Quote:
Originally Posted by Squiggle Dog
That is great and exactly what this world needs. I worried about the emissions but apparently it burns cleaner than dino oil? Imagine how much machines like this would help to find a way to use garbage and make it into something useful and cleaner-burning. It would really give people an incentive to recycle because it would pay to do so.
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This guy in the video only contribution is that he's constructed a table top sized unit interestingly there are no mentions of power requirement or efficiency!
The process has been used in numerous places on an industrial scale here in the US for more than 5 or 6 years already.
Here's news of an industrial operation in Oregon
http://www.oregonlive.com/tigard/index.ssf/2010/10/agilyx_chris_ulum_recycling_tigard_us_oil_bob_redd_kevin_dewhitt_plas2fuel_agri-plas.html
Company in MN
http://www.polymerenergy.com/
And not to be outdone here's info about a company that builds microwave machines to accomplish the same thing. The microwave application is used to both convert plastics to oil and to help separate out any valuable metals like transforming insulated wire into oil and recyclable cleaned copper!
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil.html
The real question is can this all be done economically. Might be better to aggregate and store plastic in giant holes in the ground until that economic break point is reached, then dig it up and refine it when fossil supplies are harder and more expensive to obtain!