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

[mskala.livejournal.com]

Is this a good thing? I figured one of the few silver linings of non-biodegradeable plastics is that every gallon of oil made into plastic that sits in the landfill for a bazillion years, is a gallon of oil NOT turned into CO₂ and making the atmosphere heat up. So if we can encourage people to use as much plastic as possible, we're hastening the day when we'll run out of oil and actually start reducing greenhouse gas emissions for real.

Making it possible to burn more oil before we run out, isn't necessarily a good thing.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

What about the effect of plastic that degrades in the landfill and poisons the water table? And not all of that oil is going to be burned; it can be turned into plastic again, say.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

What about the effect of plastic that degrades in the landfill and poisons the water table?

That's obviously not a good thing if it happens - but with many popular types of plastic (e.g. LDPE and HDPE) I don't think it actually happens. There's not much polyethylene that can turn toxic; it's just straight hydrocarbons. A big part of the objection to plastic is that it doesn't degrade. The silver lining is that that makes plastic a carbon sink.

And not all of that oil is going to be burned; it can be turned into plastic again, say.

If more than zero is burned, it increases that total amount of oil that can be burned for a given amount pumped out of the ground; and if you imagine a simplistic model where x% of all oil (from both sources) gets burned and the rest is made into plastic, all of which eventually gets turned into oil, then for any x greater than zero, all oil will eventually end up getting burned - because that's the only way oil leaves the system.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for studying this kind of invention. Having more knowledge is a good thing. But I hope it won't lead to a wonderful new era of plentiful oil, because it sure seems like we need ways to stop burning oil, not ways to be able to burn more.

Coal is a complicating factor. I wonder if we can somehow make plastic out of coal?

[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.)