1661 How To Make Your Own Fuel From Waste Or Plastics - Hydrothermal Carbonisation
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ค. 2024
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Sounds like the start of another playlist. How to make your own autoclave with minimal tools, what happens when you hydrothermal carbonize old tires, how to store the various products of hydrothermal carbonization and what you can make from them, the list just goes on and on. Hope this is the start of a long series 😁.
Definitely don't do that with tires
@@yonkromis7883 Proper tire pyrolysis yields a diesel grade fuel and carbon black, which has many industrial uses, along with steel belts for other industrial uses.
@@brianwesley28 correct I worked with Rodger Jailer building a prototype plant in the UK several years back, I think Firestone bought the patent.
It was really interesting work, and quite simple.
Plastics are sophisticated materials, he is making low end fuels with high cost plastics
@@Blue.star1 But plastics are evil waste.
Man, I'm so excited! I can't wait to autoclave my first turd lol.
lol - everyone has to have a hobby lol
The turd will burn alone, just let it dry out.
Opening soon, the crematorium petrol station, even though grandad has gone he’ll still get you home. Lol
lolol -oh dark mate lol
🤣😃😃😃
One was an engineer, the other a car guy who once worked for Hiram Percy Maxim, making mufflers for cars. Can’t help but think they would have liked the idea.
Lololololol
@@twestgard2 that might make better fuel.
A few years ago there was a few companies that were building plants to pyrolysis plastics into fuel. For some reason they have quietly gone away. It seemed like a great idea as the systems could use some of the waste gas to power the heater after it was started.
pyrolysis and HTC are different mate - with pyrolysis you get a lot of tar - with HTC not so much - it would be an interesting thing to see how tyres would do in this set up
@@ThinkingandTinkering And there is gasification too.
I used to own stock in one.
i.e. Licella - at least this past year they were announcing some forest product company (CANFOR) to process wood waste. Still waiting for a chance to license it and build a landfill-powered station.
There was a proposal around 2014 to build a plant next to the new London Gateway port. It was going to make aviation fuel from waste. "British Airways and American-owned fuel production firm Solena Fuels Ltd have located a site in Thurrock, Essex for the development of a gasification facility to turn commercial and industrial waste into aviation fuel". Lots of local objections around the amount of traffic it would create on local roads. The Thurrock one never happened, but Velocys have planning permission for one in Lincolnshire.
Could you Image putting this vessel in the focus of the solar mirror/lens ---> storing solar in liquid fuel
that would be cool
@@ThinkingandTinkering That was my first thought too. Mmmmm, a challenge Mr Murray-Smith??
Awesome
I think this would be the best use. Storing energy from a renewable source. It must take use a lot of energy for this process so no point in burning stuff we already have just to make a bit more
In the US there are fiberglass satillite tv dishes left over from the 80's. I have thought they would make great solar collectors but did not have a good use for all that heat. Now I do.
If you cover this again, it might be good to explain how its different/similar to Pyrolosis.
This is as close as we've come to Mr. Fusion from back to the future 😍
Organic "Gasifiers" have always intrigued me even when thinking of off grid power generation.
There are commercial products out there selling for thousands of dollar for this very thing!
Yes! Excites me. Yes! I’ve considered it… wanted to do this experiment for years now. I didn’t realise it had more uses then plastic to fuel. Thanks again!!
The energy we need is all around us
Ultimate recycling and sustainability!
The fact that so few people seem to know/are talking about this blows my mind
Good one Rob! looking forward to a tandem Autoclave solar concentrator(s) ( parabolic mirror (s))
That's Brilliant Bob!
Really interesting video. This is tremendously important information.
Wow!! This is so exciting!! Thanks Robert!
cheers mate
This is amazing, excellent video.
So happy to know you!
Wow, this is great!
This is right in line with my comment from yesterday. Thanks you good sir. Awesome and Amazing.
it was you I was thinking about mate - cheers
Very exciting, I'm waiting for more, a diy for home.
Really neat!
Great video- just subscribed a few weeks back. Thx for this one!
