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Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back to Oil

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Jun 27, 2007 10:58 PM
from the but-how-is-it-on-popcorn dept.
An anonymous reader writes "From the newscientist article: "Key to GRC's process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas.""
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  • Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spudtrooper (1073512) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @10:59PM (#19671781)
    Finally, a use for all those AOL CDs!
  • I've been saying for years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by afidel (530433) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:00PM (#19671785)
    That the mines of the next century will be our garbage mountains. It will be the place with the highest density of easily obtainable materials.
    • I called it! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Old Man Kensey (5209) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:19PM (#19671949) Homepage
      Almost two years ago [slashdot.org].
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Interesting)

      by timmarhy (659436) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:21PM (#19671965)
      same here. metals, oil, gas... rubbish piles have all of them in 100x the abundance that natural deposits do. whats lacking is methods to get them, no doubt some clever cookies will figure that out once the price is right.
      [ Parent ]
                      • Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Interesting)

                        by Colin Smith (2679) on Thursday June 28 2007, @08:48AM (#19675295)

                        That sounds to me like a recipe for high inflation. After all, the only thing that causes inflation, is inflation: things get more expensive so people demand a pay rise, and then having to pay workers more makes things get more expensive.
                        Actually not. Money, is a commodity.

                        It acts just like any other commodity. If there's too much coffee, the value decreases. Money works in exactly the same way. Inflation can only occur if there's too much money in the economy, the value of the individual dollar/pound/euro decreases and everything else appears to increase in cost. All that's happening is that the currency is devaluing, which you then see on the currency markets as well.

                        The dirty little (non) secret of our current monetary system is two fold. First, "the national debt" and second "fractional reserve banking".

                        The first point is that the government and central bankers create money from nothing and create a national IOU to balance it. The government borrows money from the bankers and they write down this debt and demand interest on it. The money has been borrowed into existence. This money is then paid to government employees, contractors, suppliers etc where it enters the economy.

                        The second stage of this is the fractional reserve banking system. This is perhaps the biggest scam ever created. The fractional reserve banking system allows commercial banks to loan out to people more money than they have in reserve. Hence "fractional reserve" Typically they can loan out up to 20 times more than they have in deposits. That is they only have to have on hand about 5% on average of what they are allowed to loan out.

                        So this money comes from the government national debt, into the economy, lands in the banks deposit accounts and is then multiplied about 19 times as loans. 95% + 95% of that 95% and so on till it reaches 0. It's a recipe for creating both massive debt and massive inflation.

                        Which the central banks and government attempt to control using the base interest rates. Essentially what it does is divide society into the creditors and the debtors. Every dollar that someone owns is one dollar's worth of debt, owed by someone else. There are other implications also with constantly and repeatedly paying 5% interest on money.

                        1. The bankers will ultimately be the sole and inevitable owners of everything. They set the rules of the game years ago.

                        2. Everyone has to work an extra 5% harder each year for their cash, because they have to try to pay this debt. This has implications for everyone and everything. All businesses, taxpayers must constantly expand their efforts by that 5% every year to service this interest. Think about it. This is an exponential increase. 100%, 105%, 110¼%, 115¾%, 121½% and we have to try to keep up. It explains why capitalism has become so rapacious. The debts have to be serviced and to even pretend to do so requires an exponential increase in the economy.

                        3. The debt can never actually be paid. There isn't enough money in existence to pay of the debt, ever. Because of the interest on the initial creation of the money. You borrow $100 into existence but owe $105 at the end of the year, the extra $5 doesn't actually exist, it was never created, so you borrow some more. And so we divide into the people who have managed to pay the debt and people who are saddled with mounting levels which are literally impossible to pay.

                        It didn't used to be this way. A trade used to mean that two people exchanged something of value. A chicken for a duck. Both of them benefitted. Even when money came along, it still meant that both parties benefitted, they were exchanging items they valued more, a chicken for a dollar, it wasn't required for someone somewhere to lose out. That all changed during the last century. Our money became debt based. Every dollar/pound/euro/yen/yuan required a debt, paying interest to the bankers, interest on money they created from nothing.

