How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Thanks Beyond Biodiesel. I was thinking the same thing, but have been concerned, in the case of a mistake in the process or some temperature control mishap, about potentially thick condensate forming and therefore clogging these condensers. Any thought on that?

Marso Green, the way to avoid thick condensate from plugging up your expensive investment in condensers is to use a high temp trap. I use a large diameter void that is filled with chore-boys, or course steel wool to trap the heavy fractions before the vapor stream enters my condensers.

As for the efficiency aspect, I was thinking either a fan blowing through them or dipping them in a tank of circulating water would significantly raise their efficiency. Too crazy? I have a few high quality aircraft coolers and hoping I can use them

thanks again for your continuing attention to everyone's inquiries

Sure, a fan would increase the efficiency of an air-to-liquid heat exchanger, and even better immersing it in circulating cooled water.

On the other hand, an air-to-liquid heat exchanger would be very useful for cooling your cooling water so that you can recirculate it.

i have here few questions hoping someone could help me.

1. what is the purpose of that vertical rectangular shaped hole?

It is where the wiring goes in a kiln. If you ever take a kiln apart you will see this on most kiln designs.

2. do you have any idea for the collection of the excess gas or uncondensed gas?how to collect them?

The uncondensed gasses are mostly butane, propane and methane. They can be collected in a standard gas jar, or they can be directed at the flame if you are using a flame to heat your retort.

3. is it possible to use an electric stove as a heating element?

Yes, the heating element from an electric stove can be used. Most heating elements are nicrome wire, and nicrome wire is good to at least 1200F (650c). In fact a stove oven could be used low temp kiln if the insulation were beefed up with some kaowool or refractory board.

4. is it possible to place the nichrome wire vertically(meaning, the grooves on an aluminum oxide brick will be vertical)so that it will be easy to clean/replace those nichrome wires?

Yes, although the standard is to run the wires horizontally.

[imakebiodiesel]

Ive had an exciting day today. I finished making up a small 20 litre still and poured 10 litres of my" crude" into it. This" crude" is the product from the last 10 small batches I have made with my small reactor. The catalyst column was filled with 200gms of my latest catalyst and was used for all ten batches. I have only one condenser on my small reactor so all of the fuel is mixed up. I was keen to discover exactly what my fuel was made of.
I slowly brought the still up in temperature until the still head was at 155 degrees C and then I held it there for an hour untill the liquid stopped flowing from the condenser. The collection jar had 246 ml of liquid.
So the result is my fuel is
25% light fraction BP<155C (petrol/gasoline)
75% middle fraction BP 155-265C ( kerosene)
0% heavy fraction BP.>260 ( diesel)
This is great news for me as my aim is to produce enough fuel to heat my home in winter and run a small petrol car such as a VW polo, all from waste plastic.
Im about half way through building my full size reactor which will process about 75kg at a time.
Since I do in the future want to make a business making and selling catalysts I cant tell you exactly whats in my catalyst except that its not clay but a combination of four different minerals.

[imakebiodiesel]

sorry, the above figure should have been" 2460ml of liquid"

[Marso Green]

Ive had an exciting day today. I finished making up a small 20 litre still and poured 10 litres of my" crude" into it. This" crude" is the product from the last 10 small batches I have made with my small reactor. The catalyst column was filled with 200gms of my latest catalyst and was used for all ten batches. I have only one condenser on my small reactor so all of the fuel is mixed up. I was keen to discover exactly what my fuel was made of.
I slowly brought the still up in temperature until the still head was at 155 degrees C and then I held it there for an hour untill the liquid stopped flowing from the condenser. The collection jar had 246 ml of liquid.
So the result is my fuel is
25% light fraction BP<155C (petrol/gasoline)
75% middle fraction BP 155-265C ( kerosene)
0% heavy fraction BP.>260 ( diesel)
This is great news for me as my aim is to produce enough fuel to heat my home in winter and run a small petrol car such as a VW polo, all from waste plastic.
Im about half way through building my full size reactor which will process about 75kg at a time.
Since I do in the future want to make a business making and selling catalysts I cant tell you exactly whats in my catalyst except that its not clay but a combination of four different minerals.

It is exciting indeed and congratulations on this achievement. Now of course you must expecting a lot of questions from the rest of us


1) Does the catalyst you developed require heating to the same temperature as the reactor? I'm assuming it's for the gaseous phase of the feedstock, unless you tell me otherwise

2) For those of us not interested in Kerosene, rather in diesel and (may be) gasoline, do you have a catalyst solution for us?

3) Your feedstock?

Thanks again for sharing

[imakebiodiesel]

The catalyst is for the gaseous phase and it needs to be heated to above 200C to activate it. This is done initially with a small (250W) band heater and then the hot gases from the retort maintains the heat.
The feedstock is mainly PE but I often add up to 20% PP and or PS.
The catalyst can be adjusted to produce different blends of light, middle and heavy fractions. I have moved away from producing heavy fractions (diesel) because of the legal problems of making diesel in Ireland and also many newer common rail engines will not run on anything but absolutely standard low sulphur diesel. Heating burners and petrol engines do not have the same problems.