Guess I'm oldskool if I watched the bamboo video when it came out! Been inspired ever since :)
Thins should be done on every urban center great video ty
cheers mate
There are specific types of biochar kilns that will capture the volatile gasses to either send it back to the kiln or to capture for use in other purposes . As mentioned in your video there are extras in the liquid and gasses , including pyrolignious acid , when watered down is a fertiliser that can be added back to the biochar
As a heat source there’s potential to use the device as a heat source for electricity generation , sterling engines ….. etc
The biochar industry needs this as there’s too much carbon in the atmosphere
Hi Robert, you've mentioned that you can tune up the process to maximize the amount of alcohols produced.
Are there ball park pressure and temperature numbers, (a range, or different numbers for plastic/human/animal-waste)?
Alternatively, can you point me to the relevant papers(s) on this subject?
I wasn't able to find this particular information (yet:).
Thank you.
Thanks you are a font of useful ideas.
cheers mate
Awesome stuff
As always. Fun interesting information.
Drinking water,ag water, sewage. Energy. The things we need to have and or control
cheers mate
Great video,would be a great asset for an off the grid homestead.
yeah I think so
@@ThinkingandTinkering 👍
@@ThinkingandTinkering I suppose that the energy needed might cancel out what you gained depending on what you were aiming for,my thoughts were converting an acre or so of weeds into fuel for a tractor or truck etc...
I've seen some one do something similar in their back yard. Distillation of plastic waste. But it was atmospheric pressure
What was the acidic solution they used in the back yard exsperiment?
Fuel is one of the fields i find challenging in a self sufficientcy situation... So thanks! What pressure do we need for this to work? I've got a bunch of spent mushroom mycelium on straw and wood chips and a big 15 psi pressure cooker...
What a time to be alive. So much good so much bad.
You have told us how to make fuels out of both urine and dumps! Fantastic! :-)
lol - let nothing go to waste mate lol
Urine is really good for direct garden use--but it needs to be diluted in a 5 parts water to 1 part urine concentration.
I love the idea, although I didn't hear anything about the overall numbers in regards to the amount of energy exspense that it takes to actually heat up the acid/compost mixture in order to make it viable.
Minworth sewage treatment in the West Midland are already doing the biogas production
Hi Robert I have an important question! Why not do hydrothermal Liquidation instead of htc? Also how do I build an htl/htc reactor ? Thanks for your amazing work!
I think it would be good to collect and condense whatever it gets relieved from the relief valve when it decides to relieve itself so the waste doesn't get wasted.
Humm.. that sounds oddly recursive...
Any recommendations for an appropriate rated pressure relief valve?
Awesome mate you have me hooked with this one ! So we can burn the coal in the log burner but what can we do with the liquid 🤔 sell it ? Refine it more ? Is it cost efficient? Oh so many questions
Yay! Sheet!
Can we have a video on using the liquid for bio diesel, pls?
for sure mate
Is it possible to HTC everything altogether?
yep good stuff
cheers mate
Could you do a series where you combine this with the wood gassifier design from world war II were they used to run vehicles with wood and instead use plastic? Obviously the technology would need to be updated and the design would be different. But running your vehicle, generator, etc. on plastic would be awesome!
I read an article or paper a while back talking about using carbonized coffee grounds to remove hydrogen sulfide from biogas. I don't think you would be able to use some of the biogas to carbonize the coffee grounds but if you could that would be cool!
you could - remember when I said at the beginning of the video that hydrothermal carbonisation retains the structure - well materials like coffee make great activated carbons and that I basically what is doing the job
Thank you for all the great info Robert. What will old car oil do in this process?
Don't see the point when you can directly use the car oil as a fuel, and if you can use a system that has efficient secondary combustion, you'll burn off most of the pollution/toxins.
could one use acetic acid instead of sulfuric ore the others you mentioned?
that would be cool becouse it is easy to make trough fermentation
This guy reminds me of a less caustic version of Julius Sumner-Miller. It's great to see the internet doing something really worthwhile - in the form of allowing his channel a wider audience - for a change.
Would love you to do a video on getting and using methane gas from organic waste. 🙏 please. Love your videos, new subscriber. 👍
You're the best man:)
wow - cheers mate
Brilliant, but what about the scaling of the equipment?
