Sensible Erection | A machine that turns plastic back into oil...

Thursday, 9 September 2010

A machine that turns plastic back into oil...

quote [ Akinori Ito, the CEO of Blest, a Japanese company, has somewhat of a panacea. If plastic is just oil, why don’t we simply turn it back into what it was, he pondered. So the guy made a machine to do just that. His solution is safe, eco-friendly and efficient. ]

Great Scott!

I want one.

Found this article from 2007 about a microwave version of this machine made by an American company:

http://sensibleerection.com/entry.php/65752
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil.html

[sci&tech] [by Transfer@3:41amGMT] [+10 Interesting]

Comments

Krutz said @ 3:44am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Funny]
Now if we could just make this machine portable and in some kind of ray-gun form, the practical joke opportunities would be endless.

arrowhen said @ 4:18pm GMT on 9th Sep
Ha ha! Your prosthetic leg is now a puddle of goo! Stupid amputee!

sacrelicious said @ 3:48am GMT on 9th Sep
...and at what cost per gallon?

Transfer said @ 3:50am GMT on 9th Sep
One kilogram of plastic waste produces almost a liter of oil while using about 1 kilowatt of electricity.

So... how many liters of oil in a gallon? And how much for 1 kilowatt of electricity...

Let's ask google!

Transfer said @ 3:56am GMT on 9th Sep
1 US gallon = 3.78541178 liters

Electricity costs vary by location but this was the first result:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html

# 12¢ / kWh - up to the baseline
# 14¢ / kWh - 101 to 130% of baseline
# 29¢ / kWh - 131 to 200% of baseline
# 42¢ / kWh - 201 - 300% of baseline
# 50¢ / kWh - over 300% of baseline

For California...

So.... uhhhh math nerds help me out so I don't embarrass myself...

If kWh is a kilowatt hour and it's almost 4 liters to the gallon then it costs how much again?

Ack synapses misfiring!

Transfer said @ 3:59am GMT on 9th Sep
Ok ok that link also says "The average cost of residential electricity was 12¢/kWh in the U.S. in April 2009."

So just use that as the base. So let's round up and say that it takes 4 kilowatts to make a gallon of oil. How many kilowatts in a kilowatt hour?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour

Uh I'm probably being dumb and by it seems like converting plastic trash to oil is very cheap under that criteria... Someone help me with the math. Anyone?

sacrelicious said @ 4:03am GMT on 9th Sep
you're missing some very important variables. see below.

crom said @ 2:11pm GMT on 9th Sep
There are one hour of kilowatts in a kilowatt hour.

foobar said @ 4:23am GMT on 9th Sep
Kilowatt and kilowatt/hour are not the same unit.

Transfer said @ 4:25am GMT on 9th Sep
See my other comment asking what the conversion of kilowatt to kWh is. And help me with the math already.

foobar said @ 5:46am GMT on 9th Sep
A kilowatt/hour is one kilowatt for one hour.

I saw this posted elsewhere earlier, and the missing piece of info is how long the machine has to run in order to produce that litre of oil.

sacrelicious said @ 4:01am GMT on 9th Sep
I'm afraid the plastic itself and the electricity is just part of the overhead. you're failing to account for labor costs, transport of the plastic to the facility, maintenance of the equipment and administrative cost. and probably a few things I haven't thought of.

point is, oil spurts out of the ground in enormous volume (sometimes whether we'd like it to or not, oops!) such that it renders the cost of the expensive equipment necessary to drill the holes and harness the flow negligible.

in other words, it's cheaper to take something out of the ground than it is to manufacture it.

drunk said @ 4:03am GMT on 9th Sep
Taking it from plastic isn't really manufacturing it.
It's unmanufacturing it.
Right?

Transfer said @ 4:07am GMT on 9th Sep
Yeah, if you watch the video he's basically shoving garbage in his machine and turning it into oil. I've got about a thousand plastic bags under my kitchen sink, and three empty water bottles sitting in the trash beside me. There's no extra transport there, I just need to throw it in one of those machines and turn it on for a bit and PRESTO CHANGO oil... amirite?

sacrelicious said @ 4:13am GMT on 9th Sep
and if an industrial-scale plant could sustain itself purely of the trash generated by it's employees transport of waste plastics would not be a consideration. but that's unfortunately not how it works.

