The Marvellous Plastic-Eating Mushroom When Yale University students found Pestalotiopsis in the rainforests of Ecuador in 2011, they discovered the first fungus that not only has a voracious appetite for plastic but can thrive in oxygen-starved environments like landfills. They taste good too.
Kinda scary to think about what's in the mushroom. Edible sure, but so is plastic. There's got to be bpas, carcinogens, or microplastics or maybe a combination of those in the fruiting body
@@antonkukoba3378 because it wont help at all. Consuming nutrients mean burning it inside your body. you breath out CO2. pretty sure the fungus does the same. you would need to bury the mushroom thousands miles underground and never pick them back up to remove C atoms from the ecosystem.
Butilpyryridinium chloride … Checked the price to see if I could install a back garden distillation plant, bootlegger style. 67 Euros for 500 mg 😳 hmmm guess I’ll still be going to the gas station.
I think the concern is that we would have to worry about it becoming uncontrolled and causing all kinds of problems in everything from consumer devices to electrical wiring.
Soon we’ll be importing all our waste plastic rubbish back from all the places we exported it to! Thanks for another great, informative video Robert, always appreciated.
i love it Rob, thank you......and i chuckled when you said you'd made those fixtures in 1707 and 1710....i jumped to the conclusion that you were well in the past!.....and now i'm impressed and amazed you're well into the future now!...hee! ;)
Years ago I put up a video called "Plastic into electricity invention and idea" featuring this technology. My method involves producing the plastic oils in a chamber heated by the waste heat of a specially designed Internal combustion engine similar to a "hot bulb" vaporization ignition engine from antiquity which is capable of running on any fuel even crude oil. The engine is started on regular biofuel, then once sufficient heat is produced and heated plastic gasses bubble through water-the resultant oils are directly burned in said engine generator.
More information about hot bulb engines: In the hot bulb engine, combustion takes place in a separated combustion chamber, the "vaporizer" (also called the "hot bulb"), usually mounted on the cylinder head, into which fuel is sprayed. It is connected to the cylinder by a narrow passage and is heated by combustion gases while running; an external flame, such as a blow torch or slow-burning wick, is used for starting; on later models, electric heating or pyrotechnics were sometimes used. Another method was the inclusion of a spark plug and vibrator-coil ignition; the engine would be started on petrol (gasoline) and switched over to oil after warming to running temperature. The pre-heating time depends on the engine design, the type of heating used and the ambient temperature, but for most engines in a temperate climate generally ranges from 2 to 5 minutes to as much as half an hour if operating in extreme cold or the engine is especially large. The engine is then turned over, usually by hand, but sometimes by compressed air or an electric motor. Once the engine is running, the heat of compression and ignition maintains the hot bulb at the necessary temperature, and the blow-lamp or other heat source can be removed. Thereafter, the engine requires no external heat and requires only a supply of air, fuel oil and lubricating oil to run. However, under low power the bulb could cool off too much. If the load on the engine is low, combustion temperatures may not be sufficient to maintain the temperature of the hot bulb. Many hot-bulb engines cannot be run off-load without auxiliary heating for this reason. Some engines had a throttle valve in their air intakes to cut down the supply of excess cold air for when running at light load and/or low speed, and others had adjustable fuel sprayer nozzles that could be adjusted to deliver a strong jet of fuel oil into the core of the hot bulb where temperatures would be greatest, rather than the normal wide spray of atomised fuel, to maintain self-combustion under prolonged low load running or idling. Equally, as the engine's load increases, so does the temperature of the bulb. This causes the start of combustion to advance (occurring earlier in the cycle) which reduces power and efficiency. If combustion is allowed to advance too much then damaging pre-ignition can occur. This was a limiting factor on the power output of hot-bulb engines and in order to circumvent this limit some hot-bulb engines feature a system whereby water is dripped into the air intake to reduce the temperature of the air charge and counteract pre-ignition, thus allowing higher power outputs. The fact that the engine can be left unattended for long periods while running made hot-bulb engines a popular choice for applications requiring a steady power output, such as farm tractors, generators, pumps and canal boat propulsion.
I patented another way to remould none food grade HDPE into a light infrastructure apparatus for building things like smart-ag platforms and floating classrooms. A modular super cheap to product extruded hollow profile that gets its strength or use by what’s put in it. It’s called Kavitat. Love the show. .
@@Paul-yh8km Back into oil, burning it as fuel is just stupid, we get back into fossil fuel burning. They will call it renewables but it is BS. Coal is easier n cheaper and natural gas even better.
70 degree centigrade can easily be achieved with a simple solar hot water heater mounted on the roof. So in essence this whole process could actually be energy free to achieve. Nice. Now someone has to design a domestic version for home use. That would reduce the amount of trash the dump truck has to pick up from the homes while giving the home owner fuel to drive around with.
they had the process ready for commercial production 20 years ago, it is not a new idea. A better idea is to use hydrogen to transform organic matter from trash and plastics into methane.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937The same low temperature process? That’s a depressing revelation, can you cite a particular paper or news article detailing this, please?
