Plastics to Oil - Pyrolysis and Secret Catalysts and Alterna Message Board

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Pastimes : Plastics to Oil - Pyrolysis and Secret Catalysts and Alterna

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To: Buckey who wrote (53277)	4/30/2019 3:51:58 PM
From: PaperProphet	Read Replies (1) of 53574

Absolutely. Plastic really does break down into individual molecules under higher temperatures. It usually burns at those temperatures but if oxygen-restricted, it becomes liquid oil and gasses. HDPE, PP and LDPE are basically massive alkanes and become smaller chains when broken down. From a stoichiometric stand point, each break in the chain needs two more hydrogen atoms to make alkanes like diesel and oil but that can hydrogen balances if some of the carbon falls out as char. Anyone can pyrolyze plastic into oil, even PTOI. I'm sure PTOI succeeded in that simple science project as well and if they didn't, they could hire a third grader to help them. The big problem I see is that plastic scrap of any type is not free nor even cheap. Recyclers pay good money for pure plastic and even mixed plastic. Pound for pound, scrap plastic costs as much as diesel. There's no point competing with recyclers to buy plastic, spending money to pyrolize it and then hoping it's somewhere on par with diesel. Plastic does get thrown into landfills and that is free for anyone who wants to spend time and money to sort it from the waste stream. For scale, if a process worked at 100% efficiency to convert plastic into diesel, a person would have to collect 55 HDPE empty milk jugs to make one gallon of diesel for which the spot rate is $2.05. To break even a person would have to find someone to collect 275 two-oz milk jugs or equivalent per hour to be able to pay that person a wage of just $10.25/hour, That would be a fool's errand...and that doesn't even include any other costs. PTOI founder Mr. Bordynuik certainly modified his story through whatever he heard on the message boards and finally hit upon "non-recyclable plastic." He was able to get investors on the message boards to sing along with him but I have yet to see an example of non-recyclable plastic. Plastic can be very low quality and still be heated and extruded into plastic deck boards and other items. Unless scrap plastic is toxic, radioactive or mixed with too many other materials, it's recyclable. If some plastic is non-recyclable then there would likely be issues with pyrolysis as well. Burning a toxic fuel and releasing the fumes to the air isn't good and if plastic is too impure, then any garbage would work just as well. Other start up companies do try to pyrolyze regular municipal solid waste (plastic/cardboard/etc...) and convert it to a fuel as well. That results in a very low quality oil. The Dept of Energy stated that many companies were trying to pyrolyze garbage and that many were "near-commercial" by the 1990's...but here we are three decades later and "near-commercial" is still as far as anyone has achieved. A company called Dynamotive a decade or two ago showed graphs of the breakdown of solid waste into gasses and oils as well as other information which was useful. They never made it. Dynamotive also honest about their progress and lack of commercial success. However for every honest company like Dynamotive, there are probably five or ten dishonest companies which whet investors's appetites with a pyrlysis garbage-to-gold story. It works because penny stock investors buy the story and the stock and then try to pump it to everyone else while waging war on anyone who raises any red flags. Scams sell themselves to investors. Pyrolysis makes for a great story to make swindlers rich at investors' expense...but so far nobody has ever made a dime from the process itself.

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