                        It can actually be narr
                        [ Parent ]
    • Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Insightful)

      The only problem is that they also have a very high density of thoroughly toxic materials, stuff that you really don't want disturbed if you can avoid it.

      Unfortunately, I could easily see it being economically infeasible to mine garbage dumps, because the cost of environmental remediation would be worse than just leaving the resources there, entombed with all the hazardous stuff.

      Really, if we had a slightly longer planning horizon than we seem to have, we'd at least be sorting our garbage before burying it, instead of piling it all together. Just pulling out all the metal and putting it in one hole, with the plastic and organics in another, or burying similar types of appliances together, would make the landfills that much more attractive to mine later on.
      [ Parent ]
        • True, but how is it enforced? Perhaps in the Netherlands, people can be trusted to just do it, but I'm not sure that would work here.

          In fact, I'm pretty sure that in my municipality, it's technically illegal to throw out anything that's toxic into the regular trash, but there's no enforcement mechanism, and given a choice between taking that old NiCd phone battery or fluorescent light tube to the recycling center, and just putting it in the trash ... well, you tell me which one people are going to do? (Hint, it's the one that's less work.) Hell, I know people who don't even recycle metals, because it's too much work to sort stuff into the bin that they're already given. Easier just to chuck it all in one bin and not think about it. And that's only two cans, one for all mixed recyclables and one for 'everything else.'

          I've heard anecdotally that in Japan, there are people who basically go through trash at transfer stations, and will hunt down (based on personally identifying information in the trash) those folks who don't sort their recyclables out and reprimand/embarrass them -- short of something vaguely creepy like that (and in the U.S., social ostracism and humiliation aren't going to work as punishments), I'm not sure any consumer-sorting programs are going to work.

          Without draconian enforcement, I think the sorting has to be -- or at least has to be backed up by sorting -- done at the transfer station or dump.

          From a different perspective, sorting garbage based on predetermined criteria seems to be like something that, once you get over the initial investment in the system that does it, is probably better done by one giant machine that sorts the garbage for 100,000 people, than each of those 100,000 people having to take a few minutes a day to think about it. From a purely economic perspective, the opportunity cost of everyone's time probably justifies an automatic sorter, and when you factor in the recovered value from the recyclables [1] and the possible "dump mining" aspects that it creates later, I'd think it would be a good investment.

          [1] The value of the metal and Type 1 plastic, anyway; the higher-number plastics don't seem to be worth recycling right now, at least based on what I've read.
          [ Parent ]
          • by mastershake_phd (1050150) on Thursday June 28 2007, @01:21AM (#19672567) Homepage
            A local town started limiting each household to 2 trashbags per week. If you needed more than that you have to buy special green trash bags for $1.50 each. The result? Trash volume is down, and recycling is up 40%. Just save up before you clean out your basement...
            [ Parent ]
          • Enforcement isn't the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by zippthorne (748122) on Thursday June 28 2007, @02:18AM (#19672833) Journal
            Just need to have non-stupid options. Every four or five months, I check with my state's waste management website for how to handle the tricky stuff (like fluorescent tubes and button batteries), mostly because that's about how often I lose a CFL. Their answer is that I must drive halfway across the state (it's a small state, but the way the roads are, half-way across might as well be all the way across). Also, I have to make a special appointment for the privilege.

            I might consider doing this when my CRT monitor finally fails, but somehow I doubt that burning 12 gallons of gasoline for a single compact bulb is less harmful to the environment than tossing it in with the regular trash. And if it's not, then there's no point in my continuing to use them, as the 12 gallons of gasoline puts the lifetime cost well over that which regular light bulbs would've been over the same time period. They fail to break often enough that just accumulating a bunch of spent CFLs is really an option. It'd take me ten years to fill a small box with 'em, and frankly, I don't want to store hazardous waste for that long.

