Turning Plastic Wastes to Fuel. Biofuelshub.com

Feature
Written by Sabrina Deparine
Monday, 18 January 2010 10:11

Based on statistics, the United States alone produces 50 million tons of plastic wastes annually. The figure is too much considering that plastics are low-value wastes, meaning, people may not bother that much to have them recycled because they could not give back favorable returns aside from the usual “saving the earth” sentiment. Wouldn’t it be nice if we can find a way to convert these low value wastes to something high-value that we can use again?

Perhaps this was the same question that Envion thought of. The company has opened a USD 5-million plant in Washington D.C. which can convert 6,000 tons of plastic wastes to nearly a million barrels of new material resembling oil. According to Michael Han, Chairman and Chief Executive of the company, their output product can be blended with other materials or components to produce gasoline or diesel.

Although the exact procedure in the plant is not disclosed, the plant can convert plastic wastes to fuel material for about USD 10 per barrel. Bales of plastics like beverage cups from coffee shops and fast food chains, margarine containers, planters and others are stored temporarily in a part of the plant premise, waiting to be shredded and fed into the machinery. They can also digest the blue bins and PET bottle caps. However, Han hastily added that they do not accept PET (particularly PET bottles with the “1” embossed at the bottom) in their plant because these have higher values in the recycling market.

Envion’s plant is equipped with two-story-high chemical reactor, internal agitator, and heating equipment that can give off infrared energy. The process is driven by electricity, not with open flame, so operators can control the temperature when converting plastic materials to liquid fuel. About 82% of the plastic wastes fed to the machine are converted.

The output is something similar to murky lemonade. It does smell like gasoline or diesel though. One oil company has already agreed to buy this material to blend them with motor fuel. Mr. Han is also currently in talks with other oil and petroleum companies and working out to secure a license for this Envion technology so it can be used around the world.

The process also produces a sludge-like by-product which can be burned for energy. Based on pilot tests, each ton of waste can produce as much as 3 to 5 barrels of oil-like product. Each barrel takes about 59 to 98 kilowatt-hours of electricity, roughly two or three days’ worth of electricity for a typical household. This means that the price of electricity per gallon is roughly around 7 to 12 cents.

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