How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Beyond Biodiesel]

After reading these two posts I began to wonder :why bother with electricity if I have the possibility to use gas(CH4),and after a few "batches" just go with "the thing" it comes out of PP/HDPE and burn it in a diesel burner (I found one rated to 16kw and a 1,4 liter consumption for one hour).

Natural gas is going to be more efficient at heating, and in most cases cheaper, than electricity for heating your retort. On the other hand fuel oil, will be cheaper, and coal will be cheaper than that, and using scrap wood will be free for fueling the retort. You could also try using the coke that comes out of your retort for heating your next run.

Jetijs , I "stumbled" upon a video with a similar instalation but wich used as a zeolite (alumo-silicat catalyst) BEFORE the condenser!
Here it is, just "jump" to 5:09 !
What do you(or others with MORE experience think about this "modification"?
Is it good/NECESARY?
Plastic to oil refinery, in miniature
Plastic to oil refinery, in miniature - YouTube

I noticed that they were using 5 gallon paint pots, which are basically pressure cookers. I use a pressure cooker as well, but it can only handle about 350F (176c), unless the seal is replaced with teflon, then it can only go to 500F (260c).

I would suggest that anyone who wants to explore catalyst cracking of plastics, or any other feed stock, should first run the retort without catalyst for enough cycles to see how much fuel you get, before running a catalyst, so that you know how effective the catalyst is, and how much trouble it might be to run. I propose that you will find a catalyst on this small a unit is not going to be cost effective.

[CRMoore]

Safe as furnaces

Taking the potential risks involved in hydrocarbon cracking Im not sure this could ever be an activity carried out in a typical suburban house.
Im a organic gardener myself and an enthusiast for home composting but there is very little risk of my composter exploding and burning my house down.
I see it more as a unit used by a small to medium business, carried out in an industrial area, processing the waste of that business and perhaps of businesses around them into fuel that would supplement their fuel requirements.
One thing we can be sure of is that fuel prices are going to increase in the future and any fuel intensive business is going to find a source of cheap diesel a powerful competitive edge over their competitors.

Don't see this as necessarily more dangerous than a furnace or truck-certainly could be set up in a garage for the block/community. Fuel for heating community center or van.

[imakebiodiesel]

Ive no doubt that with suitable safety features a pyrolyser could be made fairly safe. But there are other reasons that these units may not find acceptance as domestic units. One of them would be space. While the reactor can be compact the plastic feedstock is not. My favourite resource for making fuel is the Cubie. These are 25 litre ( 5 gallon) containers made from hdpe and used to store oils detergents and all kinds of liquid products. To make enough fuel to fill one medium size car (60 litres.) I need 180 cubies. Unshredded these would take up 6 cubic metres of space. I dont think my wife ( or my neighbours) would appreciate a mountain of plastic rubbish in our back yard.
For many businesses disposal of plastic waste is a significant expense. One small to medium size company I deal with takes back and pays to recycle all of its plastic containers. Currently it takes back 250,000 containers a year. Converting these into fuel would address two big problems for this company, waste disposal and high fuel prices.
Domestic users dont have that kind of incentive, at least not yet.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Good idea, imakebiodiesel. I have been thinking along the same lines. The pyrolysis of plastics has had me thinking of all of the 25 litre (5 gallon) cubies I go through to make fuel. I presently have about 50 of them.

They all have residues of WVO that could be reclaimed in the pyrolysis process as well. I plan to crush them, instead of shred them, and stack them in a retort, and run them through the pyrolysis process as soon as I have made my processor large enough to handle them.

Cracking hydrocarbons has also gotten me thinking about cracking the high melting point esters, hydrogenated oils and animal fat that are otherwise the rejects in the blending WVO into fuel process. And, I have a few cubies of that sitting around waiting for me to crack it. Once we can crack hydrocarbons safely there is no end of hydrocarbon sources that can be cracked.

[dutchdivco]

I don't see it happening;

"Average' consumer getting into Pyrolising, at least NOT in 'Western, developed' countries, not pre-apocolypse, anyway.
Too much 'work', too much 'mess', takes up too much space. Not as long as 'we' can work a couple of hours, (to earn the $), so we can go to the gas station, and 'fill-up'.
It, (pyrolising) just doesn't 'fit' well, with our centralised supply structure. I CAN see 'people' seperating/sorting their 'refuse', and the plastic being routed to 'someone else' who WILL Pyrolise it.
And, Post- Apocolypse (next year, what ya think?) I can see how those who are left could have running motor vehicles for MANY years, after the refineries are shut down, (along with Banks, Governments, etc.) by pyrolising all the plastic detrius we've created.AND WVO, AND WMO, etc.