            The items aren't exactly very large or numerous. I fail to see why they can't just put one or more small bins at the transfer station for them. How much space would a whole town's worth of expired button batteries need to take, anyway?
            [ Parent ]
          • Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Informative)

            by yotto (590067) on Thursday June 28 2007, @01:44AM (#19672671) Homepage
            Actually, "Gigawatts" can be pronounced the way doc says it without changing the spelling. I learned that in skool.
            [ Parent ]
              • One of the great and wonderful things about English is that spelling reflects quite accurately the history of the word. Sure, there are some pronunciation ambiguities that are a little difficult to learn, but even ESL learners get over that hill remarkably quickly.

                But with English -- unlike almost any other language -- you can look at a word and immediately know that its roots are in Greek, or Latin, or French, or Celtic, or whether it's a modern loan word. This has massive benefits for advanced literacy, as it means you actually know more words than you think you do, and can quite accurately guess at the meaning of new words you encounter -- which is of far greater utility than simply knowing how to say the word. Get the sound wrong and people will correct you almost immediately, so what's the problem?

                In other languages, once a word has been imported, its roots are lost, and with that the connection to the linguistic system from which it came, and its connection to other similarly-sourced words.

                So, regular spelling: great for primary school kids; not so great for everyone else who wants to use language at a more advanced level, for things like communication and literature.

                [ Parent ]
  • but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhrostyMcByte (589271) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:02PM (#19671807) Homepage
    no mention on how much energy it takes to run the thing, or how much energy it puts out. it's not of much use if it costs a fraction to just bury the old plastic and make new stuff from scratch.
    • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Iron Sun (227218) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:08PM (#19671863)
      The article doesn't give exact figures, but it does say:

      GRC says its Hawk-10 can extract enough oil and gas from the left-over fluff to run the Hawk-10 itself and a number of other machines used by Gershow.

      That addresses the energy issue, but still leaves open the question of how much it costs to maintain the equipment. You'd have to think they've got some sort of business model worked out if they've progressed to the point of selling to customers.
      [ Parent ]
        • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by jcr (53032) <jcr@@@mac...com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:54PM (#19672183) Journal
          If all it does is recylce plastics, that's a commercial value right there. Landfill space is getting scarce in a lot of cities.

          -jcr
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Rei (128717) on Thursday June 28 2007, @12:48AM (#19672421) Homepage
            Not only reducing landfill; this could be huge in electronics recycling. Much of that recycling goes on (officially illegally) in China. It goes like this: they take all parts that have copper in them and throw them in a big heap all day. At night, they douse the huge heap in fuel and light it; the plastics burn all night, spewing huge amounts of toxins across the landscape. In the morning, they collect the blackened ball of copper for sale and brush aside the ash.

            Compare that to this, where, according to the article, it produces enough oil to run itself plus "other" machinery. Coated wire goes in, stripped wire comes out.

            One big issue comes up for me: the contents of that oil. In such a recycling process, the oil itself could simply be gelled and discarded, with the energy to run the machine coming from cleaner sources; the key issue is that you're not doing burns of toxic plastics. So it's still useful. For wider use, however, one would want the oil to be clean enough to use. What happens with chlorinated plastics, like PVC? Where does the chlorine end up? What about fluorinated plastics? And so on -- where do all of these things end up?
            [ Parent ]
        • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Iron Sun (227218) on Thursday June 28 2007, @12:08AM (#19672243)
          It obviously isn't completely unviable, as they have their first customer lined up. It must make economic sense to them.

          It also doesn't require that the oil produced be comparable in price to the imported stuff, as there is additional value added in the form of reduced processing of their auto waste. If the machine creates real savings in that area then the fact that it powers itself is a nice secondary feature.