@@andrewsackville-west1609 we have made over 8 billions of tonnes of it since 1950 so a big pile to get through and we really should clean up the planet.
@@okafka5446well, yt does not like external links but you can search on yt How Gasification Turns Waste Into Energy and fuel from trash. And even before that the japanese tried with the hydrogenation and succeded in transforming all plastics including pvc into methane which is the starting point for any synthesis we want like fischer tropsch or methanole. Sure during the hydrogenation of the pvc is produced some HCl but that is trivial to separate and is a valuable byproduct
Cool. I figured that when the return on plastic recycling outweighed its cost, they'd start mining the oceans for plastic. Maybe now it's only a matter of time. Thanks for sharing this.
I'll have to dig it out of my files but there is a paper or patent that I found a long time ago that details the process of converting PET plastic into oxalic acid. Another thing I've been looking at is the de-chlorination of PVC via chemical means and conversion of the leftover polyvinyl compounds into something liquid that can be used as a fuel. But, as always, I have too many projects.
The dude from Garage 54 uses pyrolysis with a gasifier to turn old car tires into fuel for his Lada. Other than the smell, it works just as well, if not better, than the gasoline from a gas station.
I literally have about 50 large plastic bags of used soft plastics under my deck, just waiting for someone to figure out proper plastics recycling. We do have a plastics recycling facility, but the staff has informed me that over 1/2 of their bins are taken directly to the landfill, because of contamination from unlike plastics. Someone needs to figure this out. When they do, I hope they are using concentrated sunlight to liquify the recycled plastics.
Glad to hear you talking about this Robert, I first heard of this years ago when I watched a NZ youtuber build a backyard Pyrolysis experiment over a series of videos. In his setup the process was started using Propane but once up to temperature it ran off it's own fumes. He took his distillate off as diesel but as soon as he started producing and proved the point... I believe his channel got pulled, no surprises there then. I also saw a documentary on an Australian group who had built and run a fair few commercial plants and claimed to be in the process of doing the same in UK.. but heard nothing more... things like this don't ever seem to make the news.
If the plastic bag in the tin was on top of a log burner(with the still attached). you could produce enough fuel to light a miners lamp and call it MOONSHINE...LOL
In the uk most councils, if not all, do not collect plastic bags for recycling. Yet plastic bags are one of the worst sources of plastic pollution, easily breaking down in the environment to form micro plastics. It would be very satisfying if industry started to demand the return of plastic bags as a valuable feed stock. While platics shopping bags has been banned, plastic film is still a common wrap for many products.
Most supermarkets collect these. Not been back in UK to establish what is done with them but they are collected and used in NZ for manufacturing plastic pallets, fence posts etc.
Back like 20 years ago in discovery magazine a father and son team out of new Jersey USA .created a hivoltage steam plastic cracker it made light sweet crude oil .they said it could
In the 1980's some engineers in Texas built a machine that would chop tired into 4 inch squares that were then fed on a conveyor belt the through a molten lead bath that distilled the tires and removed much of the sulfur, the distilled product was a relatively clean No. 2 fuel oil and the said that the yield was about 2 gallons per tire.
You have to remember too, that this was the 1980's and recycling was not a main stream issue then. More than likely bureaucratic red tape and regulation and the $6 million price tag killed it. @@antonkukoba3378
If im not mistaken you can also do this with used motor oil. It would also be beneficial if we could find a way to make a fractionating column from common items.
The calculation of dealing with the waste after use should also be part of it. The manufacturers don't have to acknowledge it but as a consumer I have to pay extra waste fees for managing a recycling bin and it's pick up and the community has to pay for the land filling or other management of it if they can even sell a small part of it. Long ago the world decided we needed treaties & agreements to take care ol land disputes and weapons. We need a similar sort of thing to guide the production and reuse of product and especially plastics. It's kind of mind-boggling how much waste there is for just something that you needed for a snack or a meal.
Bang on old chap! We definitely need a much larger and more powerful government! Sure the taxes will have to go up but it will be worth it! True it will probably cause more homelessness but they will be able to make money going through bins collecting plastic and selling it to recyclers! This will work well for the new migrants especially! Almost certainly they will also get involved in drugs and prostitution, rape and theft. But this will produce many jobs for law enforcement, judges and counselors!
You are so very right! We don't need homes and jobs anymore! Let the government and the ruling elites take care of us! Obviously they love us and only want the best for us!@@KLondike5
using large Frenzel lenses or parabolic reflectors to capture sunlight and heat the vessel might be a way to work around the need for burning fuel to make fuel.
You know, I’ve seen a lot of videos on pyrosis, and when you think about it, the oil industry does exactly that just think of the oil sands it would be a good thing for them to take the plastic back instead of digging up the country
Eastman chemical has brought one plant online and broke ground for a process that converts plastics back to feed stocks for plastic, I think it's called molecular recycling. I guess it going pretty well since they have started building at least 2 more plants.
