Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back to Oil 555
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.""
Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)
Is it cost effective? (Score:2, Informative)
similar to petrol cracking (Score:3, Informative)
I called it! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So Thermodynamics Nazis... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)
20 POUND CAR TIRE BY PRODUCT BREAKDOWN:
OIL (# 4) - 1.2 GALLONS 8.5 POUNDS
GAS - 50 CF - 3000 BTUS 2.0 POUNDS
STEEL 2.0 POUNDS
CARBON BLACK 7.5 POUNDS
No mention of how much goes into removing that stuff though.
The tech can also convert the oil in shale and tar sands into natural gas and some other gases that can converted into oil... at least that's what they say. No word on how to purchase said device.
Re:Question about the process... (Score:4, Informative)
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:Hooray! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:My only question is this.. (Score:3, Informative)
from article:"Not only does the process produce fuel in the form of oil and gas, it also makes it easier to extract the copper wire for recycling."
So I think that they had this in their mind when designing this. You het the copper and the oil. If the process would produce sparks, it is propable safe by design. I mean: sparks, combusting gas + oil = law suit, not much of a business plan.
Might be interesting to watch.
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've been saying for years... Here's one way (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Question about the process... (Score:2, Informative)
2.45GHz is not the resonant frequency of water molecules, 2.45GHz is just within the absorption band of water, which is extremely wide, and was chosen because it's cheaper to make magnetrons for 2.45GHz than other frequency ranges, 2.45GHz magnetrons are physically smaller than lower frequency magentrons, and most importantly that 2.45GHz is right smack in the middle of the 2.4-2.5GHz unlicensed ISM band, so spurious emissions won't be that big of a problem. I believe that the actual resonant frequency of the hydrogen-oxygen bond in a water molecule is somewhere around 10GHz.
However, I'm sure that the carbon-carbon bonds in hydrocarbons and the overall hydrocarbon polymers in plastics have significantly lower resonance frequencies due to their higher masses and larger physical sizes. One interesting problem, probably why they use over 1200 different frequencies, is that if a particular frequency is the fundamental resonant frequency of most of the molecules of a substance, then all of the energy will be absorbed by the molecules at the surface, which would slow the process down. I wonder if they run through a sequence of freqs or if they just run them all at once.
great, just what we need, more oil (Score:2, Informative)
This idea is labeled as recycling and therefore good. But this is not the kind of recycling we need. It's not clean energy. We need alternative fuels and reusable non-polluting products.
Re:liquify other hydrocarbons? (Score:3, Informative)
Already being done in Switzerland ... (Score:1, Informative)
So, here you are, people. Buried on page 23/28 in the recent edition of Rega (rescue operations) magazine here in Switzerland, I found this EXCELLENT article (originally in
The Swiss people are FANATICAL about recycling
And to answer the p's question: much of the energy used in the process comes from nuclear plants, but Switzerland is right up at the top of the world ranks for numerous "renewable" energies: for geothermal, it ranks at number 2 behind New Zealand, and it does that without any noticeable geothermal activity on the ground surface
Besides all that, is it so important to think about how much energy is required to clean up our own mess ? I believe we have a duty to ourselves and future generations to take responsibility for our own shit
When you buy an electrical product here in Switzerland, you are OBLIGED to cough up extra to cover the costs of disposing of the damned thing when you're done with it. Same thing should be forced on everyone with plastics - we should all pay more now for them so we can deal with the issue as things are "consumed", whether by paying for the fuel to run these processes, or putting the money aside for dealing with the mess later. Like nuclear power should be priced much higher to take into account the future cost of disposing of the nuclear waste. (A fastbreed reactor works great for this, but costs WAY too much in general).
Enough o.t. rant, on to the article
https://www.rega.ch/fr/dateien/medien/1414/PDF_Reg a_Magazin_68_fr.pdf [www.rega.ch]
My translation for those who don't understand French... (original text follows)
"In Genesis it was written: 'From dust you came, to dust you shall return'.
In English it's known as 'going full circle', an expression not quite completely translated by the image of the circle thus described. What it means to describe is the principle of returning to the point you started at.
In this instance, it doesn't relate to taking a step backwards at all, but a definitive step forward - one of the numerous little steps that are being taken to save (perhaps 'preserve' would be better here) our planet Earth.