Krutz said @ 5:12am GMT on 9th Sep
I mean, we couldn't just set up something like this in a recycling center or landfill, right? That would be silly.

sacrelicious said @ 7:39am GMT on 9th Sep
a landfill would require alot of labor in the form of sorting out the plastic from the stuff that isn't plastic. a recycling center would require that they be making at least as much money off of this as they are off of selling recycled plastic for industrial use. if they are not, why would they be interested in this?

ComposerNate said @ 8:35am GMT on 9th Sep
Keep in mind Japan has both no internal source of oil, is without the luxury of landfill space for waste, and is tight enough transportation should be less of a consideration.

Krutz said @ 9:00pm GMT on 9th Sep
Landfills already do require a lot of labor. There's also the benefits of the trash being sent to them already (eliminating any extra transport costs) and that the landfill will last that much longer without the plastic taking up space.

This plus the already-existing methane collection could also set up landfills as being sources of recycled materials as another part of doing business. As has been mentioned below, they're most likely rich sources of metals as well.

As for whether or not the costs involved = profit, that depends on who's running it and how. If it's under contract from the city, the fee is flat or based on weight and could be just part of the sanitation department's method of doing away with waste.

sacrelicious said @ 4:07am GMT on 9th Sep
it's making one thing out of another thing. why split hairs?

Dioxin said @ 4:35am GMT on 9th Sep
You're not turning a raw material into a finished product, you're converting a finished product into raw material. Otherwise creating garbage would count as manufacturing as much as the recycling process itself, since it's also making one thing out of another thing.

sacrelicious said @ 4:42am GMT on 9th Sep
for the purposes of the discussion at hand it's the same thing.

why must every internet discussion get bogged down in stupid semantic pedantry?

Dioxin said @ 5:47am GMT on 9th Sep
Exactly. Why must we account for all these things that don't need to be accounted for in an internet discussion? I just want bacon.

Todomanna said @ 8:30am GMT on 9th Sep
I don't think you can get bacon from plastic. Not bacon you'd want to eat, at least.

bluecalx said @ 5:38pm GMT on 9th Sep
You can only get Baconlite from plastic.

sanepride said @ 4:24am GMT on 9th Sep
Well one thing Mr. Ito points out in the video is that by extracting the oil from plastics collected locally you don't have the associated energy expenditure (and environmental risk) of transporting oil vast distances from producer to refiner to consumer.

Nevertheless, the extracted oil is being burned and therefore is releasing CO2 that would otherwise have remained relatively inert in the plastic into the atmosphere. This technology may be innovative and useful in the short term to supplement current petroleum use, but it really doesn't contribute to the ultimate goal of phasing out fossil fuels.

Chop-Logik said @ 4:40am GMT on 9th Sep
But it does clean up all this goddamn plastic we have floating around.

sanepride said @ 4:49am GMT on 9th Sep
No question about that. But, unsightly though it may be, is it really worse sitting around as litter than releasing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere?

audioblood said @ 4:59am GMT on 9th Sep
Depends on your terms. Some would see it as wasted potential energy, which it rightly is. What actual use would be made of that recovered energy is an entirely different concern, however.

sanepride said @ 5:09am GMT on 9th Sep
Well most plastics are in fact recyclable. Perhaps it would be more ecologically sound to simply convert them into new plastic products - thus further reducing the need to use more petroleum to make the stuff.

X said @ 10:09am GMT on 9th Sep
The problem with recycling plastics is that it takes more energy (gained from burning oil) to recycle old bottles into new materials than it does to make new bottles from raw.

This doesn't take into account low-energy reUSING materials ,though, like chopping bottles up into shards to use as an aggregate in roads, or maybe those textiles made from shredded PET. I dunno.

Krutz said @ 10:12am GMT on 9th Sep
I always wondered what the cost of plastics (including the securing and transport of petroleum products) is vs. having local bottling plants with the old "return for deposit" bottle system for soft drinks.

ComposerNate said @ 11:27am GMT on 9th Sep
In Berlin, ~80% of beer is sold in glass bottles, which are returned for ,08€ to be washed and reused. Germans brew and drink a lot of beer.