          A landfill reducing device that powers itself with a net energy surplus doesn't sound like it has no commercial value.
          [ Parent ]
    • Re:but... (Score:4, Funny)

      by protolith (619345) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:18PM (#19671939)
      And no mention of the really cool lightning created when you leave a metal fork in the plastic.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ricree (969643) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:30PM (#19672031)

      no mention on how much energy it takes to run the thing, or how much energy it puts out. it's not of much use if it costs a fraction to just bury the old plastic and make new stuff from scratch.
      They claim that it is capable of pulling out enough fuel to have a surplus, but even if it isn't it could still be viable as a means to recycle plastics. I don't know how economically viable that would be now, but the raw materials for plastic are likely to rise, while the price of these machines will likely fall. Even if it is not viable now, who is to say it will never be. All in all, it sounds plausible.
      [ Parent ]
  • Great, so... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bin_jammin (684517) <Binjammin@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:03PM (#19671811)
    when I stop at the gas station/convenience store, I'll be able to buy a burrito that's 1/2 frozen coming out of the microwave, and fuel 1/2 frozen coming out of the microwave. How far we've come!
  • Interestingly (Score:5, Funny)

    by GammaKitsune (826576) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:03PM (#19671815)
    I've gotten my microwave at home to break my food back down into component carbons. Or at least something pretty similar to coal.
  • Question about the process... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Master Control P (655590) <ejkeever.nerdshack@com> on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:10PM (#19671869) Homepage
    What I gather is that they use multiple magnetrons or microwave circuits to generate frequencies that will resonate with all the common bonds in hydrocarbons, just as 2.4Ghz is the resonant frequency of the protons in a water molecule swinging back and forth. However, they also claim (for example) that it can dissolve the insulation off a piece of copper wire. But it's still the same principle as a microwave oven, so I ask: how can they put a conductor into the chamber and not have it immediately burn up due to microwave absorbtion? Cut it up into teeny bits?
  • I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by weinrich (414267) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:13PM (#19671897)

    "Take a piece of copper wiring," says Meddick. "It is encased in plastic - a kind of hydrocarbon material. [stick it in our microwave] and we release all the hydrocarbons, which strips the casing off the wire."
    I knew the microwave manufacturer's were lying to us all these years! They kept telling us not to put metal in our microwaves, and now I know why: they just wanted to keep this money-making technology to themselves. You Bastards!
    • Re:I knew it! (Score:4, Informative)

      by ajs318 (655362) <sd_resp2&earthshod,co,uk> on Thursday June 28 2007, @07:21AM (#19674355)
      They tell you not to put metal in it because you probably don't know how to do so safely and so will end up doing yourself, or your oven, a mischief. They think that if you don't do it at all, you can't possibly do it wrong. If you want to try, remember microwaves are radio waves (they're about 12cm. IMMSMC) and obey all the usual laws of radio waves. Read some advanced physics textbooks and you'll learn how to put metal objects in a microwave oven without getting the usual light show.

      To summarise the physics: metals, being good conductors, tend to get a current induced in them; so does water, but, not being a perfect conductor, it also gets a potential difference across it and the old "volts * amps = watts" thing kicks in. Hence why food gets hot in the microwave, and why filament light bulbs glow in the microwave. Air is an even worse conductor, and the potential difference across the air between a piece of electrically-charged metal and the earthed oven wall might well be significant. (And no, disconnecting the earth in the plug won't help. You'll just make the oven body live. Damn those Continentals with their lovely Schuko plugs that have no fuse and will fit into a non-earthed socket with nary word of a warning. At least the worst thing that can happen in this country is that you'll plant a bare foot on a 13-amp plug in the dark. Actually, make that a socked foot; lovely fibre fragments driven deep into the wound by the sharp-edged brass pins). Once you get a PD greater than about 3MV/m (or 3kV/mm, whichever comes first) air tends to make like a metal-oxide varistor and suddenly go from being a terrible conductor to being a really good conductor. Hence the fireworks.
      [ Parent ]
  • Irony (Score:5, Funny)

