
Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans - endswapper
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-05/turning-plastic-to-oil-u-k-startup-sees-money-in-saving-oceans
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djsumdog
I feel like I see one of these every few years. I remember the Japanese one
from a while back:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8)

The article does mention this particular technique tries to get bigger yields
and remove the need of sorting that other methods require. If it works as they
claim, I could see it working for mining landfills, but when it comes to
plastic patches in the ocean, I have trouble seeing a ship being able to
recover enough plastic to be greater than its fuel use skimming through it.

~~~
aaron695
> I have trouble seeing a ship being able to recover enough plastic to be
> greater than its fuel use skimming through it.

I don't think this would be the idea.

I think by making it worth money to recycle the plastic it doesn't get into
the oceans.

It's certainly not worthwhile trying to getting the existing plastic out of
the oceans, this has been well covered by engineers.

~~~
Double_a_92
You don't even have to recycle it. Burning it for heat energy is enough. Most
plastic only produces water and co2 when burned...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Are you sure about that? As a younger person I burned a few samples of various
things called 'plastic' and the fumes sure smelled like maybe I should be
sterile by now.

~~~
msl
Plastics tend to consists of carbon and hydrogen chains. See for example
polycarbonate [1], polyetene [2] and ABS [3] (contains nitrogen). They might
however contain all sorts of additives. In order to produce just water, carbon
dioxide and nitrogen the burning must be carefully controlled [4] - in your
experiment the burning was probably not complete, which explains the fumes
(that might have been carcinogenic [4]).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styrene)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plasti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plastics)

~~~
scq
You generally don't want to burn halogenated plastics like PVC though. As I
understand it that will release highly toxic dioxins (which cause cancer and
birth defects among other things) unless they are incinerated at high
temperatures.

~~~
pjc50
I don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct - incineration of plastics is
needs to be done at high temperatures to avoid this problem.

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thriftwy
Before long we're going to campaign protecting the unique ecosystem that arose
on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Patch is shrinking, we will say, due to ongoing cleaning/mining
operations, and its endemic creatures are struggling without their home.

~~~
graphitezepp
This idea feeds my current existential crisis nicely.

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userbinator
I can see this working very well for plastics like polyethylene and
polypropylene (which fortunately make up the majority of the stuff floating in
the oceans) which are essentially long-chain hydrocarbons with nothing but H
and C, but I wonder how it would handle fluorinated and chlorinated plastics
(PTFE, PVC).

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easilyBored
If there was a way to _really_ do it, I would not mind a x% tax on items that
use plastic. Plastics make our life easier, much easier, so we can afford to
pa x% more to safely recycle it.

The money would be going to getting rid of it...not pork projects or paying
for $400,000 pensions for civil servants.

~~~
endswapper
I think we could avoid an actual tax with an effective tax.

Container deposits such as bottles and cans have proven to be effective. It's
worth exploring whether expanding the concept to cover materials in general
would yield similar benefits. It wouldn't have to cost consumers anything more
and it provides an incentive for the consumer to take on more responsibility
for material and environmental stewardship.

~~~
kwhitefoot
In Norway we have variations on systems like this for tyres, electronic
equipment and so on. Generally the manufacturer or importer pays into a fund
that is supposed to pay for recycling of the product once it is scrapped. In
addition shops that sell electronic goods have to accept scrap electronic
goods (anyone's not just what they sold) for recycling. Petrol stations have
public bins for recycling containers that contained toxic chemicals like
screen wash, antifreeze, and oil.

Really it all just comes down to political will.

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chicob
All carbon that comes from fossil sources should be avoided. This is only a
good idea if it prevents further extraction of oil or coal.

Otherwise we will just be adding more extra carbon to the carbon cycle, by
dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

~~~
dotancohen
In fact, having the carbon stored in the garbage patch is better for the
environment (and the organisms that depend on a stable environment) than
burning it and releasing it into the atmosphere.

~~~
technofiend
You don't want to burn and release, that's true, but you also don't want the
plastic in the food chain. So you need some sort of way to compress and store
the co2 until it can be sequestered.

~~~
chicob
Perhaps making plastic waste ingots when the recyclability is too low to be
profitable and then burying large volumes of plastic this way.

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abhiyerra
There is another company that is also working on this in the Bay Area.
[http://www.resynergi.com](http://www.resynergi.com)

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ajdlinux
There's an Australian company that's trying to build a plastics-to-diesel
plant in my city, but is facing a lot of local opposition due to pollution and
safety concerns - a government health review panel has basically suspended the
project until they can provide more evidence of safety. Will be interesting to
watch.

[http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-
to-p...](http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/foy-group-aims-to-prove-
safety-of-a-plastictofuel-plant-for-hume-20170509-gw0oa6.html)

[http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-
panel-s...](http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/independent-panel-slams-
proposed-hume-plastics-plant-20170503-gvy4no.html)

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ReligiousFlames
In VICE HBO Season 5 Ep 7 "Plastic Oceans," Jeanette Garcia, a PhD polymer
science researcher at IBM's Almaden Bernal facility in San Jose, discussed
chemical recycling of plastic.

[http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-
and...](http://www.hbo.com/vice/episodes/05/61-life-under-sharia-and-plastic-
oceans/index.html)

(PS: I went to a dark matter conference at that enormous facility in the
mid-90's and was offered a job but couldn't get a work permit being 15
requiring parental and school approvals. Bernal Road is also an awesome, steep
road bike route.)

------
endswapper
Plastic-to-diesel plant set for Nova Scotia -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14307390)

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loki22
While generating fuel from plastic is nice, the value is really low, and the
carbon goes back in the environment. The oil that comes from catalytic
pyrolysis also contains some oxidation products that are nasty smelling and of
questionable toxicity.

Even better is to simply recycle for use in some other application. The cost
of plastic monomers is typically higher than fuel.

The holy grail will be to get monomers back to generate pristine polymer back!

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Double_a_92
If that would work profitabely, why not use it for regular trash? I guess it
collects the plastic, but the oi transformation is just a gimmick to get
publicity.

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speedplane
As a tech product it's cool, but as a green project, I'd guess that increasing
recycling programs would probably have a much larger and immediate effect.

~~~
usrusr
Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills,
but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there.

I suspect a gullible investor money grab: "Saudi riches while saving cute
animals, you'd be a fool not to try!", there will always be some people
ignoring the too good to be true test.

But if it does work, creating some fuel while doing the cleanup could make a
world of difference in terms of funding. I don't see this ever really
competing with conventional resource extraction while there is still a drop of
crude in the ground, but as a trophy token, "plastic patch fuel" could make
fundraising much easier.

~~~
speedplane
> Conventional recycling (or better yet: avoidance) can reduce new landfills,
> but ha zero impact on stuff that is already there.

Every day, we are putting tons of waste into the ocean. With better
recycling/avoidance programs, we may reduce that by 20%, greatly reducing the
amount of waste we put into the ocean each year. I don't know the details of
this tech, but it could remove far less than that same 20% reduction.

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Gatsky
No mention of the carbon footprint of this thing.

~~~
DamonHD
In principle negative by one measure since you are recovering energy (embedded
in the outputs, possibly to then be used as fuel) if done well.

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omginternets
>Turning plastic to oil [...] saving oceans

The phrase "robbing Peter to pay Paul" comes to mind.