Krutz said @ 9:04pm GMT on 9th Sep
And Americans drink loads of beverages in general. I recently went to a barbecue where the host served Coke and other soft drinks in glass bottles; it was so preferable over plastic. The drink stayed cold longer, you didn't have the plastic-y after taste, etc.

My home town of around 10,000 had a Pepsi bottling plant at one time (about the size of a regular 2-story home overall, with a roll-up door at either end for the trucks), and I wondered if the cost of doing that kind of drink-delivery system would be better, overall, in terms of waste products, petroleum use, jobs, consumer value, etc.

moriati said @ 7:26am GMT on 10th Sep
The energy cost of the initial manufacture of a glass bottle, collection and transfer to a cleaning plant which can return bottles to food-contact status and then redelivery is high.

ComposerNate said @ 10:39am GMT on 10th Sep
The plan was started in part to counter all the broken glass around the city. Now we have the homeless/workless cruising parks and sorting public trash bins, cleaning up after careless drunks. Berlin is 1/3 parks. Have a picnic and someone will likely come along and ask nicely if they can take away your empties. In beer gardens, customers will return their empties for their deposit, helping keep everything relatively tidy. Trains rarely have the rolling semi-empty beer bottle around its sticky floor.

foobar said @ 4:20pm GMT on 9th Sep
It doesn't take much energy to recycle a higher grade plastic into a lower grade one. Few if any milk jugs are made from new plastic.

moriati said @ 7:24am GMT on 10th Sep
No. It doesn't. On average you save 1.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalents for every tonne of PET or HDPE bottle recycled.

I should declare an interest, I work at a plastic bottle recycling plant.

Chop-Logik said @ 5:01am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
Well, it's more than aesthetically displeasing. The plastic fucks up the ecosystem as it photodegrades or is consumed by animals, thereby entering the food chain. If we had something better to do with the oil than setting it on fire, it might be a good idea to convert it.

Free deep-fryer with every Plastic Conversion Machine!

lilmookieesquire said @ 5:30am GMT on 9th Sep
Put machine on ship. Have ship collect any plastic it runs into. Boom! Free oil at reduced coat while helping the environment.

catkin said @ 5:32pm GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
Send that ship through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch!

EPT said @ 7:57am GMT on 9th Sep
in other words, it's cheaper to take something out of the ground than it is to manufacture it.

Nope. Aluminium is significantly cheaper to recycle than to mine.

captainstubing said @ 9:57am GMT on 9th Sep
Fo sho, but it is basically solid electricity...

captainstubing said @ 9:55am GMT on 9th Sep
You could also discount out the costs of transport and landfill and if you are concerned about any flow on problems from that then take them out as well. I have no idea where that gets this story.

Tang said @ 4:33am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:5 Funny]
now if only they could make a machine that turns the oil back into dinosaurs :D

tickaz said @ 5:33am GMT on 9th Sep
or trees

dook_sucks said @ 6:31am GMT on 9th Sep
Or bacteria.
http://kk.org/ct2/2008/06/the-unclear-origins-of-oil.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ct2+%28CT2%29

Or rocks?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2652/did-oil-really-come-from-dinosaurs

Todomanna said @ 8:31am GMT on 9th Sep
Or magnets!

lsdbeta said @ 12:28pm GMT on 9th Sep
How the fuck do they work?

rndmnmbr said @ 5:11am GMT on 9th Sep
Keep in mind, this is new technology. Let progress eventually make it super cheap to operate, or the price of oil rise to the point where it's an economically viable replacement, and you'll see companies strip-mining landfills.

Fuck sake, we should be strip-mining landfills now, just for the recovery of metals.

gunthar said @ 5:26am GMT on 9th Sep
recent repost?

KropperPrime said @ 5:27am GMT on 9th Sep
So the big innovation is to burn it and then cool down the gases?

Wow, that was a doozy.

Dioxin said @ 5:50am GMT on 9th Sep
Yeah. Crazy how nobody else is doing it.

lilmookieesquire said @ 8:33am GMT on 9th Sep
I'm doing it. All I need is $5 dollars from each of you.
Account:lilmookie Bahama slushfund
#83540172528303716181

Cash only please.