Not saying I'm not going to do it, or others on this thread; just don't see it becoming 'mainstream', any more than WVO or WMO 'processing' has; just a small % of the population exploring it.Jim

[CRMoore]

Not Average

[QUOTE=dutchdivco;200989]"Average' consumer getting into Pyrolising, at least NOT in 'Western, developed' countries, not pre-apocolypse, anyway.
Too much 'work', too much 'mess', takes up too much space. Not as long as 'we' can work a couple of hours, (to earn the $), so we can go to the gas station, and 'fill-up'.

Don't need the average consumer just 0.5% of them to take those hours and run the week's plastic debris though the processor set up in garage-or will take one day for each member of club. I've been waiting for this opportunity-thought I had it through ERM now am hoping that either one of you guys can create an unit in the US or that Blest has a 1/2 off sale!

[dutchdivco]

Agreed, (sort of)

I'm old. When I was young, I was all on fire, to 'change the world', overly optimistic, etc. With time, I have mellowed.
So, I'm not optimisitic that this pyrolising method is going to change the world, in terms of enegy usage. And, I'm o.k. with that.
If I can use it, to change MY energy usage, thats fine. And, if 5% can use it, to change theirs, thats fine, too.

I am NOT optimistic that there is going to be any substantial change in our centralised, long supply chain structure of civilisation, unless there is a cataclysmic event, that FORCES such a change. Fortunately, such an event seems to be coming, soon.

And after, those that survive will had LOTS of 'material' to Pyrolise, as has been pointed out in other posts; 'waste' plastic, WVO ad WMO, and even plant materials. So, IF I survive, I'll have a source for energy, assuming survival is even desirable.

And THATS why I am following this thread.Jim

[Beyond Biodiesel]

"Average' consumer getting into Pyrolising, at least NOT in 'Western, developed' countries, not pre-apocolypse, anyway.
Too much 'work', too much 'mess', takes up too much space. Not as long as 'we' can work a couple of hours, (to earn the $), so we can go to the gas station, and 'fill-up'.
It, (pyrolising) just doesn't 'fit' well, with our centralised supply structure. I CAN see 'people' seperating/sorting their 'refuse', and the plastic being routed to 'someone else' who WILL Pyrolise it.
And, Post- Apocolypse (next year, what ya think?) I can see how those who are left could have running motor vehicles for MANY years, after the refineries are shut down, (along with Banks, Governments, etc.) by pyrolising all the plastic detrius we've created.AND WVO, AND WMO, etc.

Not saying I'm not going to do it, or others on this thread; just don't see it becoming 'mainstream', any more than WVO or WMO 'processing' has; just a small % of the population exploring it.Jim

I agree with your point. Turning waste oils into diesel fuel is the easiest thing, and few do it, but enough so do it now to make it a challenge to find waste oil.

I expect every county in the USA might have pyrolysis units emerge to turn that mountain of plastics at the land fill into fuel.

Here are more useful links for pyrolysis I just stumbled upon on another forum:

Source:
Small Scale Biomass To Liquid - TDIClub Forums

BEK Biochar-Pyrolysis
BEK Biochar-Pyrolysis « Gasifier Experimenters Kit

Fischer-Tropsch Reactor Model in VBA for Excel
http://www.acerc.byu.edu/News/Confer...%20Brunner.pdf

Green Fuels
Our Technology - GreenFuelsCA of Northern California

Small-scale Gas To Liquids with Fischer Tropsch video
Small-scale Gas To Liquids with Fischer Tropsch - YouTube

Advanced Biorefinery
ABRI - Advanced Biorefinery Inc.

Performance Characteristics of Coal-to- Liquids (CTL) Diesel in a 50-State Emissions Compliant Passenger Car
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...10_shaburg.pdf

Run an Engine with the GEK
GEK Wiki / Run an Engine with the GEK

[Babataku]

Candle Wax

Hi all.
I finally got my setup to run. Experimented with HDPE for two days. It works quite nicely. Here is a video:
YouTube - ‪diesel from HDPE‬‏

With PE you get great looking fuel, like a whiskey as soon as it is out of the condenser, but when it cools down, it solidifies as paraffin wax:


Here you can see partial waxing from left to right. The bottles more to the left are cooler.