What do the PFASs turn into? vapourise and breath into F2?
Another very interesting and informative video...
What would occur with .....nuclear waste ... Even lightly contaminated such as is presently put in drums and stored ???
Thom in Scotland.
TH-cam channel NatureJab had built a few microwave autoclave machines. He microwaves plastics into fuel. Same concept. It's worth checking out if you are interested in the subject. He microwaves it and then distills the liquid portions. And he gets a fuel. Very cool
I was just going to point that out!!
He doesn't use high pressure though, just microwaves as an efficient direct heat source and carbon as a susceptor ...
Going back to my scuba diving days (about 25-30 years ago) your talking about 20 metres under water. That is a very achievable pressure from the most simple pressure cooker, even a simple home made pressure vessel. Then you mentioned coal or brickettes. This seems to be a simple home made experiment.
Would need to modify/change the pressure relief valve on home pressure cooker. I wouldn't suggest the avg home tinker to try such in kitchen device. A vessel failure could do serious harm, even at 30psig. At 150psig hot acid vapor and shrapnel would be a bomb. The Boston marathon bomber used dry ice in a pressure pot with the psv blocked if I remember correct
@@Skunkhunt_42 very true but done right using the standard safety regulations, even common sense, would have you pretty safe
it is mate - we have done it before - but like JM says care is needed and for someone not used to this sort of stuff rated equipment would probably be the best idea - or at least stick some sand bags around it and resist the urge to peer in !!
@@ThinkingandTinkering extremely well said mate
@@stevetobias4890 cheers mate
That's amazing, thanks! 👏
Does it have to be with strong acids? I'm thinking about cheap production of lactic/citric acid through fermentation.
no mate it has to be a mineral acid - sulphuric, nitric, phosphoric - which kind of makes sense as an organic acid would just hydrothermally carbonise - anyway it is a weak solution
Nitric acid is the easiest to get a constant supply of at home. You essentially just need a plasma coil in a completely sealed glass container with an air intake from an aquarium bubbler. The outtake is just several tubes of water filtering the gas through which collects the nitric acid, The end of the line to let the air out is just let out into a line that goes outside the building. You're going to want proper ventilation in case anything is leaking, which is always a concern as the gas itself is toxic. Processing can take a good week or two depending on your water containers. You can check concentration using pH test strips. The first few containers should be high concentration which you can water down as needed. The system needs to have a good supply of renewable power for itself to keep it going otherwise your hydro bill is going to rack up. I would also do your research before actually attempting and not take my word for it.
@@ThinkingandTinkering Thank you for all of your videos. You are an inspiration. I do wonder if you had an aerobic digester, could you use the sulphur acid from that in the hydrothermal carbonization process?
@@elalcalde3362 Good question... like converting hydrogen sulfide into sulfuric acid 🤔
@@daniellapain1576 Thanks for the info 🎉
Years ago in an organic chemistry class we put sawdust into test tubes and added heat from a Bunsen burner. Because the tube was relatively oxygen free the wood didn’t burn. But once the moisture boiled off it emitted volatile gases which flowed down a tube to a pipette where we burned them in a constant flame. The material left in the tube was mostly pure carbon, which of course is also burnable. I think this is similar to what happens in efficient wood burners like rocket mass heaters. Instead of unburned hydrocarbons going up the chimney they are burned.
I worked with a researcher who wrote a paper about turning plastics into fuel. Years later I saw someone else doing just that at an energy fair. He started by demonstrating dissolving LOTS of Styrofoam with acetone, ie fingernail polish remover. But for more complicated plastics he used a device, probably similar to this one, to create a type of diesel fuel. That was several years ago so I’m surprised I haven’t seen it commercialized.
I'm not surprised. The most wealthy people in this world, have an agenda, and that agenda doesn't include us being energy independent, but as dependent as is possible.
I did not know that anything like this was possible until I saw that bio-diesel was something one could make in a survival video game called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. Though I do not think one can make fuel from plastic or manure in that game.
I'm interested in achieving this process in the hopes that less plastic waste will be dumped into ocean, and at the same time making use of all the other bi-products used in this process. I sure miss having a fish dinner without being exsposed to less mercury.
