How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[kvdb111]

Thank you BB.
The magnetic process is called Induction heating.
It does not look viable as there are very expensive electronic parts and fans that might not be up for the task.

[kimmoa]

Does anyone know if Jetijs still follows this thread? I've tried to contact him by private message but no reply and don't even know if the messaging works correctly. I should urgently contact him. So, Jetijs, please if you read this either reply to my private message or send a short email to kimmoa@hotmail.com

Thanks!

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Does anyone know if Jetijs still follows this thread? I've tried to contact him by private message but no reply and don't even know if the messaging works correctly. I should urgently contact him. So, Jetijs, please if you read this either reply to my private message or send a short email to kimmoa@hotmail.com

Thanks!

My guess is Jetijs PM box has been stuffed with people wanting advice, so he may have stopped checking it. If you have questions about building a pyrolysis unit, then this is as good a place as any to post those questions; and you will probably get a quicker answer.

[ashiki]

Thanks!

Thanks everybody.
my unit is complete and i am gonna run it today! (back to garbage dive)
feedstock:most probably hdpe,ldpe,and pp mixture!
thanks!

[ashiki]

Good work

I have read of researchers using microwaves for pyrolysis, and perhaps electromagnetic heating might work, but I do not believe the consumer units are capable of withstanding 800F (425c).

i tried to heat up my 1st retort(just 4 test) in my mom's old induction cooker
(works on electromagnetic induction)
which dont really need a physical contact to heat.
but found it too hard to control,
i.e it made the retort red hot in 30secs, and .if in physical contact-glass like thing above it starts melting!
so it can be used but requiers breaking up the electronics,and a fixup!

one thing is that its much much energy efficient than normal heaters.
im still trying to make use of it!

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Thanks ashiki, i will keep inductive heating in mind for a possible future build. I am still using hot plates, band heaters, and line wrap in physical contact with my retort, and I am happy with it for now.

[kimmoa]

Hey. The reason I wanted to contact him is that I drive across Latvia in November and the road goes something like 50km away from his workshop. Would be interested in dropping in and saying hi, and perhaps even have a look at the equipment before I start welding my own. Have already collected almost all the material and the welding is about to begin soon.

[NickTech]

Welcome NickTech, if you are going to crack solids, such as plastics and rubber, back into petroleum, then you will want a large enough opening at the top to get those solids it. I think 1ft (12"/30cm) is a good diameter. If you are planning on distilling waste oils, such as waste motor oil (WMO), then a 3/4" tapered thread fitting should work fine.

Hi Beyond Biodiesel, thanks for your quick reply. So, if I good understand, cutting the plastics in small parts, there will be no problems in using an expansion vessel.

I insist on this point because I have problems in modifying the propane thank as proposed by Jetijs. If you can suggest an alternative "ready to use" (or almost), I will appreciate.

A curiosity:the secon unit by Jetijs uses a flanged tube as reactor camber?

Thank you
Nicola

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Hey. The reason I wanted to contact him is that I drive across Latvia in November and the road goes something like 50km away from his workshop. Would be interested in dropping in and saying hi, and perhaps even have a look at the equipment before I start welding my own. Have already collected almost all the material and the welding is about to begin soon.

If you run into Jetijs, please do take some photos and check back here when you get back on line next.

Hi Beyond Biodiesel, thanks for your quick reply. So, if I good understand, cutting the plastics in small parts, there will be no problems in using an expansion vessel.

I see no reason why an expansion tank would not work as a retort/reaction vessel, so if you can grind up the plastic small enough to fit through a 3/4" hole, then it should work. It just sounds liek a lot of trouble. One option might be to build a large open top tank that you use to melt the plastic into liquid, then pour, pump, or push the liquid into your reactor.

I insist on this point because I have problems in modifying the propane thank as proposed by Jetijs. If you can suggest an alternative "ready to use" (or almost), I will appreciate.