And after a few minutes you get this:


I also tried aluminum oxide bits as catalyst, but they make the fuel to solidify into waxes that are brighter, more white and denser and melt at higher temperatures. So the aluminum oxide makes things worse. As the aluminum oxide is removed after the process, it is yellow, soaked with paraffin and burns quite nicely:







If you run the waxes through the process again, you get more liquid fuel, but it still has lots of waxes in it that make the fuel misty:



About 3 liters of plastic leaves this much carbon behind:


More experiments to come
Thanks,
Jetijs

Hi Jetjis & All

Still new to this thread. great stuff this is! Anyway Im based in Africa and im starting to build my machine soon. have ordered the materials and should start building. I will start with the simple 1st generation batch reactor which you built in a steel drum. I have access to hdpe and ldpe waste plastics and will be using this.

I want to make Candle Wax and wanted to find out what type of aluminum oxide you used as catalyst and what quantity? I want all the diesel to turn into a bright white wax as you experienced in the quoted experiment.

I will use the wax to make cheaper candles, ad these are very expensive here...

hope you can help.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

I want to make Candle Wax and wanted to find out what type of aluminum oxide you used as catalyst and what quantity? I want all the diesel to turn into a bright white wax as you experienced in the quoted experiment.

I will use the wax to make cheaper candles, ad these are very expensive here...

hope you can help.

If you want wax, then don't use a catalyst.

[helmat]

hi to all

Hi redrichie
Polyethylene and plypropylene are pure hydrocarbons, only they are arranged in long chains. If you chop those chains into shorter ones, you get oil, if you chop them even shorter, you get diesel, and if you chop them again, you get gasoline and eventually burnable gas. So nothing else than hydrocarbons. This means that the burned gasses can only produce some co2 and water vapor when the gas mixes with air and burns, but way less than a typical car engine.

Nice work Jetijs. Great topic with great contributors. Thanks to all.
you have mentioned that 1000kg shreded waste plastic 50 t. could you help me to find some provider in your country. I am seriously thinking of to plant a 500kg reactor.

[dutchdivco]

Another issue

That will inevitable come up, if enough people begin pursueing Pyrolising, regardless of what they use for 'feedstock'; regulation and taxation.

Given the very real and previously covered in this thread 'risks' involved in this process, if enough people begin doing it, you can bet Gov'ts will begin to regulate it, in order to 'protect' the populace, and the environment from unscrupulous operators, and those who are looking to compete for a Darwin award.

And, there IS an $.18 Federal tax (in the U.S., currently) as well as state taxes, on any 'transportation fuel'. And the paperwork required to be filed, in order to get the permits, and pay the tax, is prohibitive for any small producer.

So much of what the Beaurocracy does is counter-productive, and this is no exception. Jim

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Jim, et al, I figure we will soon see every landfill in the USA, and the rest of the world, is going to operate their own pyrolysis unit to reduce the plastics and rubber products entering the landfill. In some ways I think it is a good thing, but it means plastics and rubber products are going to soon become hard to find to operate a small-scale backyard pyrolysis plant, which, again, I think is a good thing, because I agree with your, Jim, there are too many people competing for Darwin awards, and all this process needs is one pyrolysis plant in some idiots backyard to go up in flames and burn half the neighborhood down, to cause a major government regulation backlash to close it down for good.

[thissideup]

I think half of you need to get back to basics, and focus on the colaborative effort to perfect this process. Debating the economics, future political opposition or apocolyptic feasability of the process will only serve to discourage. I have a brother that thinks like that, for every great idea he has, he also has two great reasons why ''it wont work''. You will be amazed at how much you can accomplish by simply getting up in the morning and dealing ONLY with the problems that present themselves during that day. You'll find that only a fraction of the road blocks that you assume will stop you actually present themselves during the course of your venture, provided you wake in the morining with the mind set to achieve and succeed. I suggest you take a moment read about the history of the light bulb before posting why ''it wont work''.

[Babataku]

If you want wax, then don't use a catalyst.

Hi Beyond Biodiesel,

without catalyst "All" diesel will turn into a bright white wax? how many times do I have to process this? I will be using only PE.