@@Spiritman597
Right, there are some plastics that cannot be recycled. Hopefully we can use hydrothermal carbonisation to convert those into mercury free carbon, since burning coal apparently accounts for a little under a quarter of the mercury we put into the environment.
WHAT ABOUT IF WE USE THE CHARCOAL FROM A WOOD GASIFIER? OR ADAPT AN AUTOCLAVE TO THE GASIFIER? I MEAN TO PRODUCE THIS DIESEL?
Fantastic! I'm interested in your comment on making your own autoclave. Is there a chance to see a video on that topic for we DIY minded sort?
I think scavenging parts for that would be a treat.
Gasifier from a pressure vessel of any type. Probably best would be a tall acetylene, oxygen tank cut with a pressure cooker head welded on top for filling.
Granted dealing with pressure like this can be quite spooky!, I’d probably get something prebuilt. My welds sure aren’t boilermaker grade lol
Some folks fail to pay attention: he said at the beginning he already did a video about this in 2013, keep digging his channel...
Thats truly brilliant!!! But how easy is it to make a small scale for home use autoclave bio-digester?? I think farmers use something similar for cow / pig poo, but I'd love to see how to build one, but I just can't get my head round it.
Yep, the old Mother Earth News had article back in 70s showing the composting of chicken dung on the farm to produce methane gas which could be used to power all the utilities on the farm. Don't be fooled, these are very old ideas being piece mealed out with folks making claim for 'discovery. Sorry, nothing new under the sun, so find everything in plain sight with open eyes.
I believe Robert has some videos on it. Essentially you can use a stainless steel tube with threads on both ends with some strong SS caps, from plumbing supplies. You do have to be careful with the temps and times, because these homemade ones can't handle the pressure levels of the specifically built autoclaves. To be on the safe side, one could heat it within a matrix of sand or the like, so that if does explode, it would be less likely to cause damage. And if you're going to go that route, it might be more efficient to wrap it directly with resistive/heating wire (then apply a DC current), put some fiberglass or rockwool insulation around it, and then put it in the sand box.
@@justinw1765 How many bars?
Do you have a video on building an autoclave?
Is this the same as pyrolysis?
Hello sir, is this method same as normal pyrolisis of plastic? I think almost yes, but normal pyrolisis dont use pressure, your method yes. What is difference in results? Yelds? Is product same liquid? Thank you for answers
Seems like a useful way to use excess renewable energy to produce carbon to sequester or use to nourish soil, whilst producing a usable fuel.
All whilst employing a net reduction in greenhouse gas.
Cool😍
Olmost onoccupayïng space in motion😍
As the liquids.
Tray to put some of this to fuce diverend metals and see wat is happening 😍🙏😍
Like mi ch3 depletion water was match lesser negative
Bit maby yours is less negative inof to do it with same cind of melats 🙏😍🙏
It is a very interesting video but when it comes to the human waste aspect I had heard of a different way that someone had done it where instead of using acid they instead use a lot of pressure to turn water into super steam that would break down the organic into carbon in a very similar way.
If anyone is curious I can give a link to where I saw this from
sure send the link
@@fireballloadout please send the link
@@forestMog I posted the link earlier in this chat
Dammit I already filled my wife's pressure cooker with the morning's constitutional and had it on the stove before you told us that won't work. 😕
So, like the town gas works in the US and Europe from about 1840 or so?
If I could subscribe a million times I would.
This will be a great a supplement with waste to energy plants all the world, but I don’t know about home use application
I think it depends a bit on your skill level - the actual process is something undergrads would tackle - and mechanically they are sometimes not the best lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering yes only a minority have the skill and more importantly the time to do this at home. It’s very much an inconvenience when you can just buy a more useful fuel
Not quite Mr Fusion! LoL not yet anyway. But interesting idea and a way to store energy in the biomass . Would be great for off grid situation and you could heat your house on charcoal briquettes and power your car on biodiesel!!
lolol - no not yet!!