A curiosity:the secon unit by Jetijs uses a flanged tube as reactor camber?

Thank you
Nicola

An old compressor tank should work fine as a reaction vessel. Any steel tank with a reasonable wall thickness and a copper or graphite seal flange on the top is best. Find the industrial scrap yards in your area, and keep looking for surplus equipment that you can re-purpose.

[sunilkm153]

The process is really simple, it is similar to how alcohol is made. If you heat plastic waste in non oxygen environment, it will melt, but will not burn. After it has melted, it will start to boil and evaporate, you just need to put those vapors through a cooling pipe and when cooled the vapors will condense to a liquid and some of the vapors with shorter hydrocarbon lengths will remain as a gas. The exit of the cooling pipe is then going through a bubbler containing water to capture the last liquid forms of fuel and leave only gas that is then burned. If the cooling of the cooling tube is sufficient, there will be no fuel in the bubbler, but if not, the water will capture all the remaining fuel that will float above the water and can be poured off the water. On the bottom of the cooling tube is a steel reservoir that collects all the liquid and it has a release valve on the bottom so that the liquid fuel can be poured out. Here are some pictures to better understand the design:









This device works on electricity (3 phase), it has six nichrome coils as heating elements and consumes a total of 6kW (1kW each coil). The coils are turned on and off by three solid state relays, one for each phase, the relays are controlled by a digital thermostat with a temperature sensor just a bit below the lid, so that the vapor temperature can be monitored. You need to heat the plastic slowly to about 350 degrees and just wait till it does the magic. Our device has a capacity of 50 liters and can hold about 30 kg of shredded plastic. The process takes about 4 hours, but it can be shortened considerably by tweaking the design a bit. As I said, this makes a liquid fuel that can be used as multifuel, that means it can be used on diesel engines and also on gasoline engines, but we still need to test it will work on gasoline. It works for diesel engines just fine, that has already been tested. There is a difference in what plastic you use, if you use polyethylene (plastic cans, plastic foil, and all kind of flexible non break plastics) you will get out liquid fuel that will solidify as it cools into paraffin, it is still good for diesel engines as long as you use a heated fuel tank, because it needs to be heated just about at 30 degrees celsius to be liquid and transparent. If you don't want that, you can put the paraffin through the device for one more time and you will chop those hydrocarbons even smaller and half of the paraffin will turn to liquid fuel and other half will remain a paraffin, but much denser and will melt at higher temperatures, this is the stuff you can make candles out of and it does not smell at all when burned, maybe a bit like candles. But if you use polypropylene (computer monitor cases, printer cases, other plastics that break easily), you get out only liquid fuel, no paraffin at all. All you need is just filter the fuel out of solids and you good to go and put it in your gas tank. We have made the analysis and it is almost the perfect diesel fraction. It has no acids or alkalines in it, like fuel from tires does. The unit in the pictures can convert about 60 kg of plastic into 60 liters of fuel in one day. Other methods of heating the reactor can be employed, electricity is just easier to work with and control. Some Japanese companies manufacture such devices, but their prices for this size unit is more than 100 000$, our home made device cost us 900$ max. We use aluminum oxide bricks to insulate the heat, they are light as foam and can be easily cut in any shape, but any kind of insulator can be used. The bricks make the highest costs for this device. It can also be made using liquid fuel burners to heat the reactor, this will enable to make the device self sustainable by using about 10-15% of the produced fuel along with the produced gas. A small farm can use a device this size and make fuel for itself by converting plastic waste to fuel, farms have very much plastic waste and it is a big problem, at least in my country. Our next goal is to make the same thing possible using biomass, every farm could then use old leafs, wet grass, saw dust and all kind of biomass and gasify it into tar like substance that can then be put through the pyrolysis device and turned into biodiesel. But we will see about that. Here are some fuel samples:

These are samples from polyethylene, in the first run out comes mostly paraffin like liquid that solidifies at temperatures below 20 degrees celsius, the other clear sample is from the same paraffin that is gone through the process one more time. Will post more pictures and a video later.
Thanks,
Jetijs

where are all senior members . I miss jetijs imbd excaliber asad and several others We all built our own pilot plants and sucessfully operate the same . I think this discussion is saturated now . If all senior members are reading this may I suggest to start this discussion in the same field but for scaling up this technology for bigger capacities and towards commercialisition
THANKS

[Beyond Biodiesel]

where are all senior members . I miss jetijs imbd excaliber asad and several others We all built our own pilot plants and sucessfully operate the same . I think this discussion is saturated now . If all senior members are reading this may I suggest to start this discussion in the same field but for scaling up this technology for bigger capacities and towards commercialisition
THANKS

Hello sunilkm153, most everyone has trouble just getting a small-scale pilot plant operational on a shoe string. I expect most of the people who made their own units found out it was a lot of trouble for too little return on the 55gallon (200L) batch scale. So, scaling it up could make it profitable, but the expense of doing so safely is often time out of the economic reach of the DIY.

Therefore my focus is distilling WMO, because it is 5 gallons (20L) in equals 5 gallons )20L) out in a 6 gallon (24L) retort. Still I have been in development for about 1.5 years so far and I still do not have a device that I can just dump 5-gallons of WMO in and get 5 gallons of fuel-grade hydrocarbons out in a few hours.

My whole pyrolysis system has been torn about for 6 months for a major rebuild, which is likely to take another 6 months, but by spring I expect to have a unit that I can do back-to-back 5-gallon batches in.

[Excalibur]

Those of you who have been keeping an eye on my blog will know that I've done an initial run of about 80liters from WMO feedstock. I learnt a lot and have a good idea of the improvements I need to pursue.
Only when I open up the retort hatch will I be adding PE, otherwise feedstock will be continuous feed wmo.

One overwhelming point was, I need to have a clear indication of how much is in the retort at any one time. One solution is to have sight gauges on the oil-feed and diesel reservoir vessels. I can then match the input to output with perhaps an adjustment for losses.
The PID/servo software gave some grief as well. In short java.exe uses 100%cpu caused by msvcr71.dll. This eventually leads to a program or OS freeze. Should anyone know a remedy, please advise. The offending PC is XP based so I'm going to try Windows7 as a possible workaround.

Look for a Youtube video update soon.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Congratulations, Excalibur, on the recent run of your WMO pyrolysis unit. I am not sure why your programming problem is a .exe issue, because I would think that since you are using an arduino, then all you need to do is down load some code into the arduino, and execute on that platform?

[Excalibur]

Congratulations, Excalibur, on the recent run of your WMO pyrolysis unit. I am not sure why your programming problem is a .exe issue, because I would think that since you are using an arduino, then all you need to do is down load some code into the arduino, and execute on that platform?

The microcontroller is an Arduino and the PID handling uses a Java platform. I've identified that msvcr.dll is the offending Java thread that soaks up the memory. There's numerous hits on Google about the issue but no apparent solution. The XP PC has an older single core cpu with 750mb of memory. Perhaps the old PC simply lacks resources, so to isolate the possibilty I'll substitute my quad core W7 PC with 6gb memory. I'll know by the end of today...

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Thanks, Excalibur, for keeping us posted on your developments. The thing that this thread lacks is ardunio development for pyrolysis control.

I am still focuses upon inexpensive 800F (425c) insulation. I am very pleased with my current firebrick formula and production methods. I now have about 40-50 of them, but I need about 80 more to insulate the complete project.

I need crushed glass for the formula, and that right now is the hard labor portion of this project. Over the weekend I borrowed an electric cement mixer to churn bottles into crushed glass, but after about 8 hrs of churning I got very little crushed glass, but cleaned out my neighbor's cement mixer really well. He will be happy. I plan to go back to pounding the glass with a steel rod, because it seems to work best.