After soft plastic recycling collapsed in Australia, we've been collecting over ten cubic metres of LDPE bread bags from waste food we collect for our farm. A solar powered kiln was my first thought. In 2028 my solar feed in will decrease by 9/10 in value, so I'm looking for ways to monetise my 30kW array. 70° C can be achieved efficiently with a heat pump. Not sure if the catalyst is cheaply available, or would need to be reclined from the oil.
Where I stay, they've been doing the plastic-to-fuel thing for years. LOTS of downsides- the people cooking the plastics to make fuel generate a phenomenal stench (clearly zero environmental enforcement); then, the vehicles that burn this fuel (ironically waste collection trucks) produce an eye-watering exhaust fume... drive behind one on the highway for any amount of time and you start to feel like you're trapped in an industrial building fire.
There is a process called hydrothermal carboization for sewage treatment it also turns plastics back into oil and collecting that and other byproducts is part of the business model.
Be made small enough to fight in the back of a pick up truck . butter ball turkey in Missouri had one it made 600 barrels of light sweet crude oil a day from the turkey processing trash no trips to the trash dump . You probably can look it up in the back issues of discovery magazine. So where is it to day ? .no news I think it got bought by waste management and shelved . No crises with a solution no panic money .
You are behind the curve. Paul Baskis, from Atlas Energy, has a patented process for plastic to fuel process. At hundreds of tons per hour. Currently under contract for multiple facilities in multiple states. Paralysis is ok. But multi stage gasification is much better.
At 70C You could also run this process with industrial scale heat pumps running off renewable energy to seriously dent the emissions. Hopefully the catalyst is easily recoverable & reusable too.
So, you are saying, nature stored energy as crude, we converted that into plastic, which we have stored for a rainy day. Let's hope for a down pour. Great information Dr. Smith. What is the toxicity of the catalyst?
They need to make sure where possible that only plastics that breakdown safely are used for food packaging, therefore plastics like PVC need to be avoided.
Here's the elephant in the room - the carbon in the plastic is strongly bound, but when you turn it into fuel and burn it, the carbon is liberated and the greenhouse effect is extended.
I'm playing with an idea for a motor where you inject hot oil into a chamber of water to make really high pressures. Dark smoky fires create really high pressures. I think I might be able to use that stuff for the oil. Imagine cars that run on water and oil made from recycled plastics. Now that would be revolutionary!
@@billschwandt1 Grid scale wind energy has a carbon intensity up to 20gCO2/kWh. Fossil fuels range from 300 to 1000 gCO2/kWh depending on use and fuel type. If wind turbines were to be built using green steel, that 20 figure would drop further.
Hi Robert, We did an intensive study on the mass balance of pyrolysis. The collected syngasses are sufficient to propell a pyrolysis process. The inefficiency resides in the cleaning of the waste feedstock. Therefore, I postulate that we need to look at the efficient cleaning of feedstock rather than purely look at the different energy extraction processes. In any way, could you please provide a link to the referenced process for further scrutiny. Your thought-provoking clips are, however, very stimulating. Thank you!
Was that cleaning out of the chamber after the pyrolysis or actually cleaning the plastics of other materials previous to pyrolysis, or perhaps even getting it down to the sizes required to enter the chamber?
Pyrolysis is inefficient process if the goal was to produce oil/gasoline. But a good option if the goal is to reduce plastic waste. And the residue can be used as aggregate in asphalt or concrete maybe.
I have always thought it a good idea to make as many plastics as possible out of polymers that break down in cheap low grade solvents that when dissolves , they create the right chemical ingredients to be distilled into a useful fuel .
How much cleaning and seperation does the feedstock need , ? And nasty byproducts ? I've always thought the simpler our pladtic packaging is ,the more more likely it is to be recycled, and if it takes a consumer levy to collect the feedstock and get it to the recycling plant ,then so be it ..
I'm eagerly waiting for memes about USA when they hear there is oil in trash. And. Eagerly waiting on that trash becoming more useable. As a fuel if need be.
@petevenuti7355 but there are videos from a decade ago using this process. Pioneered in India as I remember. A small amount of fuel can cook down the next batch when there isn't solar.
I know a company that have a pyrolysis machine technology that can convert any kind of thing having hydrocarbon inside into synthetic fuel (both liquid and gas). It's in use for a long time in power plants.
I saw a video of animals that eat plastic found in the Pacific Gyre (the place where a lot of plastic in the ocean ends up). I wonder if the enzymes from these animals are being researched?
Changing World Technologies almost went fully commercial with this more than a decade ago. Prob worth trying again, esp if you include solar &c power in the process. This with a solar concentrator, esp in a desert location, would be good.
@@AndreaDingbatt Most plastic waste in the UK gets incinerated in waste to energy plants, there is a cost penalty for putting it in landfill. But burning it or putting it in landfill isn't the answer.
