Plastic into Oil at Home !

[sarafina]

Originally Posted by Matt sachs

Are the gasses produced by plactic worse than that produced by burning crude or coal?

Holy Cow YES!!!

(25 years married to an environmental engineer)

Difference between a slow *maybe* death down the road and a fast *right now* death today....

[Matt sachs]

So, I assume, the residue left over in the 80% conversion is the stuff that makes burning plastic worse than burning crude or coal. So the question is - what to do with that residue? It's still in the environment?

[dacust]

Seems like people missed the several places where this has been pointed out:

80% efficiency DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE LOOSING MONEY.


The 80% efficiency is NOT talking about money.

It is NOT talking about energy in vs. energy out.

It IS talking about volume of plastic in vs. volume of waste left over. 20% of the plastic is not converted into oil. 80% of the plastic IS turned into oil. It can STILL be a money maker. (Not saying it is, just that it can be...)

Mining gold is only about .00003% to .003% efficient. From .01 to 1 ounce of gold for each ton of ore. But, the gold is worth enough for that extremely low conversion efficiency to still be economical.

For the plastic-oil conversion, if the cost of energy in is less than the value of the oil produced, you can make money. If the profit margin is high enough, and operational expenses are low enough (waste disposal, machine repairs, etc) maybe you can pay for the machine and then make a profit before the machine wears out. That is the basis for whether it is economically feasible.

-dan

[capn_billl]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Throwing plastic bottles?

Wouldn't that be...wait for this one...Just like throwing away money?!

And FWIW in the cosmetics business especially, including upscale shampoos, the finished printed etc. bottle actually does cost a lot more than the contents do.

That is actually true of a lot of things we consume. Coke was once sold in recycled glass bottles, now in throw away plastic or metal.

Most products are now sold in throw away containers, IE a plastic container that is sold wrapped in plastic!

I now throw away two or three layers on packaging just to get at the product, (which is also sealed and shrink wrapped).

Almost everything we buy now will hit the landfills in a few years at most. Water once came in a glass, now comes in a throw away bottle.

Before we polluted the landscape with all of our garbage and industrial waste that water was safe to drink.

I read a book once, written in the 1960's that forsaw a world were the water was soo polluted you had to buy clean water, and the air was so polluted you had to buy a mask, (from the same factory that polluted the air in the first place), it was science fiction at the time....

[captain58sailin]

It is everyone's job to find a better way, we are all a source of pollution. sarafina, has your husband ever looked at the tidal power generation plant in the bay of Fundy ? I visited once and was very impressed with the low impact high efficiency of the unit. They only sent out power bills every 2 months due to the high expense of the billing and the low cost of the power. The average power bill for the Victorian house was 17 dollars Canadian, per 2 months.

[capn_billl]

I believe we can each make a concious choice to vote with our wallets. Buy the products with the least waste. Use non oil sources whenever possible. Reduce as much as you can your energy, and oil consumption. We could significantly reduce our useage of oil by switching to natural gas, or other sources whenever possible, and saving oil for those applications that can be powered no other way.

[Matt sachs]

Put a 50 cents deposit on plastic bottles and they will get recycled.

[Dkdoyle]

Rooftop solar panels overloading grid. They will always find away to make money from you. But it is better for environment.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-1226165360822

[hellosailor]

"Coke was once sold in recycled glass bottles, now in throw away plastic or metal."
Yes and no. I don't know if Coke ever recycled glass for bottles but I'd assume it didn't for their first 50? 80? years. And their plastic bottles can be recycled, and now all have recycled content IIRC. Same for their aluminum cans, aluminum is heavily recycled content.

Thrown away? Sure, the glass was thrown away too. I'm not the only guy who made money by taking in thrown-away bottles for their deposit value. Recycling isn't at all new.<G>

As Matt says, make the deposit high enough and they WILL get recycled. Everyone who lives in a 5c deposit state and reads the "10c deposit in..." labels has had the same thought that inspired a Seinfeld episode, driving a truckload of them cross-country to get the double money back.

Which still leaves the real economics of the Blest machine unknown. Maybe turning oil bottles into oil is not a good idea, maybe they're better used as bricks, or cleaned and refilled with potable water instead of importing in still more new ones.

When I see people buying cases of bottled water for emergency stockpiles...and meanwhile they are throwing out empty 2-liter bottles that could easily be filled from the tap to do the same job...I have to wonder just how rich and stupid one has to be to join that club.

[Seahunter]

How about throwing a couple of solar panels onboard instead of waiting for pie in the sky conjecture. Polymer to diesel has been around for some time now without result. We also have the technology to change sewage to fuel as well. The problem with this type of realigning hydrocarbons is that it takes more energy to produce a viable fuel than in actually creates while creating massive amounts of unseen air-water pollution. At least the bottles can be picked up and recycled appropriately.

[MoonlightShadow]

There are other factors here in the UK. There are such things as Carbon Credits, Landfill Taxes and Gate Fees for waste over here, not sure if same in US.

This is quite Interesting.

How about using an anaerobic digester to produce the fuel to run the conversion plant?

[hellosailor]

"There are such things as Carbon Credits, Landfill Taxes and Gate Fees for waste over here, not sure if same in US. "
Substantially the same in the US. In some municipalities, it can cost $50 as a "tip fee" (fee for tipping the truck, so to speak) ever time you use the bulk landfill. Car trunk or dump truck--still $50 a trip, residents only.
Seattle, Washington, has apparently reduced their garbage load significantly since they began charging residents "per bag" in some areas. You get so many bags per week or motth, and if you need more, you've got to buy tax stickers for them, or dispose of your own garbage. Motivation works--but most of our idiocracy won't vote it on themselves. Seattle is not your typical US city.

[Seahunter]

Carbon credit is merely blood money that allows rich countries like Canada, GB and the US (not in any order) to continue polluting at accelerated rates in an effort to ease the weight of guilt from our collective consciousnesses. The levels or carbon, carbon monoxide and methane spewing from our countries is directly proportional to our standards of living. There's no solution in creating digesters that will ultimately puke more methane into the atmosphere, especially when the product(s) being digested weren't carbon neutral from their inception.

Conservation of available assets has the most effect towards reducing our carbon footprint. Use less to go farther. Boater's generally get that rule as space onboard is limited we therefore are forced to either "make do" or become creative in the management of our available resources. Most boaters understand the concept that less is better. "Stuff" gets in the way and in most instances is a hindrance, especially if; it cannot create water, power the boat, keep the boat dry or communicate with other boaters. We need to pay this knowlege forward.

It's the consumption of this "stuff" and the lack of the conservation of the energy to create it, along with the landfills, ponds and pits we fill with the remains of the broken, busted and rotting "stuff" that we're burying ourselves. All the while we pretend to be creative, applying our ingenuity to the issues; to no avail. The answer is as simple as the idea of using less in order to create a smaller footprint while traveling farther. In some respects we should appear no different in our passage of time on this planet, to how the wake of our boats disappear into the waves as we make passage on our personal journeys.