Ebichuman said @ 9:31am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Underrated]
If I pay $10, will you do it faster?

...And harder?

lilmookieesquire said @ 9:45am GMT on 10th Sep
Yes.

lilmookieesquire said @ 6:27am GMT on 9th Sep
You should see some venture capitalists.

I had one guy tell me there was no money in teaching English in Japan but "we should open a bagel shop!".

happiest_sadist said @ 9:43am GMT on 11th Sep
Should we melt them down as well?

lilmookieesquire said @ 5:28am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
If this machine could make it worthwhile for a business to collect all the plastic floating on the ocean, that would be awesome.

taeyn said @ 5:36am GMT on 9th Sep
So that giant plastic reef in the pacific...

leezurd said @ 5:39am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
...can, now, easily be turned into an oil slick...

Dioxin said @ 5:51am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Funny]
Which can be siphoned off to create more floating sea plastic! BP. It's what we do.

lilmookieesquire said @ 6:29am GMT on 9th Sep
Funciteful.

Dioxin said @ 5:52am GMT on 9th Sep
why is this nsfw?

Krutz said @ 5:57am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:2]
It's got a Japanese guy and lubricants. What more do you need?

leezurd said @ 6:51am GMT on 9th Sep
Tentacles, mayo, amputees, butter, plastic wrap, velvet, a map to Chorp's house, Elmers glue, 5 yards of nylon rope, spray paint, tongs, kittens, razors, one small cargo plane, a dash of paprika, staples, tomato, BACON, tiger balm, smoked salmon, incandescent bulb, flux, flax, peanut butter, new shirt, new job, life, appreciation of life, to "un-see" what I have seen multiple times, hope, happiness, luck, strength, courage, yogurt, nougat, creamy center filling, surgical gloves, surgical mask, duct tape, water color paints, bananas...

Should I continue?

Chop-Logik said @ 7:17am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:1 Insightful]
The password is bacon.

Oh, and come in via the firewood chute. It's to the south. Combine flux with flax. Trade the goblin monk your watercolours for the cursed aerosol paint. Don't trash the gypsy's locker. Unequip your happiness. Don't feed Ermel's grue.

Krutz said @ 10:10am GMT on 9th Sep
I was trying to establish a baseline, not present Japan's entire weekend "to do list."

Transfer said @ 1:06pm GMT on 9th Sep
Because I was gonna put something else in extended and then forgot to change it when I decided to just do the main link... fixt now.

structured_spirits said @ 6:02am GMT on 9th Sep
Uh this process uses energy, turning oil into plastic uses energy, this is a bad cycle. Seems like some kind of bs cooked up by the plastics industry.

lilmookieesquire said @ 6:27am GMT on 9th Sep
Applications in recycling?

SnappyNipples said @ 6:29am GMT on 9th Sep
Solar furnace?

MrChaos said @ 12:55pm GMT on 9th Sep
Bad idea?

structured_spirits said @ 7:57pm GMT on 9th Sep
Yeah, as in the plastic industry says, don't worry yuppy consumers, you can still buy those little plastic bottles of water and whatsnots, we've got this great idea on how to recycle them into fuel for your piece-o-shit H2. Demand skyrockets for new "green" plastics, lol. Bad idea.

crom said @ 1:26am GMT on 10th Sep
Right because yuppy guilt is strangling the plastic bottle market.

cheesemo said @ 8:01am GMT on 9th Sep [Score:4 Funny]

mischa said @ 12:22pm GMT on 9th Sep
so how much oil needs to be burnt to get the power to heat the plastic up to recycle it?

ComposerNate said @ 12:54pm GMT on 9th Sep
In Japan, approximately only 11 percent of electricity produced in 2005 was from oil-generated.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Japan/Electricity.html

Rojo^ said @ 1:19pm GMT on 9th Sep

Yogurthu said @ 4:00pm GMT on 9th Sep
Meh. If I had the money I would hire that guy to make a machine that can shove all the oil and plastic into the asses of all oil magnates. Painfully and slowly.
Wait, we will need a few more oil magnates, so maybe this machine is useful after all!