Hope the catalyst process works. That is for making new plastic….not fuel. Even with the energy intensive process, when we have sufficient wind and solar, there will be a 3x excess, (see Tony Sebo) so this free energy needs an outlet.
Ok, so that raises the questions: What's the energy cost of producing the aluminum chloride, what's the usage lifespan of the catalyst, and what's it's cost of production.
A strategy where zero grid power is produced via hydrocarbons is a good start and a very achievable goal. Save hydrocarbon use for mobile platforms requiring high density fuels, like airplanes and trucking, in the interim. The exception to that might be trash incineration, recycling and use of excess production in which using the energy to process raw materials might work. An international treaty banning the target of nuclear plants in war - although that might be a tough sell because of breeder reactors. Might be worth an investment in non-uranium nuclear.
Would the exhaust from a wood gasifier be hot enough to process the plastic? It would be neat if the waste heat from running the gasifier could be used to produce a liquid fuel that could be stored for later to either run the engine without the gasifier or use it to start the engine before the gasifier is fully up to temp.
Hi, well i do think that is a great idea, combining 2 things to get the best of both worlds, heating swimming pools, heating your home, bbq etc etc! nice one, take care and have a great day!
At those temperatures it would broadly possible to use industrial waste heat and focal concentration solar even on cloudy days in the northern hemisphere. Literally no limit to where you do it around the globe . You could even do it on small scale in the artic and antartic camps to create fuel !
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The Marvellous Plastic-Eating Mushroom When Yale University students found Pestalotiopsis in the rainforests of Ecuador in 2011, they discovered the first fungus that not only has a voracious appetite for plastic but can thrive in oxygen-starved environments like landfills. They taste good too.
Kinda scary to think about what's in the mushroom. Edible sure, but so is plastic. There's got to be bpas, carcinogens, or microplastics or maybe a combination of those in the fruiting body
so it's 13 years and no further breakthrough. The mushroom is apparently a gimmick
@@antonkukoba3378 because it wont help at all. Consuming nutrients mean burning it inside your body. you breath out CO2. pretty sure the fungus does the same. you would need to bury the mushroom thousands miles underground and never pick them back up to remove C atoms from the ecosystem.
Butilpyryridinium chloride … Checked the price to see if I could install a back garden distillation plant, bootlegger style. 67 Euros for 500 mg 😳 hmmm guess I’ll still be going to the gas station.
I think the concern is that we would have to worry about it becoming uncontrolled and causing all kinds of problems in everything from consumer devices to electrical wiring.
There's a guy here in Kenya making petrol and diesel alternatives from plastics. Nice innovation.
I like the idea of filling a canoe form with plastic bags, put it into a solar oven (parabolic mirrors around the mould/mold). Cool. Cool canoe. 😎
Soon we’ll be importing all our waste plastic rubbish back from all the places we exported it to! Thanks for another great, informative video Robert, always appreciated.
i love it Rob, thank you......and i chuckled when you said you'd made those fixtures in 1707 and 1710....i jumped to the conclusion that you were well in the past!.....and now i'm impressed and amazed you're well into the future now!...hee! ;)
Robert is Definitely a Time-Lord!!😎👍👍
Cool tech but we still need to limit our single use plastic consumption
Years ago I put up a video called "Plastic into electricity invention and idea" featuring this technology. My method involves producing the plastic oils in a chamber heated by the waste heat of a specially designed Internal combustion engine similar to a "hot bulb" vaporization ignition engine from antiquity which is capable of running on any fuel even crude oil. The engine is started on regular biofuel, then once sufficient heat is produced and heated plastic gasses bubble through water-the resultant oils are directly burned in said engine generator.
More information about hot bulb engines:
In the hot bulb engine, combustion takes place in a separated combustion chamber, the "vaporizer" (also called the "hot bulb"), usually mounted on the cylinder head, into which fuel is sprayed. It is connected to the cylinder by a narrow passage and is heated by combustion gases while running; an external flame, such as a blow torch or slow-burning wick, is used for starting; on later models, electric heating or pyrotechnics were sometimes used. Another method was the inclusion of a spark plug and vibrator-coil ignition; the engine would be started on petrol (gasoline) and switched over to oil after warming to running temperature.
The pre-heating time depends on the engine design, the type of heating used and the ambient temperature, but for most engines in a temperate climate generally ranges from 2 to 5 minutes to as much as half an hour if operating in extreme cold or the engine is especially large. The engine is then turned over, usually by hand, but sometimes by compressed air or an electric motor.
