Plastic to oil

[billswan]

Guys

Found this clip on u-tube      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzYFdyybUI
It is not about bio diesel but it is another fuel, thought some on here might find it interesting!

The guy claims it is made of waste plastic. I bet the process he uses to turn the plastic back to some kind of oil would not be EPA approved

Billswan

[cognos]

I can't view the clip - my internet connection doesn't do youtube...

It is very possible to make fuels - or almost any other petrochemical product - from waste "plastics". Of course, there are thousands of different kinds of plastics, so it is wise to choose one's feedstock properly for the desired end product... plastic water bottles are a pretty poor choice, some "styrofoams" work great...

In the trade, in a very basic expanation of the process - one would take a solid "plastic", mix with a suitable solvent, add heat and liquify, filter off the undesirables (either physically or chemically), and hydrotreat the living hell out of the resulting glop. Refine/distill/treat the hydrotreated end product as usual.

If you were using turkey guts as your feedstock, the process is remarkably similar... I'm not joking here, there is a pilot plant somewhere in the US using turkey and chicken plant waste to make biodiesel (they're extracting the the fats for feedstock)...

I can't see any home user coming up with a shade-tree hydrotreater and associated processing equipment, but hey, I could be wrong... if somebody has one, please let me know where you live and when you run it, so I can be elsewhere that day...

What sort of process are they running in the video?

[cognos]

Ha! So, basically, no usable information at all...

I can't imagine how a usable, cost-effective, safe gasoline-type fuel (or diesel, for that matter) could be made from any sort of plastic by a home tinkerer...

I suppose you could get some toluene (or xylene or benzene) and dissolve some styrofoam cups... I'm sure it would run in an engine, but I can't say for how long... , and I wouldn't want to breathe either the fuel or the exhaust from the engine for very long...

Some things that can be done, maybe shouldn't be...

[billswan]

Cognos

Here is a cut and paste of the info that went with the utube clip.


(This is a clip from a video I made of my old wheel horse tractor running on fuel I made from plastic.
This is the raw unseparated unfiltered fuel so you see a little smoke from the oil that is still in it.
I make about 26 gallons per batch of the raw fuel then seperate it into gasoline and fueloil/Diesel
at about 1/3 gasoline and 2/3 oil and about half a gallon buckets worth of ash from a 55 gallon
drum of ground up poly type plastics.) end quote


The guy was running a small engine on the stuff, for what ever it is worth I found it interesting thought it might start up some useful conversation...........The guy also has some listeroid clips up so maybe he is already here

billswan

[vdubnut62]

That sure was some nasty lookin' stuff he had in that cider jug!  One thing is for sure, I wouldn't pour that "liquid" into anything that I was proud of. His poor old Wheel Horse looked rougher than a night in jail. (reminds me of some of my stuff around here!)
Ron

[billswan]

More info popped up in the comments section on utube, the guy said the plastic was polypropylene
and some polyethylene..................for what ever that is worth.

cognos

what do yo think of that?

[cognos]

I don't know what to think of it!  

I can't imagine what he is doing to those plastics to get 1/3 "gasoline" and 2/3 "diesel." I'd guess some kind of aggressive solvent is involved...

If you use any kind of process (that I can think of, who knows, I miss lots of stuff) to "break up" the bonds of polypropylene or polyethylene, you'd end up with... propylene (a gas at STP) or ethylene (another gas) - or some sort of unstable monomer... these could be used as feedstock to another process to make fuels, I suppose... but not in somebody's back yard - or at least, no one I want to live next door to, there's some high pressures and temperatures involved!

Not to mention all the stabilizers added to plastics. Unless these are removed, they oxidize up quite nicely to some product that resemble "sticky black glass" - you'd have to see it to believe it - not sure I'd want stuff like that depositing throughout my engine...

Who knows. Without more information on the process, it's impossible to say. Maybe he's come up with some heretofore unknown miracle process being kept quiet by "Big Oil", just like the Fish Carburettor... or more properly the Winnipeg Carburettor...

[akghound]

I think this would be a better option. Converting waste engine oil to diesel could be done on a DYI basis.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5885444/description.html
Oil to diesel forum.
http://www.oiltodiesel.com/forum/index.php
There is another Engine oil to diesel forum but I couldn't find it.
Ken Gardner

[cognos]

I just had a quick look at that Oil to Diesel forum, and what some people are doing there - building and running some rudimentary process units.