You could you lies a concentrated solar dish which is like a 10 ft satellite dish covered with mylar or something similar or a large frenzel lens to produce the heat for boiling that way it would not take a lot of energy to do it I would take a lot of electricity or wood or something to boil that for hours
Very interesting stuff. I wonder if adding hydrogen to this mix would change the output composition mix from the process.
Might be okay, if you avoid Oxygen with that!
Other wise, ya might crater it!
I know induction heating might be the most energy efficient, but I wonder if solar heating would be just as effective
Or a combination of the two. Solar when available. And Induction using a generator using steam (use the coal or anything to heat the water to run the generator)
I like the idea of cleaning up GARBAGE and get rid of those FOREVER particals
In order to use Solar for this process, you really would have to optimize it. Paint it the blackest black that you can, use Solar concentrators though you wouldn't want to point a very pointed parabolic beam at it, but use a more diffuse/larger area "beam". Alternatively, using vacuum insulation around it would help a lot (and you could probably forgo larger, more involved solar concentrators). It is not too hard to make vacuum insulated, mostly glass panels, but it is somewhat expensive as you need high quality, strong and thick glass for this application. (Easier and cheaper to do, would be to use glass jars, and once sealed with the vacuum pulled, put it upside down over the tube).
Another option to use Solar, is to get a good size Solar panel, and then hook it up directly to resistive/heating type wire, and wrap the tube with it, and then put a bunch of insulation (rockwool would be the best) around it.
Build a cheap incineration toilet! There is a huge market because the existing models are quite expensive (2.000 - 4.500 $) and it is interesting for off grid living and cheaper house building.
In one of her annual reports BASF wrote about a project of recycling plastics in this way but that was it. I never heard of it again. We could collect plastic waste for conversion to gas the same way we collect paper or glass. In Germany the plastic waste is collected once a month in a yellow plastic bag ("Wertstoffsack") but as far as I am informed this material is not recycled as they say but instead burned.
so is this what I should be doing with all my takeout containers instead of putting them in the recycling bin? (for them to end up god knows where)
So that's what the professor used on Back to the Future to fuel his car that's awesome always wondering what that was about
Or possibly aluminum. I saw a video on Action Lab where he used gallium to retrieve some of the energy used to smelt the aluminum without gallium loss.
Sounds great, how green is this, sounds pretty clean
you do have to heat it - but as the material can be used as fuel that's an option - of course as angelus said we could do this via solar
have to wonder about how practical it is for the average hobbyist + how much net energy you can hope to harvest (once you subtract the energy you have to put into the process + the cost of acid)
My thoughts too
vido link would be helpfull
By the way, I'm looking for a purely urban waste solution of recycling poop, dry toilet generally require dry organic stuff like wood stuff to work, I wonder what can be used as a substitute, especially typical consumption waste.
The problem I see is firstly, how much energy is being used to create that heat and pressure.
Secondly, with regard to fluorinated long chain organic molecules, free fluorine can be a very dangerous chemical (quite safe when in a long chain molecule, but very dangerous in many other circumstances). How safe would the breakdown products of these substances from an autoclave be?
Looking to do this on my boat as part of enviro cleanup / self-sufficiency. Lots of cruisers collect trash, but they send it to the landfill when they reach town again. If there was a solution (autoclave / pyrolysis / ???) that turned trash into diesel, it would solve 2 problems.
I thought the same i couldn't wait but this autoclave is pretty costly and a pressure cooker doesn't work 😢
Nice. I am not sure how Hydrothermal Carbonization is different from "thermal depolymerization" or from pyrolysis?
doing it in water allows for 1: saving the time/energy of drying your feedstock, and 2: keeping all the organic bits in the liquid product: in the absence of water, they would volatilize and be lost as gases.
a method using quartz spheres and coating them in strontium oxide, put in vegetable oil. bombard with klystron. the microwave radiation makes it biodiesel without harmful chemicals
Seems like a cool way to make highly porous carbon structures (not sure about the proper name) from polystyrene.
Edit: Not sure if the "aerated" structure will be retained under these conditions though.
seems they should based on what he has said, maybe try?
Remember the scene in Mad Max Beyond thunderdoom,they were using the gas created by pig poop to power everything including engines in vehicles.
