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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.
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)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hooray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the reason why plastics are not very recyclable is that you cannot substitute one plastic for another. The previous method recycles polycarbonate from CDs only into polycarbonate. Polycarbonate cannot be used instead of polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, etc. These other plastics have far more uses. So turning into fuel is a more general use to me.
Re:In any case... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
even better! do you know how many mpg you can get on PURE EVIL?!?
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Funny)
Boy is that true. I microwaved an AOL CD, it turned into pure evil, and a bunch of little dudes came in and took me on a wacky adventure!
I've been saying for years (Score:5, Insightful)
I called it! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:5, Informative)
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
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.
Re:Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:4, Interesting)
Enforcement isn't the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Informative)
Spelling doesn't have to reflect the pronunciation (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
-jcr
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, so... (Score:4, Funny)
Interestingly (Score:5, Funny)
Question about the process... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Question about the process... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question about the process... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Question about the process... (Score:4, Funny)
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I knew it! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Irony (Score:5, Funny)
Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Already done in a bioreactor (Score:5, Funny)
Try feeding your dog a (small) Lego. It has the same effect. For almost a week.
liquify other hydrocarbons? (Score:5, Interesting)
A giant microwave... (Score:5, Funny)
Everything old is new again (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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)
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)
It's about recycling... not fuel scavenging (Score:4, Insightful)
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:People... (Score:4, Funny)
Was there ever a "trendy" form of cremation?
Re:People... (Score:4, Funny)
Exxon has been working on that. Re:People... (Score:5, Funny)
This is true and people have been using animal fat as a fuel ever since they discovered fire. Exxon realized that 150,000 people already die each year from global warming and their bodies represent an untapped, carbon neutral fuel source. Check out the results at Vivoleum.com [vivoleum.com], and you to may want to be a candle or SUV fodder. Burn guilt free!
Re:So Thermodynamics Nazis... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is it cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
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