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.""
I've been saying for years (Score:5, Insightful)
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:So Thermodynamics Nazis... (Score:2, Insightful)
Same argument for hydrogen-Why it is viable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
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.
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:Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:3, Insightful)
hell yellow cake is found 180m at times
Re:boom (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to sound like a hippy.. but... (Score:3, Insightful)
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:3, Insightful)
Re:Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you miss a round, no big deal. You won't fill up your box that fast anyway.
Sorting your trash at home takes no time at all. For most trash you just need to remember this: If it rots, it goes into the green container, if it doesn't, put it in the grey container. Paper and chemicals have their own box.
Really, it doesn't take time, and AFAIK, the only thing the government had to do to enforce it was have a public awareness campaign...
Re:liquify other hydrocarbons? (Score:3, Insightful)
No it wouldn't.
The US used-to produce the vast majority of the world's oil. It was the largest exporting nation by far, but production has slowed and many of the oil deposits have been exhausted. The US has always been, and still is, one of the top 3 oil producing nations.
The reason the US isn't the old and "new Saudi Arabia for oil" isn't because of lack of oil, but because the US uses so much that despite the huge production, we still have to import more.
You can bet, if liquid fuel from coal gets cheap, our energy usage will go through the roof, and we'll use every last bit of it in record time, and quickly start importing it from other countries.
Saudi Arabia is what it is not because it has oil, but because it's oil is combined with a tiny, tiny population, who couldn't use a tiny fraction of it all if they tried. We don't have that "problem" in the US.
Re:Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:2, Insightful)
But in the city right next door they started charging $4 for stickers you put on large items to have them picked up. Naturally, some streets are littered with old couches and mattresses without trash stickers. $4 dollars while reasonable, is still more than some people are willing to pay.
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
Re:Need an enforcement structure, though. (Score:3, Insightful)
True story:
A day-care center was having a real problem with parents arriving late (2-3 hours after they were supposed to) to pick up their kids. So someone at the day-care center had the bright idea of charging $10 per incident if a parent was more than 30 minutes late. Guess what happened? MORE parents showed up late and paid the $10! They felt like the $10 fine made it OK and they stopped trying as hard to avoid being late.
Eventually the problem got solved by making it a 3-strike policy: if you're more than 30 minutes late 3 times you have to find another place to send your kids. They really worked up the guilt angle on this, too - "You know, moving your child to another day-care provider is going to be incredibly disruptive for them" and the inconvenience angle - "You're already struggling to meet your schedule, do you really want to have to take the time to find another place for your child?" Once they instituted that policy, lateness dropped dramatically.
So, I would say that the way to handle people who overproduce trash or don't sort it isn't to just charge them some minimal fine (sorry, but $1.50 so I don't have to fuck around with sorting my garbage? I'm lazy enough to think that's a deal, and I'm sure I'm not the only one). The way to handle it is to make it less convenient or attractive to just make extra trash/not sort it than the other option. I don't have anything specific in mind, but maybe something along the lines of an individual trash allotment, which, if you exceed it, requires that you document the contents of the trash that's exceeding it and pay a moderate fine. If you don't document it you pay a not-so-moderate fine. Make it a bigger pain in the ass to not sort/reduce waste and people will take the easier way. Make it just a matter of throwing a fairly trivial amount of money at a problem, and the biggest problem people will keep their old habits.
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.
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:I've been saying for years (Score:3, Insightful)
Revolutionary new microwave technology produces uses 10 megawatts of energy to produce enough oil to provide 1 megawatt of electricity! What a bargain!!
Re:In any case... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I've been saying for years (Score:4, Insightful)