[thissideup]

Ive had an exciting day today. I finished making up a small 20 litre still and poured 10 litres of my" crude" into it. This" crude" is the product from the last 10 small batches I have made with my small reactor. The catalyst column was filled with 200gms of my latest catalyst and was used for all ten batches. I have only one condenser on my small reactor so all of the fuel is mixed up. I was keen to discover exactly what my fuel was made of.
I slowly brought the still up in temperature until the still head was at 155 degrees C and then I held it there for an hour untill the liquid stopped flowing from the condenser. The collection jar had 246 ml of liquid.
So the result is my fuel is
25% light fraction BP<155C (petrol/gasoline)
75% middle fraction BP 155-265C ( kerosene)
0% heavy fraction BP.>260 ( diesel)
This is great news for me as my aim is to produce enough fuel to heat my home in winter and run a small petrol car such as a VW polo, all from waste plastic.
Im about half way through building my full size reactor which will process about 75kg at a time.
Since I do in the future want to make a business making and selling catalysts I cant tell you exactly whats in my catalyst except that its not clay but a combination of four different minerals.

How did you determine that there was no diesel component? did you boil the remaining liquid off at the 260C you specified?

[jonathan]

plastic waste

hello did someone know if geyser tank is good for pyrolysis reactor because its have a layer of porcelain? thanks

[ndsunil]

Pressure inside reactor

It assumed indeed the pyrolysis reaction takes place in reactor . Feeding is at One end of reactor is and other end is connected to atmosphere through condenser .So it is obvious that no pressure should get developed inside the reactor . But in practice because vapor nature , micron size carbon particles and
especially batch processes a phenomenon called as " artillery blockage- similar to human beings " takes place and this cause the obstruction to vapor path and develops a pressure in reactor . Does this pressure building in the reactor affects
process ? I mean does this pressure affects the yield in terms of out put ? and in what ways ? what should be the permissible pressure inside the reactor for the best yield ?

[imakebiodiesel]

There is no diesel type fuel in my mix because I set the temperature at the top of my catalyst/reflux head at 260C. The BP of diesel ranges from 260 - 390C.

The acceptable pressure inside a pyroliser is atmospheric plus the depth of water in the bubbler. No buildup of pressure should be allowed, ever.
If you are getting artillery blockages then your pipework is too small in diameter or you have a bottleneck somewhere in the system. You should change your pipework to avoid blockages. firstly because they are dangerous and secondly because they disrupt the steady gas flow needed for correct catalysing and condensing.

My reactor is equipped with an adjustable pressure relief valve set at minimum 1 bar and a pressure gauge. The valve has never opened and the gauge has never shown any reading.

[joan27]

is there any disadvantage of placing those nichrome wire vertically?

if i will be using an electric stove, is it possible to still put a temperature controller?

[Excalibur]

is there any disadvantage of placing those nichrome wire vertically?

if i will be using an electric stove, is it possible to still put a temperature controller?

The weight of the nichrome could mean it would sag when red hot?
A standard electric stove like the one I have in my kitchen has the thermostat set at 261c. I tested with a thermocouple. I see no reason why a digital temperature controller couldn't be used to control temperatures.

[imakebiodiesel]

If anyone wants to have look at our reactor and read about our progress visit the website polydiesel . Its a bit unfortunate that we called it polydiesel and then decided to make kerosene and petrol instead. We will do a video an upload it to utube soon, my son is a keen amateur film maker.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

It assumed indeed the pyrolysis reaction takes place in reactor . Feeding is at One end of reactor is and other end is connected to atmosphere through condenser .So it is obvious that no pressure should get developed inside the reactor . But in practice because vapor nature , micron size carbon particles and
especially batch processes a phenomenon called as " artillery blockage- similar to human beings " takes place and this cause the obstruction to vapor path and develops a pressure in reactor . Does this pressure building in the reactor affects
process ? I mean does this pressure affects the yield in terms of out put ? and in what ways ? what should be the permissible pressure inside the reactor for the best yield ?

You definitely do not want to have a blockage in your reactor, or Oops, caboom!!!

However, cat cracking units at petroleum refineries are typically run at higher than ambient pressures. The cat cracking units I operated for Chevron Research were typically operated at 15 PSI above ambient.

Running a cat cracking units at 15 PSI above ambient means you can expose the heavy fractions to higher temperatures before they leave the cat cracking unit, which promotes cracking.

Thermal cracking of hydro carbons begins at the boiling point of the hydrocarbon and increases significantly at 600F (300C). So, increasing the temperature at which the heavy fractions are exposed increases cracking, even without the presence of a catalyst.

The device needed for increasing the pressure inside the cat cracking unit is a reverse pressure regulator. We at Chevron used something called a "research valve" which was this reverse pressure regulator that could handle temperatures of about 800F (425c).

Yesterday I did an experiment with vacuum distillation of waste 2-stroke gasoline that had been contaminated with WMO. I poured 10 gallons of waste 2 stroke gasoline, which is known to be contaminated with WMO, into my 20 gallon processing tank, then I ran 30 feet of 1" ID vacuum hose to my vacuum distillation unit, to see if I could easily extract the gasoline component from the WMO, so that I could use it for blending.

In 2 minutes of pumping I got the tank down to 23"HG, within another minute I noticed precipitate collecting in my water quenched sample container. The drip rate at first was 1/second. After 2 hours the drip rate dropped to 1/20seconds. This is all I got after 2 hours of vacuum only distillation at about 82F ambient temperature.

You will notice an emulsion layer. I am guessing that the bottom layer is water. The top layer is most probably gasoline.

I also ran an ice quench to see if I got anything from it. I did, so anyone distilling WMO, or cracking plastics is going to want an ice quench.

Here is the equipment

[joan27]

is it possible to compress the gas into a gas collector or gas jar to maximize the space? if it is possible, can you give me a design of that gas jar (material specs),so that the gas will not ignite..

[joan27]

i saw some related study about pyrolysis of polyethylene, in that study there is a cyclone and demister, can you tell me what is the difference of that study to the one posted in this forum..thanks