{"id":8053,"date":"2017-11-08T07:30:36","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T21:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/?p=8053"},"modified":"2020-06-20T00:35:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:35:27","slug":"plastic-bags-to-fuel-its-for-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/environment\/plastic-bags-to-fuel-its-for-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic Bags To Fuel: It\u2019s For Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you may have seen a few posts by various environmental groups kicking up a big stink about the amount of plastic that\u2019s floating around in our oceans \u2013 and justifiably so. You might have seen a few pictures of the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch (floating around in the North Pacific somewhere between Japan and the USA). A lot of it is in the form of polyethelene, which is not biodegradable \u2013 the only thing that breaks it down is sunlight, which is why we deal with it by burying it in landfills underground where the sun can\u2019t get at it. There are literally mountains and islands of it out there.<\/p>\n

At the same time, folk are looking around at the existing crude oil supplies and realising that they aint gonna last forever.\u00a0 This, as well as the pollution issue, is one of the spurs driving the push towards hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles and biofuels.<\/p>\n

Plastic is, however, another petroleum-based product.\u00a0 In other words, once upon a time, the lid of your coffee cup, your chip packet and your polar fleece top came from the same stuff that you put in your car to get to work this morning.\u00a0 What if this process could be reversed?\u00a0 What if you could un-refine the plastic and turn it back into oil that could then be refined the other way and used to keep our cars (and trucks and trains and ships and aeroplanes) running?<\/p>\n

Well, they can do it.\u00a0 A few teams around the world have come up with ways to take all that waste plastic and convert it into something that can be used as a fuel feedstock \u2013 for diesel.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a chemical engineer, so don\u2019t ask me why most of the fun new technologies for producing greener fuel end up producing diesel rather than petrol (with the exception of ethanol, which plays nicely with petrol, as we\u2019ve known for years here in Australia). Although one Aussie company called Foyson\u00a0 Resources (aren\u2019t you proud?) has come up with a way to get petrol out of plastic.<\/p>\n

The technology for converting plastic back into some form of oil has been around for at least 10 years, with companies in Japan, China, India, the Philippines and the US all having a go at it.<\/p>\n

The process they use is called pyrolysis.\u00a0 Those of you with a smattering of Greek may recognise the \u201cpyro\u201d bit, which indicates that heat is involved.\u00a0 Literally, the process means \u201cseparating by heat\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s been described as a sped-up version of how oil fields and fossil fuels came to be in the first place.\u00a0 Basically, the long polymer strings made up of lots of carbon, oxygen and carbon atoms \u00a0get split apart into shorter bits about 18 carbon molecules long.<\/p>\n

OK, let\u2019s ditch the chemistry and describe it simply.<\/p>\n

1: Appropriate plastics are fed into the machine, usually after being shredded or chipped. Suitable plastics usually include polyethylene, polypropylene and a few others \u2013 but not PET (Recycling #1), which is easier to recycle.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The shredded plastic is heated slowly and turns to a gaseous form. The exact temperature at which this happens can be anywhere from 250\u00b0C through to 400\u00b0C, depending on the pyrolysis plant in question.<\/li>\n
  2. The gas is cooled to a liquid: crude oil. Bingo!<\/li>\n
  3. Other gases keep going and have to go somewhere. With some pyrolysis plant designs, the gas is captured and used to heat the pyrolysis chamber. However, some of the gases can be a bit nasty, which is why the kibosh was put on a Canberra plastic-to-fuel plant last year.<\/li>\n
  4. Leftover solids come in the form of \u201ccarbon black\u201d. This can be used as a construction material or just like old-fashioned coal, which it\u2019s practically identical to.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n