Once the engine is running, the heat of compression and ignition maintains the hot bulb at the necessary temperature, and the blow-lamp or other heat source can be removed. Thereafter, the engine requires no external heat and requires only a supply of air, fuel oil and lubricating oil to run. However, under low power the bulb could cool off too much. If the load on the engine is low, combustion temperatures may not be sufficient to maintain the temperature of the hot bulb. Many hot-bulb engines cannot be run off-load without auxiliary heating for this reason. Some engines had a throttle valve in their air intakes to cut down the supply of excess cold air for when running at light load and/or low speed, and others had adjustable fuel sprayer nozzles that could be adjusted to deliver a strong jet of fuel oil into the core of the hot bulb where temperatures would be greatest, rather than the normal wide spray of atomised fuel, to maintain self-combustion under prolonged low load running or idling. Equally, as the engine's load increases, so does the temperature of the bulb. This causes the start of combustion to advance (occurring earlier in the cycle) which reduces power and efficiency. If combustion is allowed to advance too much then damaging pre-ignition can occur. This was a limiting factor on the power output of hot-bulb engines and in order to circumvent this limit some hot-bulb engines feature a system whereby water is dripped into the air intake to reduce the temperature of the air charge and counteract pre-ignition, thus allowing higher power outputs.
The fact that the engine can be left unattended for long periods while running made hot-bulb engines a popular choice for applications requiring a steady power output, such as farm tractors, generators, pumps and canal boat propulsion.
I patented another way to remould none food grade HDPE into a light infrastructure apparatus for building things like smart-ag platforms and floating classrooms. A modular super cheap to product extruded hollow profile that gets its strength or use by what’s put in it. It’s called Kavitat. Love the show. .
Love the idea. Maybe you could write a small paper and send it to Rob Murray and he could do a video on it?
LEGO ???
@@rumples2698 Would be great to have construction-sized legos for real world building projects!
@@hippie-io7225you haven't listened to Rob going on about patents...I think it wouldn't get a sympathetic hearing.
I love watching these videos in the morning, it gets the creative juices flowing for the day!
This is very interesting. Maybe every home should have one of these, DIY recycling.
What do you think happens when the fuel is burnt?
@@Paul-yh8km You don't burn it, you turn it back into plastic for your 3D printer.
@@AlwaysCensored-xp1be
The video is about turning plastic into fuel.
@@Paul-yh8km Back into oil, burning it as fuel is just stupid, we get back into fossil fuel burning. They will call it renewables but it is BS. Coal is easier n cheaper and natural gas even better.
Excellent info on an exciting possible solution! Please keep us up-to-date as this continues. Thank you!
70 degree centigrade can easily be achieved with a simple solar hot water heater mounted on the roof. So in essence this whole process could actually be energy free to achieve. Nice. Now someone has to design a domestic version for home use. That would reduce the amount of trash the dump truck has to pick up from the homes while giving the home owner fuel to drive around with.
There have been well-known ways to do this for 50 years but the EPA has blocked all of them for frivolous reasons
A fantastic way to deal with the millions of tonnes of plastic we need clean up.
they had the process ready for commercial production 20 years ago, it is not a new idea. A better idea is to use hydrogen to transform organic matter from trash and plastics into methane.
What happens when we use up all the plastic? Even money says there will be plastic subsidies to manufacture plastic as feed stock for fuel generation.
@@orionbetelgeuse1937The same low temperature process? That’s a depressing revelation, can you cite a particular paper or news article detailing this, please?
@@andrewsackville-west1609 we have made over 8 billions of tonnes of it since 1950 so a big pile to get through and we really should clean up the planet.
@@okafka5446well, yt does not like external links but you can search on yt How Gasification Turns Waste Into Energy and fuel from trash. And even before that the japanese tried with the hydrogenation and succeded in transforming all plastics including pvc into methane which is the starting point for any synthesis we want like fischer tropsch or methanole. Sure during the hydrogenation of the pvc is produced some HCl but that is trivial to separate and is a valuable byproduct
Cool. I figured that when the return on plastic recycling outweighed its cost, they'd start mining the oceans for plastic. Maybe now it's only a matter of time. Thanks for sharing this.
Love it, this is a straight efficiency gain for the entire plastic/petrochemical industry if this is implemented at scale.
I’ve been watching for a couple years.. the last 6 months you are reading my mind 😂 don’t stop 📖 🧠
Thanks RMS
Peace Prospector Tripp
Good news for cleaning up the oceans. Hope it can be applied soon in large quantities.
I just saw an Instagram reel today of a guy turning plastic to oil, gas, and carbon black using old microwave parts. Crazy timing!
I'll have to dig it out of my files but there is a paper or patent that I found a long time ago that details the process of converting PET plastic into oxalic acid. Another thing I've been looking at is the de-chlorination of PVC via chemical means and conversion of the leftover polyvinyl compounds into something liquid that can be used as a fuel. But, as always, I have too many projects.
The dude from Garage 54 uses pyrolysis with a gasifier to turn old car tires into fuel for his Lada. Other than the smell, it works just as well, if not better, than the gasoline from a gas station.
Interesting thank you so much for the information. You’re always a plethora of great information as I changed my stator build to serpentine coils.
wow - wesome mate - I am glad to hear that I was of some help
I literally have about 50 large plastic bags of used soft plastics under my deck, just waiting for someone to figure out proper plastics recycling. We do have a plastics recycling facility, but the staff has informed me that over 1/2 of their bins are taken directly to the landfill, because of contamination from unlike plastics. Someone needs to figure this out. When they do, I hope they are using concentrated sunlight to liquify the recycled plastics.
