Energy problem solved?

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Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

AshburnerX said:
Only if your okay with a process that turns one kilogram of plastic into 3 kilograms of CO2 and a liter of oil. That is a lot of pollution for such a small amount.
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I think he meant if you burn the plastic instead of using his electric heat system to convert it into oil, it would produce 3KG of CO2 and so his actually reduces CO2 emissions. That's how I understood it, anyways.

It's a neat idea, and certainly worth keeping an eye on for improvements in the technology...
Added at: 22:38
Of course, ultimately you can never solve the energy problem.
 
Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

stienman said:
Dyson Sphere.
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From the incomparable Asimov's The Last Question (which everyone should read):

All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever."
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. "Not forever," he said.
"Oh, hell, just about forever. Till the sun runs down, Bert."
"That's not forever."
"All right, then. Billions and billions of years. Twenty billion, maybe. Are you satisfied?"
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ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

From what I understand, plastic is a product that takes the longest to break down over time. This could make recycling very interesting and potentially much more profitable. You might see the people picking up plastic to sell and such.

That's best-case-scenario, of course. I'm no scientist, so I don't know if this machine will cause MORE Co emissions as Ash suggests.
Added at: 00:26
Of course, it doesn't take away our reliance on oil. It doesn't solve the long-term problem. BUT, it might at least give us more time to find better/cheaper means of producting green technology.
 
phil

phil

I'll pick this up with one of those cures for cancer that always seem to he discovered but never actually used.
 
drifter

drifter

I remember reading about a guy in the States doing something similar a while back, although I think using a slightly different process (thermal depolymerization). It sounded very interesting, but unfortunately it didn't gain much traction. They built a test facility in Missouri, I think, but there were a lot of stumbling blocks. Ah, looks like the company went bankrupt in 2009.

Here's the original article I read, which also has links to follow-up articles.
 
C

Chibibar

looks pretty interesting. I do believe the video said if you burn plastic directly you get 3Kg of CO2. This guy process trap all that gas from "boiling plastic" into liquid then into gas form. Interesting.
 
Gared

Gared

I think I saw a TED talk video about this on Wimp.com a while back, it was only a couple of guys though and they couldn't get the process up to handling large amounts; so instead what they were doing was going around to all of the third world countries in Africa where the rest of the world dumps its trash and cleaning up small communities and leaving the gas/oil with them.
 
C

Chibibar

Gared said:
I think I saw a TED talk video about this on Wimp.com a while back, it was only a couple of guys though and they couldn't get the process up to handling large amounts; so instead what they were doing was going around to all of the third world countries in Africa where the rest of the world dumps its trash and cleaning up small communities and leaving the gas/oil with them.
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I was wondering how this would work in a large scale. Of course the guy never talk about "cleaning" the unit either ;)
 
Gared

Gared

Yeah, it's been a while since I saw the video, and then it was just something where I was scanning through all of the videos on Wimp.com, watched that one, and thought "Hey, cool." and then moved on. It would be an awesome way to get rid of all of the plastic bags we have filling up our landfills and choking out our marine life, but is it really feasible on a large scale?
 
strawman

strawman

Some of the bigger problems they've run into, so far, are:

- Contamination (you have to clean the plastic, which is not cheap)
- You can't simply mix all the different types of plastic together
- The typical "oil product" that is produced is worse than what comes out of the ground in terms of refining (requires a lot more work to turn into gas and diesel than oil from the earth)
- A very low output for even large amounts of plastic
- We don't produce nearly as much plastic as we do gas - even if we recycled all the disposable plastic every american uses daily, it really wouldn't put a dent in our daily gas consumption.

They are contemplating using the output for asphalt, and turning it back into plastic or polymers for industrial use (it's not really good for going back to the form of plastic it started as).
 
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