    by vertigoCiel (1070374) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:17PM (#19671937)
    Powering the next generation with the accumulated shit of the previous one. Brilliant.
  • Good! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Robber Baron (112304) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:21PM (#19671963) Homepage
    Good! they can start by zapping all that annoying hard plastic bubble packaging that every bleeding thing seems to come in now and is harder then hell to open without damaging the contents! What frigging idiot came up with that idea?!? If there isn't a hell, they should make one, and put idiots like that in it! I know...a prison...we'll strip them naked and make sure their cells are free of anything with sharp or pointed edges, and all their meals, toilet paper, soap etc will come wrapped in their diabolical inventions!
  • Already done in a bioreactor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anne_Nonymous (313852) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:27PM (#19672009) Homepage Journal
    >> plastic... broken down into... combustible gas

    Try feeding your dog a (small) Lego. It has the same effect. For almost a week.
  • liquify other hydrocarbons? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by uncreativ (793402) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:43PM (#19672121)
    wonder if it could be used to convert coal to a liquid hydrocarbon--would make the US the new saudi arabia for oil considering our huge coal deposits.
  • A giant microwave... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III (192702) on Thursday June 28 2007, @01:16AM (#19672543) Homepage
    So, just like, a wave, right?
  • Everything old is new again (Score:5, Funny)

    by steveoc (2661) on Thursday June 28 2007, @01:47AM (#19672679)
    Not surprised by this at all.

    There are countless stories of ancient technology where enlightened beings create things or destroy them by utilising special harmonic vibrations.

    We have pyramids and whole cities being constructed in the remote jungle covered mountains of Peru by a small number of 'dwarfs' who move massive blocks of granite around using a nothing but a 'chiming rod'. (Sound being a vibration in teh audible spectra).

    We have the armies of King David knocking down the walls of Jericho by blowing specific notes on the sacred horn of destruction. (Sound again being a vibration in teh audible spectra).

    We have ancient Indians flying around in Vimyana airships and laying waste to massed armies with blasts of specially coded light waves. (Light being a vibration in teh visible spectra).

    From ancient Inuit culture, we have heroes who can 'hummm' inaudible songs to summon a great whale from beneath the ice caps of the frozen north, and command the whale to do their bidding. (Subtonal vibrations in teh sensory spectra)

    We have the ancient Malinese who claim to have built a city UNDER THE OCEAN in a single day, by banging two large fish together. (A vibration in teh olafactory spectra perhaps ?)

    And the ancient Australian aboriginies, where the rainbow serpent created the mountains and the rivers and then literally sang day and night and linear time into existence. (A vibration in teh temporal spectra ?).

    So why should we be surprised that vibrations in teh Microwave spectra hold the power to perform the modern alchemical trick of turning old barbie dolls and art-deco floor coverings into diesel fuel ?

    Thats hardly progress - I would be impressed if they came up with a giant titanium chiming wand that could remotely construct a magnificent city on the Moon in a couple of hours, or a 100 square mile flawless pyramid of solid ruby on the surface of Mars over the space of a long weekend ...
  • Please use base 10, not base 0.454 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jsiren (886858) on Thursday June 28 2007, @03:33AM (#19673193)
    TFA quotes somewhat odd numbers:

    (...) running 9.1 kilograms of ground-up tyres through the Hawk-10 produces 4.54 litres of diesel oil, 1.42 cubic metres of combustible gas, 1 kg of steel and 3.40 kg of carbon black (...)
    WTF? Why 9.1 kg? Is this a multiple of a non-metric unit converted to metric? Or the weight of a standard car's tires? The weight of one tire? Should I know this?

    These numbers are attributed to Jerry Meddick, director of business development at Global Resource Corporation. I'd guess mr. Meddick originally said to the reporter "running 20 pounds of ground-up tyres ... produces 1.2 gallons of diesel oil, 50 cubic feet of combustible gas, 2.2 lb of steel, and 7.5 lb of carbon black", using units he's familiar with.