YT "making diesel out of plastic"
Thanks. There are plenty of industrial processes that produce waste heat, which could be stored or redirected to use for this. tavi.
the critics read my mind, that's extraordinary news that far less energy is required
That thumbnail image looks like something you would find in a retirement brochure.
Soylent Greens
"A place to let yourself go"
I agree
The cemetery plot.
Dignitas information brochure 😂
you rascal 🩼👴
Glad to hear you talking about this Robert, I first heard of this years ago when I watched a NZ youtuber build a backyard Pyrolysis experiment over a series of videos.
In his setup the process was started using Propane but once up to temperature it ran off it's own fumes.
He took his distillate off as diesel but as soon as he started producing and proved the point... I believe his channel got pulled, no surprises there then.
I also saw a documentary on an Australian group who had built and run a fair few commercial plants and claimed to be in the process of doing the same in UK.. but heard nothing more... things like this don't ever seem to make the news.
it creates a lot of toxic fumes, so simple pyrolysis is ok, but not good for environment if there is no filter or recirculation of gases/fumes
If the plastic bag in the tin was on top of a log burner(with the still attached). you could produce enough fuel to light a miners lamp and call it MOONSHINE...LOL
OK Robert, when are you going to show us how to produce this catalyst and use it in our garages?
Thankyou for sharing this research. I really enjoy your channel. I wish that there was a focus on recycling on a scale that could be in each city.
Great one. Thank you
In the uk most councils, if not all, do not collect plastic bags for recycling. Yet plastic bags are one of the worst sources of plastic pollution, easily breaking down in the environment to form micro plastics. It would be very satisfying if industry started to demand the return of plastic bags as a valuable feed stock. While platics shopping bags has been banned, plastic film is still a common wrap for many products.
Most supermarkets collect these.
Not been back in UK to establish what is done with them but they are collected and used in NZ for manufacturing plastic pallets, fence posts etc.
Back like 20 years ago in discovery magazine a father and son team out of new Jersey USA .created a hivoltage steam plastic cracker it made light sweet crude oil .they said it could
In the 1980's some engineers in Texas built a machine that would chop tired into 4 inch squares that were then fed on a conveyor belt the through a molten lead bath that distilled the tires and removed much of the sulfur, the distilled product was a relatively clean No. 2 fuel oil and the said that the yield was about 2 gallons per tire.
apparently there're some issues which didn't make it a common way of tyre recycling
You have to remember too, that this was the 1980's and recycling was not a main stream issue then. More than likely bureaucratic red tape and regulation and the $6 million price tag killed it. @@antonkukoba3378
Add induction heating for the heat source and run the process at peak solar and wind generation times, this should make it even more economical.
If im not mistaken you can also do this with used motor oil. It would also be beneficial if we could find a way to make a fractionating column from common items.
The calculation of dealing with the waste after use should also be part of it. The manufacturers don't have to acknowledge it but as a consumer I have to pay extra waste fees for managing a recycling bin and it's pick up and the community has to pay for the land filling or other management of it if they can even sell a small part of it.
Long ago the world decided we needed treaties & agreements to take care ol land disputes and weapons. We need a similar sort of thing to guide the production and reuse of product and especially plastics. It's kind of mind-boggling how much waste there is for just something that you needed for a snack or a meal.
Bang on old chap! We definitely need a much larger and more powerful government! Sure the taxes will have to go up but it will be worth it! True it will probably cause more homelessness but they will be able to make money going through bins collecting plastic and selling it to recyclers! This will work well for the new migrants especially! Almost certainly they will also get involved in drugs and prostitution, rape and theft. But this will produce many jobs for law enforcement, judges and counselors!
@@quirty864 That sounds like Papa John complaining health insurance costs 14¢ per pizza.
You are so very right! We don't need homes and jobs anymore! Let the government and the ruling elites take care of us! Obviously they love us and only want the best for us!@@KLondike5
Brilliant!!
It's not brilliant at all.
Think about it.
using large Frenzel lenses or parabolic reflectors to capture sunlight and heat the vessel might be a way to work around the need for burning fuel to make fuel.
I had almost given up hope for plastic recycling. I really hope this technology is as good as it seems and can be commercialised very soon.
You know, I’ve seen a lot of videos on pyrosis, and when you think about it, the oil industry does exactly that just think of the oil sands it would be a good thing for them to take the plastic back instead of digging up the country
Eastman chemical has brought one plant online and broke ground for a process that converts plastics back to feed stocks for plastic, I think it's called molecular recycling. I guess it going pretty well since they have started building at least 2 more plants.
fascinating. i assume we could use the oodles of low grade heat that comes from cooling towers or mega data centres?