To cut a long story short, here in Sihlbrugg in the Swiss canton of Zug, they're converting plastics (originally from petrol) back in to petrol again. The idea seems so simple in principle that you ask yourself why we even bother to talk about it: it's obvious, right ?
Well, not obvious enough it seems: the proof, noone's actually thought of actually doing it before. Today, the Sihlbrugg factory is a world first - and was appropriately recognised as such with last autumn's "Prize for Innovation" in the canton of Zug.
And it's all the buzz all over Europe.
So you ask yourself the question: what is the Sihlbrugg's system called, an incineration site or a petrol refinery ?
The answer: both of them.
This is what is truly implied by the phrase 'back to the future'.
We've all read who knows how many times about how much plastics have become a problem: the bags that are strewn over and through
Re:but... (Score:2, Informative)
also look at it this way. here in australia we have 2 bins, one for trash one for recycling. this means you need 2 trucks to collect your trash, which means 2x the fuel burnt to collect it, which i'm sure mitigates any environmental benifits you would have gained in recycling in the first place.
Re:Question about the process... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Informative)
My prefered method - and effective and proven safe probably around 100 times...
Put a small glass in the center of the microwave, place the disc on top of that. 3 seconds. Not long enough to fry anything but the disc.
Last year I convinced my wife to let me do a dozen or so for a geek-tree at christmas.
Re:Because that is the correct pronunciation... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hooray! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hooray! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:1, Informative)
1. Money isn't "printed" when issuing debt. Debt is created which is then sold to other people, their money has to exist. At some base level M1 money, coinage or other commodity exists. All debt outstanding has to be offset by an asset and that asset has to have some value. Sure you could literally print money, increasing M1 in circulation, leading to inflation, but that isn't how it works, unless you're talking about the Wiemar or other disasterous monetary policies. The credit holdbacks are nothing more than accounting for risks and maintaining reserve funding in the bank. This happens everywhere.
2. You sound like the RonPaulbots that have been flooding the net lately with their silly theories about abolishing the Fed. Of course these are wrapped in anti-semitic points about European jews (Rothschilds) controlling everything (not saying that is your belief). The biggest problem is that nobody really takes the time to understand things. They simply read a few sensationalist posts (or books or web pages) and think that's the truth. In reality it's far from it.
Take for example, the biggest farce perpetuated online, that the Fed is owned by shadowy European bankers. In actuality the Fed is owned by every member bank, which includes everybody from your local credit union to Bank of America and Citibank. Of course those institutions are owned by investors, or their individual depositors or investors. Thus, the majority of the Fed is owned by the people. Sure, foreign banks are members of the Fed and thus do own a portion of the Fed. However, the ratio of foreign banks to US banks significantly outweighs their voting power.
Another farce is that those bankers keep all of their money. The Fed makes tens of billions in profit every year. This is either disbursed, through dividends, to the member banks, or paid to the Federal Government in the form of cash disbursements (tens of billions annually).
3. You attempt to pin inflation on just monetary policy. However, there is no clear cause of inflation, beyond just putting more M1 in circulation. There can be price shocks due to differing supply/demand, there can be changes in demands of spending which leads to inflation (more or less demand chasing more or less money leads to higher borrowing costs which are passed on to consumers), and there can be wage inflation whereby workers demand additional pay which is then passed on to consumers, which results in workers demanding more pay, passing that on to consumers creating a spiral.
The last two are particularily useful in predicting inflation. When demand for money is at its peak, during an economic peak, then costs for borrowing technically go up (but the base-level price of it is lower due to economic expansion monetary policy). The main lever to slow that incremental demand is increasing the base cost of financing, which lowers the amount of projects which are profitable at certain financing levels, slowing growth. Additionally, the cost of doing business, by paying your workers (the last factor) increases as economic growth peaks, because you have to pay 1 more worker more money to get him off of the unemployment line (or your current workers more to get more productivity). Thus, both of these items are ultimately passed onto to consumers, creating inflation.
The Keynesian form, above, or the Menetarist form (you) have differing opinions. Your whole idea of inflation controlled by monetary supply through central banking is stupid and outdated. It's been disproven over and over again. Monetary supply can't ultimately be controlled by central banks due to the global nature of the economy. Money will flow to or from economies or sectors now based upon the credit risk and profitability of the endevor.
I'd be interested to know what your educational background is, considering that no reasonable finance person I have ever met would take such a position on things.