"How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply"

[dmm]

http://www.energeticforum.com/renewable-energy/7040-how-turn-plastic-waste-into-diesel-fuel-cheaply.html

Just FYI. I'm not sure whether everyone has already seen this. I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Josh Carmack]

The problems I have read with converting plastics into fuels is it generally takes more energy input to convert than you can get back out.

 

[dmm]

For what it's worth, they claim their device uses no more than the equivalent of 20 percent of the produced fuel to sustain the process. I say "equivalent" because their prototype runs on grid electricity. Given they're not, as far as I know, selling anything, I'm somewhat inclined to at least consider they may be telling the truth.

 

[Josh Carmack]

I see that, if their results are correct thats most assuredly better than what I read about years ago. If I had no job and all the time and money in the world i'd be willing to build one, one that is much smaller and doesn't have to be batch fed would be great. I'm about as skeptical as most people are about WMO, so that doesn't mean it isn't possible and hasn't already been done. I'd like to see some smaller setups that run continuous before I'd try it.

 

[dmm]

Of course, when you consider the energy that went into producing plastic, it's probably very wasteful to use heat to break those long-chain molecules and then burn the resulting liquid in an engine. I'd imagine that, as far as the "big picture" is concerned, it's far more efficient to just reuse the plastic.

 

[dmm]

I'm self-employed and I definitely have more time than money. I'd love to build one of these things, but right now I can't even scrape together the funds for a working WMO setup. Well, that, and I guess all the talk of "abrasive ash" has me a bit scared.

 

[Brad S.]

I know plastic is oil basically, but little concerned about coking with that type of fuel.
BUT very very interesting.
While back someone posted something about a Japanese scientist that had a machine to turn any kind stuff like this into oil.
Doing some reading.

 

[Josh Carmack]

dmm the only thing that cost me in the beginning was fittings valves and the fuge. I salvaged all the rest. See some of my other post with pictures on how I got started. Here's my take on ash, .... nothing man built will last. I bought an old cheap truck and it paid for itself very fast burning wmo anything after that is free running. After only 10 fill ups(two tanks at a time) the truck paid for itself in fuel savings,,, I have filled it up a lot more than 10 times since. If it goes down tomorrow I'll haul it to the scrap heap and recoup 25 to 30% of what I paid for it and buy another one. So what if I cut it life shorter by 10 20 or 40k miles.

 

[Josh Carmack]

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[Josh Carmack]

Correction ....15 fill ups.

 

[FarmerFrank]

I can only imagine people rolling their eyes after I tell them I run my truck on used oil and sometimes plastic. Hahaha.

I read about this before and it is defiantly neat. If you had an energy source like free natural gas to run it you'd be in the clear

 

[AcIdBuRn02ZTS]

Considering its the same operation as running a still... you could wood fire it for cheap/free. From my understanding, just about anything can be broken down into a flamible gas/liquid. lol

 

[FarmerFrank]

I have always wanted to build a still, and I did just put in an outdoor boiler.... Hmmmm

 

[The FNG]

This guy has some neat stuff. He's on the "other forum" (the diesel stop). http://diydiesel.blogspot.com

 

[dmm]

dmm the only thing that cost me in the beginning was fittings valves and the fuge. I salvaged all the rest. See some of my other post with pictures on how I got started. Here's my take on ash, .... nothing man built will last. I bought an old cheap truck and it paid for itself very fast burning wmo anything after that is free running. After only 10 fill ups(two tanks at a time) the truck paid for itself in fuel savings,,, I have filled it up a lot more than 10 times since. If it goes down tomorrow I'll haul it to the scrap heap and recoup 25 to 30% of what I paid for it and buy another one. So what if I cut it life shorter by 10 20 or 40k miles.

Oh, absolutely: time is the devourer of all things. As long as your fuel savings are more than the costs of repairing or replacing your equipment, it's all good. I'm definitely going to do the WMO thing as soon as I can come up with the funds. Unfortunately, right now I need to replace my truck.

I had planned on distilling the oil to fractionate it and hopefully remove some of the additives that leave residue, which is what originally led me to the link I posted; however, given the success that you and others here are having with centrifugal separation and simple filtration I'm beginning to think I'm just making things needlessly complicated.

On another note, I've read that turbocharging is necessary with these alternative fuels to prevent or at least reduce injector and pre-chamber coking. Do you have any thoughts on this?