Personal plastic to fuel conversion system

Hello. I am currently in the process of starting a new kind of plastic recycling company. We would be selling portable and easy to use plastic to fuel (diesel, gasoline and kerosene) conversion system based on pyrolysis. We are currently trying to decide which market niche to start with and farm plastics looks very promising. We have done extensive research online and now would like to start getting some feedback from farmers directly.

The goal is an inexpensive, green, safe and profitable plastic recycling system for private businesses and individuals.

Please ask me any questions you want and I will do my best to answer them.

Cheers!

Patrick
 
A quick description of the process, type of plastics that are useable, likely costs and output would make interesting reading as well as the type and standards of the fuels produced.

Process. Mixed plastics (including PVC) will be inserted in a corrosion resistant airtight steel reactor. Two step induction heating process will star. First stage will be removal of toxins from any PVC plastics. Second stage at ~300 Celcius will melt and evaporate the plastics, which will then condense in separate containers (diesel ~70%, gasoline ~20% and kerosene ~10%). The system will only need the operator to push start and it will turn itself off after all plastic is converted. This may take anywhere from half to several hours to finish.

Plastics. All thermoplastic plastics will be usable. Each will have different properties (with a slightly different distribution of byproducts), but all can be reduced to oils. The diesel will have sulfur levels lower than petrol station equivalent. It will be able to run a diesel engine. Here's a link to one of many published papers on this type of fuel quality https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940549/

Costs: This one is tricky as we want to make it cheap enough for a wide market of people to afford. The price will be directly connected to the size of the machine and we are currently trying to figure out what size would be best for average farmers. Which is one of the reasons why I am on this forum. The very rough price is currently at £500. Don't quote me on this just yet. We still need to gain a better understanding which functions would be best in this environment and which we can take out.
 
Process. Mixed plastics (including PVC) will be inserted in a corrosion resistant airtight steel reactor. Two step induction heating process will star. First stage will be removal of toxins from any PVC plastics. Second stage at ~300 Celcius will melt and evaporate the plastics, which will then condense in separate containers (diesel ~70%, gasoline ~20% and kerosene ~10%). The system will only need the operator to push start and it will turn itself off after all plastic is converted. This may take anywhere from half to several hours to finish.

Plastics. All thermoplastic plastics will be usable. Each will have different properties (with a slightly different distribution of byproducts), but all can be reduced to oils. The diesel will have sulfur levels lower than petrol station equivalent. It will be able to run a diesel engine. Here's a link to one of many published papers on this type of fuel quality https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4940549/

Costs: This one is tricky as we want to make it cheap enough for a wide market of people to afford. The price will be directly connected to the size of the machine and we are currently trying to figure out what size would be best for average farmers. Which is one of the reasons why I am on this forum. The very rough price is currently at £500. Don't quote me on this just yet. We still need to gain a better understanding which functions would be best in this environment and which we can take out.

This sounds really promising in my eyes?
Is suphur a lubricant?? so would we have to add a lube say a %of bio fuel to it???
 
Whats our likely cost per litre for a diesel type fuel with our own plastic

So bellow is my maths for cost of 1 liter of diesel based only on the consumed electricity to produce it.

To get 1 liter of diesel from plastic requires 1.3MJ of energy (this includes inefficiencies, even less theoretically). 1.3MJ is 0.36kWh at a price of £0.12 per 1 kWh this will cost £0.04 to produce. I just did it, so I hope my maths is on point.
 

woodworm

Member
Location
Thetford Norfolk
Patrick,
It all sounds very interesting
Here's a starter for 10, and a few more .....

Will all of the dirt (mud), straw, cow poo and other detritus that comes with the plastic on farms hinder the process or production of oil?
Is the pyrolysis oil ready to pour straight into our cars or does it require cleaning or refining in any way?
How much plastic will need to fed into it each hour/day/week?
Does it require constant supervision or can you just fill it up and let it get on with it?
Is it a batch or continuous system?
Is it equipped with a fire suppression system to prevent any calamities?
Will it require environmental permits?
Will we have to become registered waste carriers?
How big is the plant and what does it cost?

I think that'll do to start with.
Woodworm
 
Thankyou for your reply @Green Prometheus it sounds interesting and I think you will have some more questions to follow. But you sound very up front and honest which should help on this forum.
How are these systems looked upon by the environment brigade?

Yeah, legislation is one of those things I haven't started wrestling with yet. I imagine I will need to prove them that this device is environmentally safe and within emission levels. It certainly is, but I am not entirely sure of the proving process yet.

In USA, this type of processing is being used on a large scale in a number of places. What I want to do is to decentralize it and make it cheap enough for everyone to use. This will not waste fuel, people and time to be taken from far away places to the central plant.
 
How would the process cope with contamination with moisture,organic and inorganic?

Basically the average dirty wet silage wrap.

It will cope, but it will need more time to evaporate the water. One of the things we are worrying about now is indeed water content. It is actually really bad to have water in your fuel, so we will be adding a device to separate water from the fuel. In this case, the process would take longer to finish as all the water would need to be heated a long with the plastics.

What kind of contamination would it be specifically? Dirt or some chemicals? If it's dirt - that's fine. You would be able to remove the char,dirt and whats left unprocessed after the conversion. If chemicals, they could contaminate the fuel. This is another thing we will need to figure out to see how badly would it affect the fuel and what could be done to purify it.
 
Where have you demonstrated this process?

We haven't demonstrated it outside a lab environment yet. Currently we are forming the team, the company and deciding which direction will the first model be built. We got at least 10 different starting markets, but we need to start with the one that will most likely succeed so we could progress.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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