All I can say is - Wow.

There are guys that are fabricating their own pressure vessels. Firing home-made boilers. Building - and operating - "distillation" units, fed with waste oils...

Not something I'd recommend experimenting with. I wouldn't even want to be in range of one of these in operation.

I can see that WMO/WVO/SVO can be safely collected, cleaned, stored,  and used as a fuel in many diesel engines by many DIYers, with some basic mechanical and chemical skills - and a ton of common sense.

To even attempt a refinery-like process - heat + pressure + oil + chemicals + DIY equipment -  by a home user just seems crazy dangerous to me. It would also be ridiculously expensive to do safely. One 1 HP explosion-proof pump and motor to transfer hot product around would be enough to break my "oil-maker hobbyist" bank...

I know what it takes to get a grass-roots refinery up and running - from flat ground to first product. The engineering and safe procedures followed in industry today are built on the the accidents and incidents of the past...

I'm not saying it can't be done, it obviously can... one could "crack" WMO to diesel (and coke and gasoline and propane, etc.) in a pot still made out a 45 gallon drum setting over a wood fire in a pit in your back yard. But I question the safety and the economics.

[veggie]

I think this would be a better option. Converting waste engine oil to diesel could be done on a DYI basis.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5885444/description.html
Oil to diesel forum.
http://www.oiltodiesel.com/forum/index.php
There is another Engine oil to diesel forum but I couldn't find it.
Ken Gardner

Yep, it can be done, and there are many people experimenting with this.
Two main obstacles are 1] Dangerously high temperatures for back yard DIY'ers, and 2] heavy sludge waste product that needs to be dealt with. (I suppose an oil waste dump site could take the sludge.)

veggie

[cognos]

I just read the patent. I can't find anything different about this process than 100's of other simple thermal cracker/distillation units, in wide service in hundreds of refineries throughout the world... look up Visbreaker unit, or Coker unit...

1. Heat the feedstock oil to a temperature, pre-determined by a lab test of the feedstock, that yields the desired product mix with the correct distillation curve. (This step may give a DIYer some trouble... especially with a variable feedstock supply... )

2. Distill the resulting cracked stock, separating the products. Without some heavy-duty instrumentation, this will be almost impossible to control. It's hard enough to do in a refinery...

3. Cool and store the finished products.

4. Remove and dispose of toxic waste byproducts, and maintain the equipment.

Voila! Easy as pie. Yes? Why doesn't everyone do it!

[akghound]

Voila! Easy as pie. Yes? Why doesn't everyone do it!

That is exactly why I use Waste Vegetable Oil. Easy to deal with. Warm up and Filter. Feed good stuff to truck and generator. Feed dregs to pigs. Keeps it simple
Ken Gardner

[billswan]

Guys

The plastic to oil   CHARACTER  is back on utube with more videos.

Look at this    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2y508O6pZg

I see he is recruiting members to his web site there he will give out his secret process!

2nd video   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6JhS4xevXE

Looks like a still out in the back woods!    Wounder if it will make moonshine to

Billswan

[rbodell]

I see he is recruiting members to his web site there he will give out his secret process!

Sounds like he is or will be charging for this information. I am sure it is no secret, but more like something not normally used like re-refining. If it is anything really new he would have a patent on it and be building a factory.

I don't have a problem with somebody selling a product and making a profit. I'll never complain about the cost of roid parts in the USA because I know what shipping costs and the investment in having them. I have had several people come by asking about using waste motor oil into fuel. I have given away maybe a hundred gallons for them to try out and gone 75 miles to help somebody build a processor. I wouldn't expect anybody else to go that far but still, None of that actually cost me anything. I often ride the motorcycle a hundred miles in an afternoon just for something to do. I could never charge somebody for showing them how to make some fuel. Yes I would make a profit if I sold processors but I wouldn't charge for how to make them.   

[Crofter]

There are some mean and sneaky components of oil refining, paper making residues, metal refining etc. The devil is in the details. The public relations people give a very dumbed down description in the glossy  profiles of the overall process but as a worker when you start to take the compulsory indoctrination sessions before going in to do repairs you get a whole lot more respect (or disgust) for what you are exposing yourself to. After 25 years as a construction steamfitter I would say someone in that picture is a promoter after grant money and using gullible investors money and not a cent of his own. That plant will swallow a hundred times more money than it spits out.