Run your car on plastic bags?
 

If it's an efficient process...why ethanol?


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How do they manage to produce so much plastic trash? I suspect that a system like that would not work here because people here want to get paid to much.
It also seems like recycling plastic in to new plastic would be better then turning oil in to plastic then turning the plastic back in to oil.

I agree with you Ryland, however I'm GUESSING it takes more energy to recycle plastic than it does to make new? You also have to look at the economics of the whole process, how much fuel/energy does it take to produce a gallon of the end result? If it would be a break even...it may be worth it from a "impact on the planet" perspective. OR just recycle it all! :-)

Interesting Article from Cambridge-MIT
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/top...20v3%20PDF.pdf

From what I've heard from a local source, production cost is below market price for oil... But once you factor in the cost of collection, sorting and the like, I imagine the numbers will go marginal or even negative quick, depending on how reliable and abundant your supply is.

Likely, like SVO, it's something that makes more sense as a DIY thing than as a commercial venture.

Best option of course is to ban plastic bags, but at least here in the USA we have plastic bag companies who put up a big fight a pour a lot of money in to keeping their product in stores and littering our streets.

Anything that was created from hydrocarbons (tires, plastic computer cases, plastic drink containers, plastic cups, plastic bags, etc etc) can be turned back into fuels ... the challenge is separating out the types of fuels (you get lighter and heavier fuels after the pyrolysis) and the 'other stuff' that comes with the process. Yes, the fuel is 'clean' due to the distillation process, but it sounds like there can be other chemical 'nasties' in the fuel.

Check out How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply for an interesting discussion...

This tiny problem never seemed to get in the way of ethanol production.

As far as I can tell, the reasoning is purely political.

Newer diesels that use common rail injection are extremely sensitive to fuel lubricity for fuel component longevity. TDI engines are not immune to this type of issue, but may be able to tolerate lowered lubricity. I wonder what the lubricity value would be from the fuel produced from the plastic bags?


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It wouldn't be an issue when the bags are turned into the same kind of molecules that regular diesel is made of.

If need be, lubricants can be mixed in.

When plastics go through a cracking process like this, you got to stop seeing them as the bags or whatever they once were.

You got to see the bags as solidified oil in the first place ;)
Ashes to ashes, oil to oil ...

Our local Food Co-op collects number 5 plastic to "recycle" because we can otherwise only recycle number 2 and number 3 plastic, the 2 and 3 plastics are popular to recycle because they can be turned in to new objects but the number 5 can not be easily turned in to a new object, the popular way to turn number 5 in to a new object is to grind it up and press it in to a mold while injecting new plastic in to the mold, so there is a limited number of things that you can make, it's also an expensive way to make an object.

So the other day I was at our food co-op and I saw the pile of garbage bags of number 5 plastic, it looks like they fill up a garbage bag every other day or so and it all gets trucked to a facility that turns it in to fuel, I'm not sure if they just burn it to produce electricity or if they make it in to liquid fuel.

I'm currently watching a documentary about plastic in the ocean, most of it's more or less micro plastic grit, plastic soup and it makes me wonder if there is a way to collect that plastic out of the water and use that as an ocean going fuel, granted this plastic is dispersed over a great area, but they figure there is 100,000 tons or more of plastic out there and because of the currents it collects in areas, maybe this is the future, mining our trash.