Awesome thing! I've looked into it a couple of months back in the context of reprocessing cat litter into carbon/fuel but found that none of the medical autoclave specs I came across could get up to the required pressure/temp for HTC to occur. Do you have any example products you can point at that do indeed get upto ~150 psi / 10 bar?
If you search for pictures of autoclaves it is easy to pick the high pressure ones out as they look just like the one in the video, chunky stainless. China and India are two sources.
@@spex357 Thanks. Yeah, I've seen these around but usually they are pretty small and super chunky (made for much higher pressures,) like the one Rob had in his video. I'm looking for something on the order of a few litres. Other than small experiments (which are valuable in their own right,) there's not much you can do with such a small apparatus.
I was looking into using either some sort of fancy biodegradable synthetic clumping litter (if i can even find one), or just wood pellets, and using an Anaerobic Digestion system for treatment of it.
*If* i could get the conditions right, I could maybe even use (wax) paper, heck even PLA bags too, but yeah.
@@sfertman The high pressure ones are probably small for a weighty reason. As they get bigger the wall thickness becomes table flattening.
Sadly I expect many would like a bigger one.
@@ericlotze7724 We use wheat based litter that we buy here in Toronto. It can go straight into the municipal composting system, so it's pretty much carbonizeable biomass. If I could only find a decent sized container that can handle the pressure/temp, I'd have a cat's lifetime supply of HTC fodder :D
If it doesn't work, it will fade away like all the others that didn't. If it does work, it will fade away like all the others that did.
This guy talks way too aggressively but damn he's good at explaining.
The chamber pot of the future. You can even throw the toilet paper in there with it!
This is interesting but I think a more efficient simpler method would be using low pressure version like a nasa toilet design. This could get the job done without requiring the autoclave or the acid, it also requires less heat but might produce large quantities of natural gas, some of which could be used to run the system.
I think the alcohol by-product from human waste was pioneered years ago by Kestrel Lager.
Was much inspired but this video...more then the last few(being truthful)...Now lawn clippings. TONS! are generated, assuming more than human wast, what difference would be needed to convert such into reusable fuel? SoMax HTC sounds like a stock tip. Am not into such..but feel like it is a great investment. remembered Microsoft or Amison?...best DVD:)
I'm getting ad's for industrial machinery from China because I have looked into this
Hi Robert, mostly my comments attempt at levity. You function in an atmosphere so rarified I could not survive. But your TH-cams are always so interesting I keep coming back. Having said that, I will share some of my experience.
I cook everyday with a stove top pressure cooker. It reaches 1 bar (15 psi) internal pressure. No home-use pressure cooker could ever withstand 10-15 bar. And you point this out.
But I am not sure that any medical or dental autoclave could withstand 10-15 bar. Mostly, medical and dental autoclaves reach sterilization temperature at about 1 bar (15 psi, 250°F 115°C). I only bring this up because I love this channel and in the past few years I have developed a certain affection for The Dread Mad Scientist Robert. I am afraid someone, hearing they can make coal with an autoclave, will go to eBay, find a dental autoclave for $350 (there is one there right now) and blow his kitchen to bits and complain, “Robert said it would work.” If it is possible to add a caveat to your TH-cam telling people to verify the strength of any autoclave before they venture into the double-digits bar-pressure, it might be a good idea.
Cheers my friend!
Yes, with whatever people do attempt this with, it should be put in a box of sand or the like. I may try this with threaded pipes w/caps, directly wrapped in resistive wiring and insulation, BUT then I would also put it in a container of sand and outside, so that if it does go BOOM, it will be safer. Conversely, you can just dig a hole in the ground and heat it up in there as well.
I am thinking I could make an autoclave from a big old hydraulic cylinder rated for 3000 psi. The ends are bolted on. I also have a hydraulic pressure valve to slowly release pressure. I should be able to swap the end caps to make a high pressure vessel. How high is the temperature? I need to make a reusable gasket.
cool
Polycarbonate as in plastic pop bottles makes great diesel and petrol. Just try it for yourself. Theres a guy in America being doing it for years. A leading chemist in UK put this forward to the gov. but the reply was that the EU masters wouldnt allow it.