Waste Plastic: The Next Grease Party

Van Living Forum

Help Support Van Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

debit.servus

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 16, 2012
Messages
730
Reaction score
0
Location
San Jose, CA


He builds a mini oil refinery at home to pyrolyze waste plastic into high-grade, low sulfur diesel & gasoline. It could be improved to use the byproducts (propane, butane gas) as energy to power the reaction, requiring no inputs other than waste plastics. 

Please watch the full video series before reading further. 

I am going to call it now, this is the next “free grease party”. Why, Waste plastic is everywhere and some people even have to pay to dispose of it. You can use multiple types of plastic for the feedstock, so it’s not like you’re limited to soda bottles. Also, If you are creative with sourcing you could find truckloads of free waste plastic to feed into your micro-refinery. 

What comes out is clear diesel fuel that safe for even a early 2000s fuel injected diesel (common rail need not apply). Since it doesn’t need minute by minute tending to keep it going, you could watch TV and tend it during commercials, or build it to set and forget. If you build it right, it doesn’t even release noxious chemicals into your space, if you keep it inside. The reaction puts out heat, meaning free heat in the winter! 

For me, it’s worth it if I could reliably find tons of waste plastic on a regular basis, as I’ll need a lot of plastic trash to get a little diesel. I’ll probably get one cubic centimeter of diesel and gasoline for every two cubic centimeters of waste plastic after conversion losses. Since I know a lot of frugalists who happily work for less than minimum wage on their weekend, I can delegate the refinement, and they can take minimum wage in fuel instead of a lower cash wage. 

Since I’m moving into a skoolie, and I plan to build a back deck to max out the legal length of the Skoolie, I will have a place for the diesel refinery. If needed, the bus can easily pull a trailer for feedstock runs. Regardless, I’m installing the maximum diesel capacity legal to carry interstate onboard an RV (it goes without saying the skoolie will be registered as an RV so RV regs apply). I will have at least 1000 miles of range, hopefully 5000

Waste plastic looks to be the 2020s used cooking oil nearly everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before hobbyists and ecomodders catch on and join the “free plastic party”. A few to several years of that, the general public will catch on and companies will begin paying businesses for their non-recyclable waste plastic, ending the free plastic party. Waste plastic is the used cooking oil of the 2020s! 

I can break free from the fuel monopoly now, and be free to explore North America endlessly for the next 5-10 years, while I flip fuel scarcity the middle finger. 

Since this micro refinery is close to the same level as a wood gasifier - I’m better off retail arbitraging, scouring the Internet for discounts on investment property, and founding a software company, scaling it and then selling it for millions (thefastlaneforum.com)... 

Once I’m made decamillionaire status thanks to entrepreneurship, I can break free from needing to work ever again, and be free to explore North America and the world whenever I want, while I flip scarcity the middle finger. 
 
I love building stuff like this, and thinking about ways to improve old technology. I recently built a .50 cal ammo box stove that has a re-burner in it, and a 3" automotive exhaust pipe for a chimney. After building my shop, I will build some sort of WMO waste oil dripper system that I can heat the space with during the Winter.
 
It does take electricity for the air compressor and fans. Also takes some propane to get it started.
 
That guy is a genius. Plastic is a huge waste item and thoroughly available everywhere. I think we encourage enough to follow the guide to make Sulfur free Diesel from waste plastics, it'll be a huge help to recycle plastic significantly.
 
Try not to get too excited about it, he did have a burnout failure and never got a successful design finished that was a viable plastic to diesel converter. His failure was partly in the insulation. It takes specialized insulation to work with the extreme high temperatures.

It takes time, investors and skill to develop waste into green products engineered burners. My workshop mate was involved as a primary designer in one such small company. They were turning the beetle kiln waste wood into Biochar. I was on the initial work site while development and testing was going on one fall to help with some of the CAD working drawing documentation work. http://www.biocharnow.com/index.php/manufacturing/kiln-based-technology. But at times I was also doing some background research on the internet for finding things such as the specialized high temp insulation and various other component fittings.


That was 6 years ago but it feels more like 20 years ago. Strange how some things see far away in the past and other that happened long ago feel much closer.
 
Top