscented) kerosene. Might as well get top $ (or euro) for your 'product'. You can buy pure scenting oils, and just add a few drops per pint. ;-). Jim

[captainstack999]

pyrolosis machines

does anyone know where i can buy a pyrolosis machine in the usa that is affordable and can produce couple hundred gallons a day of oil

[imakebiodiesel]

A local garage agreed to test my car for smoke particle emissions with the new fuel. I normally drive the car on 100% home made biodiesel but this time when the tank ran low I filled up with petrodiesel ( ouch! 151 euro per litre ). We connected up the test rig to the exhaust of the car. The mechanic was suprised at the low reading on such an old car 1.19 m-1. The fail point is 2.5 m-1, this may be because it still contained some biodiesel which burns much cleaner than ordinary diesel.
I then connected up a bottle of my diesel from plastic and ran the engine for 5 minutes to flush out the ordinary diesel in the injector pump. We ran the test again. This time the reading showed 1.15, marginally better.
The results are very encouraging. Not only would my 14 year old Skoda car pass current emissions regulations using this fuel it would also pass the much more stringent regulations for newer cars since 2008.!

[fibuslitero]

To imakebiodiesel

Hi imakebiodiesel:
Thanks for sharing the results you have obtained, very interesting .
Have you distilled diesel, kerosene and gasoline and used diesel fraction in your test?
Or maybe straight plastic oil from your reactor?.
Thank you.

A local garage agreed to test my car for smoke particle emissions with the new fuel. I normally drive the car on 100% home made biodiesel but this time when the tank ran low I filled up with petrodiesel ( ouch! 151 euro per litre ). We connected up the test rig to the exhaust of the car. The mechanic was suprised at the low reading on such an old car 1.19 m-1. The fail point is 2.5 m-1, this may be because it still contained some biodiesel which burns much cleaner than ordinary diesel.
I then connected up a bottle of my diesel from plastic and ran the engine for 5 minutes to flush out the ordinary diesel in the injector pump. We ran the test again. This time the reading showed 1.15, marginally better.
The results are very encouraging. Not only would my 14 year old Skoda car pass current emissions regulations using this fuel it would also pass the much more stringent regulations for newer cars since 2008.!

[fibuslitero]

Emulsions

Hi:
I have been searching information about oil-water emulsions.
People mix gasoline and water and diesel and water and it works under certain conditions.
Water does not burn obviously, it gives higher compression and power, reduces fuel consumption, CO2 and NOX emissions, increases mileage…
This is not new, it was initially used in WWII for airplanes.
I have used vaporized water with an ultrasonic fogger through the engine air intake (slightly modified) of a small generator and no problem.
There is available a lot of info about water injection.
In this video used motor oil is the main fuel (nothing new) mixed with water.

Man Runs Car on 50% Water - YouTube

The point is that people always say they are using very “special & patented” surfactants for this purpose in order to make a stable mixture but I think it cannot be so difficult to find something suitable.
Any idea about what this surfactants could be friends?.
I have read something about aluminum dust and other metals dusts.
The best way to investigate is using again the martyr diesel engine…

[imakebiodiesel]

I distilled the petrol and kerosene out of the plastic to oil product and used the remaining heavy distillate (diesel fraction) in my tests. It is a darker colour than the light distillate and has an oily feel between the fingers. The engine runs smoother and quieter on it than ordinary diesel.
Water injection certainly works well on normally aspirated engines but a turbo with an intercooler should do much the same job.
Injecting water spray into the air intake avoids water in the injector pump and injectors. The low boiling point of water will cause steam pressure damage to the injector system as well as longer term corrosion.

[tony steinke]

how clean

I am a new member to this forum and I just want to say thank you to Jet and all contributors for this valuable info. I built a small version using a paint can for the air tight vessel and an aluminum pot and lid lined with multiple layers of cement board coated with white tile mortor for insulating. The pot has a hole in the bottom and sits over a turkey fryer burner with 2 levels of steel plates to even out the heat on the bottom of the vessel. It works great! I plan on building a larger version soon. My question is about the cleanliness of the plastic. Where I live, the only affordable alternative is post consumer plastic that is not washed or stripped of labels and adhesives. Would this be a problem for the final product of deisel and gasoline and if so how clean does the plastic have to be? Also, I want to more easily store plastic stock by melting it down into 12 inch cubes while crude is still less than $100. Will this affect the outcome when I reheat it to make deisel ? Thank you to whoever takes the time to answer.

[imakebiodiesel]

A small amount of dirt, labels and water will not be a problem.
Water will boil even before the plastic melts and be collected in the condenser. The steam will purge air out of the reactor which is an advantage.
Paper labels, dirt and other organic materials will char, giving off a small amount of producer gas which will mix with the gas fraction and add to the char residue. Glues/solvents etc will probably crack into light distillates.
I cant see why pre-melting the plastic would have any effect.

[tony steinke]

Thanks for your quick response imakebiodiesel. On another note, Jet said in the beginning of this forum that the process took about 4 hours. Is this amont of time directly corralated to the size of his specific reactor and volume of shredded plastic that he was able to load in? In other words, would I be shooting myself in the foot by making solid cubes (trying to get as much plastic in as possible) with no air space for the plastic to melt more easily and turn into gas? I realize that it all eventually turns into a solid blob when fully melted inside the reactor.