After soft plastic recycling collapsed in Australia, we've been collecting over ten cubic metres of LDPE bread bags from waste food we collect for our farm. A solar powered kiln was my first thought. In 2028 my solar feed in will decrease by 9/10 in value, so I'm looking for ways to monetise my 30kW array. 70° C can be achieved efficiently with a heat pump. Not sure if the catalyst is cheaply available, or would need to be reclined from the oil.
Now to get the catalyst and do some processing and refine it then start the recycling all plastics into fuel. Sounds like a great retirement business.
Where I stay, they've been doing the plastic-to-fuel thing for years. LOTS of downsides- the people cooking the plastics to make fuel generate a phenomenal stench (clearly zero environmental enforcement); then, the vehicles that burn this fuel (ironically waste collection trucks) produce an eye-watering exhaust fume... drive behind one on the highway for any amount of time and you start to feel like you're trapped in an industrial building fire.
There is a process called hydrothermal carboization for sewage treatment it also turns plastics back into oil and collecting that and other byproducts is part of the business model.
Be made small enough to fight in the back of a pick up truck . butter ball turkey in Missouri had one it made 600 barrels of light sweet crude oil a day from the turkey processing trash no trips to the trash dump . You probably can look it up in the back issues of discovery magazine. So where is it to day ? .no news I think it got bought by waste management and shelved . No crises with a solution no panic money .
Some sort of reflective lens that sits on top of an enclosure. Sit that on top of the trash to melt the plastics into a gas or liquid.
I had someone tell me they would collect bottles on the beach and cook them down for fuel. I don't remember if it was diesel or gas.
You are behind the curve. Paul Baskis, from Atlas Energy, has a patented process for plastic to fuel process. At hundreds of tons per hour. Currently under contract for multiple facilities in multiple states. Paralysis is ok. But multi stage gasification is much better.
Thanks for the video!
At 70C You could also run this process with industrial scale heat pumps running off renewable energy to seriously dent the emissions.
Hopefully the catalyst is easily recoverable & reusable too.
Such great news, the sooner implemented the better.
So, you are saying, nature stored energy as crude, we converted that into plastic, which we have stored for a rainy day. Let's hope for a down pour. Great information Dr. Smith. What is the toxicity of the catalyst?
Given the toxicity of the Catalyst cited, I believe I shall leave that level of stuff for The Big Boys.
great video. Very interesting.
Now that's an interesting idea when paired with renewable or nuclear power and electrode heating.
This is one of those things you report that will be a "big thing". 70'C is nothing. That's the waste heat from a lot of commercial processes.
Next step: build a reactor that is capable of producing up to 40 gallons per month in the comfort of a shed.
Very smart idea
we sure have enough plastic to use here!
They need to make sure where possible that only plastics that breakdown safely are used for food packaging, therefore plastics like PVC need to be avoided.
I think tht is another ngle being looked too mate
I can't see this being acceptable to the Just Stop Oil crowd ?
Here's the elephant in the room - the carbon in the plastic is strongly bound, but when you turn it into fuel and burn it, the carbon is liberated and the greenhouse effect is extended.
Loving the thumbnails
I'm playing with an idea for a motor where you inject hot oil into a chamber of water to make really high pressures.
Dark smoky fires create really high pressures. I think I might be able to use that stuff for the oil.
Imagine cars that run on water and oil made from recycled plastics. Now that would be revolutionary!
Will do nothing to cut carbon emissions.
@@Paul-yh8km kinda like windmills?
@@billschwandt1
Grid scale wind energy has a carbon intensity up to 20gCO2/kWh.
Fossil fuels range from 300 to 1000 gCO2/kWh depending on use and fuel type.
If wind turbines were to be built using green steel, that 20 figure would drop further.
Hi Robert,
We did an intensive study on the mass balance of pyrolysis. The collected syngasses are sufficient to propell a pyrolysis process. The inefficiency resides in the cleaning of the waste feedstock. Therefore, I postulate that we need to look at the efficient cleaning of feedstock rather than purely look at the different energy extraction processes.
In any way, could you please provide a link to the referenced process for further scrutiny.
Your thought-provoking clips are, however, very stimulating. Thank you!
Was that cleaning out of the chamber after the pyrolysis or actually cleaning the plastics of other materials previous to pyrolysis, or perhaps even getting it down to the sizes required to enter the chamber?
I'd be more concerned of the acidification of the pyrolysis oils, as well as the tendency for monomers to repolymerize in storage with air.
Pyrolysis is inefficient process if the goal was to produce oil/gasoline. But a good option if the goal is to reduce plastic waste. And the residue can be used as aggregate in asphalt or concrete maybe.
The key test to my mind would be to use the fuel produced to fire the process - is there a net gain of excess fuel or not?
What about pressure as in the pressure cooker like sewage plant. That they breakdown everything even forever chemicals
I have always thought it a good idea to make as many plastics as possible out of polymers that break down in cheap low grade solvents that when dissolves , they create the right chemical ingredients to be distilled into a useful fuel .
