this is the greatest thing ever

[rone]

devonapple brought to my attention this little device that, by judicious application of microwaves, extracts oil and gas from plastics, rubber, and just about anything that has a hydrocarbon base, and leaves a remainder of pure carbon.  The video linked therein is a mediocre production, but it's still impressive.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The big problem with this reasoning (and with peak oil saving us from global warming, in general) is coal. The less oil there is, the more attractive the relatively huge coal reserves become as a power source. And coal's worse. It's essentially all carbon.

As rone said, this would at least mean that we wouldn't run out of oil as chemical feedstock.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Another thing i'm wondering is whether this process, if real, could be used to clean coal.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Even if it could be used to remove polluting impurities, at best you'd have something that burned to rich creamery carbon dioxide. Which is better than belching toxic smoke into the air, but still has the greenhouse gas problem.

I'm guessing coal is a somewhat different case because you wouldn't get hydrocarbons out; the hydrogen isn't there. (You could add it, but my impression is that coal liquification and gasification projects generally aren't worth the trouble in environmental footprint per joule extracted.)