    Okay, a publication calling itself scientific is not going to publish figures in non-SI units. I appreciate the effort of conversion, but it's not much better to publish figures in "base 0.454", as it were. Reading in base 10, the above quote best represents (in a roundabout way) the steel yield of the machine: to get 1 kg of steel, put in 9.1 kg of ground-up tyres.

    What if you want to express the total yield per unit of ground-up tyres? Use a unit amount or a power of 10 amount of tyres and calculate the rest from that:
    For every 10 kilograms of ground-up tyres, the Hawk-10 produces 5 litres of diesel oil, 1.6 cubic metres of combustible gas, 1.1 kg of steel, and 3.7 kg of carbon black.

    This is much easier to comprehend: if a ton (1000 kg) of ground-up tyres were delivered to a Hawk-10, it would produce approximately 500 litres of diesel oil, enough to run my 1999 Ford Focus on my 100 km per day commute 5 days a week for 20 weeks.

    Now, where's that microwawe...?

  • Beverly (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joebert (946227) on Thursday June 28 2007, @06:38AM (#19674113) Homepage
    Let me tell ya little story bout a man named Fred,
    Jersey Engineer barely has time to eat bread,
    Then one day he was cookin up some food,
    after a 20 minute call it was a bubblin crude.
  • My question (Score:5, Funny)

    by LittleGuy (267282) on Thursday June 28 2007, @06:49AM (#19674179)
    How much microwave power do you need to reconstitute oil back into dinosaurs?
  • by foniksonik (573572) on Thursday June 28 2007, @09:22AM (#19675657) Homepage Journal
    What's neat about this is that it takes waste products that would end up in a land fill and converts them to a usable form again... with a surplus over the amount of energy needed to do so. Not much, certainly not enough to supplant alternative fuel sources... but enough to drive the conversion process and power a few other machines nearby.

    This will be great for factories all around and farms and other types of businesses that end up with a lot of waste material. Maybe we can make those 75% self-sustaining... which means they won't be depleting more raw materials as quickly. This is a good thing.

    Even if the only use is for our Municipal trash companies to run their fleet of vehicles off of the trash they collect... we've won a huge gain. Maybe trucking companies could do the same... converting their used tires to fuel every month (they go through a lot of tires).

    This is equivalent to farms using their biomass to convert to biodiesel or ethanol for use in their farm equipment. It's not a commercial enterprise but it reduces waste and improves their efficiency which means they can pass the savings on to the rest of us (or stop needing subsidies from tax dollars).

        • Re:So Thermodynamics Nazis... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Homo Stannous (756539) on Wednesday June 27 2007, @11:40PM (#19672099)
          Water vapor would be a powerful greenhouse gas, if there weren't already so much of it there. Basically, our atmosphere has so much water vapor, that every frequency of IR that can be absorbed by it is already fully absorbed. So more water vapor won't make a difference. CO2 and CH4, on the other hand, are potent greenhouse gasses because not only do they absorb IR, but they're pretty scarce our atmosphere.
          [ Parent ]
    • Re:Is it cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BigBuckHunter (722855) on Thursday June 28 2007, @05:30AM (#19673779)
      That had to be the worst anti-recycling link I've ever read. Heck, Penn and Teller even did a better job. Many Items are profitable to recycle, hence the existence of private scrap yards. Some consumer waste 'is' profitable, but since the US local governments decide to do curbside pickup, it no longer saves energy. They solved this problem in Vienna by having neighborhood bins. The trucks only come when the bin is full. A simple idea like that turned glass and metal (including aluminum) profitable. Granted, the profit goes to subsidize the plastic recycling, which needs local compactors to break even.

      Corporate recycling (bottles from bars that go back to the bottler, unsold newspaper pickup, etc, are all private and profitable.

      In conclusion, recycling consumer waste 'can' be profitable, and the low hanging fruit already is profitable. It's just that our governing bodys (that control recycling) are too dumb and wasteful to figure it out.

      BBH
      [ Parent ]