That's a great idea!
Just use the normal method and use the fuel to heat your home. As you heat the home you can be making more fuel at the same time.
How much cleaning and seperation does the feedstock need , ? And nasty byproducts ?
I've always thought the simpler our pladtic packaging is ,the more more likely it is to be recycled, and if it takes a consumer levy to collect the feedstock and get it to the recycling plant ,then so be it ..
Robert, we don't have an alternative to OIL without diesel we will starve.
I'm eagerly waiting for memes about USA when they hear there is oil in trash.
And. Eagerly waiting on that trash becoming more useable. As a fuel if need be.
I've seen a community which used a solar lens to heat the chamber. Collected the plastic from task and had free fuel for their yard devices
Name?
@@petevenuti7355 I don't remember. They lived north of Los Angeles. It was a hippy encampment.
@petevenuti7355 but there are videos from a decade ago using this process. Pioneered in India as I remember.
A small amount of fuel can cook down the next batch when there isn't solar.
@@petevenuti7355 wait. Peter? Spiral garden Peter ?
@@KaliFissure I don't think so. I'm not the lawyer either.
I did build a pyramid shaped square foot garden once.
I know a company that have a pyrolysis machine technology that can convert any kind of thing having hydrocarbon inside into synthetic fuel (both liquid and gas). It's in use for a long time in power plants.
Has a plastic been designed that is specifically easier to recycle? (or burn cleanly?)
Thanks, Rob, for bringing these new technologies. You're great!
I saw a video of animals that eat plastic found in the Pacific Gyre (the place where a lot of plastic in the ocean ends up). I wonder if the enzymes from these animals are being researched?
Well you have Google, find out for yourself.
almost definately mate
Would have been nice to get typical costs for these catalysts.
Interesting Rob.....any ideas/thoughts on what I can do with a load of 3d PLA printing waste I have?
I wonder if the catalyst is recoverable after the reaction is complete.
Would it take less energy to heat the can up using induction with magnets? Or would it take more?
I wonder whether this would work for waste bio feedstock, e.g. grass cuttings, sugar cane waste, corn cob waste, etc.
Can this new process be replicated in a garden shed?
Sun powered breakdown might be ideal. Using fuel to make fuel seems counter productive.
Frez lense or magnified sun light, or waste oil heat?
absolutely mate
Changing World Technologies almost went fully commercial with this more than a decade ago. Prob worth trying again, esp if you include solar &c power in the process.
This with a solar concentrator, esp in a desert location, would be good.
So your idea is to use renewable solar energy to produce fossil fuels from fossil plastics.
@@Paul-yh8kmSounds better than leaving the plastic laying around in the landfill sites...
@@AndreaDingbatt
Most plastic waste in the UK gets incinerated in waste to energy plants, there is a cost penalty for putting it in landfill.
But burning it or putting it in landfill isn't the answer.
It won't be too expensive? It's expensive to recycle a lot of things
Hope the catalyst process works.
That is for making new plastic….not fuel.
Even with the energy intensive process, when we have sufficient wind and solar, there will be a 3x excess, (see Tony Sebo) so this free energy needs an outlet.
Ok, so that raises the questions: What's the energy cost of producing the aluminum chloride, what's the usage lifespan of the catalyst, and what's it's cost of production.
You missed the point that it does nothing to reduce carbon emissions or net zero targets.
A strategy where zero grid power is produced via hydrocarbons is a good start and a very achievable goal. Save hydrocarbon use for mobile platforms requiring high density fuels, like airplanes and trucking, in the interim. The exception to that might be trash incineration, recycling and use of excess production in which using the energy to process raw materials might work. An international treaty banning the target of nuclear plants in war - although that might be a tough sell because of breeder reactors. Might be worth an investment in non-uranium nuclear.
Would the exhaust from a wood gasifier be hot enough to process the plastic? It would be neat if the waste heat from running the gasifier could be used to produce a liquid fuel that could be stored for later to either run the engine without the gasifier or use it to start the engine before the gasifier is fully up to temp.
Hi, well i do think that is a great idea, combining 2 things to get the best of both worlds, heating swimming pools, heating your home, bbq etc etc! nice one, take care and have a great day!
at this kind of temperture - yes
Could you provide a link to the Siance Paper Please?
At those temperatures it would broadly possible to use industrial waste heat and focal concentration solar even on cloudy days in the northern hemisphere. Literally no limit to where you do it around the globe . You could even do it on small scale in the artic and antartic camps to create fuel !
yeah - i think it is an awesome advance
Just watched your video on hydrothermal carbonization. Does this break down plastics as well?
Why does the resulting oil need to be burnt? Would it not be better to use as a feed material for new plastics/chemicals?
I'm sorry if it was refered to in your video, I didn't watch the whole thing, but, how many PFAS, compounds are released? Are you aware of PFAS ?
Even if the UK meets every Net Zero target until 2050, the increase in China's pollution in January 2023 alone wiped all that out