make your own oil.....

[Prepper1]

Man Invents Machine To Convert Plastic Into Oil
seems a fairly simple device, maybe possible to try at home.

[River Song]

Good grief - I want one of those. Can't find it on eBay. Do you reckon I could get a 12V version?

[I-K-E]

interesting machine only looks like you can get them in adia and possible Canada and they cost a fair bit (£10K+)

would be interested in the science about how it works. From a quick look it takes about 3 hrs to process 500g. Looks like a seal air tight pressure cooker type arrangement and some temperature control to gasify the plastics back in to the oil fractions then water to condense the gas back into a liquid

very interesting though

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could be steam cracking too

[Prepper1]

Maybe worth a go on a small scale apparently it just melts the plastic, boils it and the resulting gases are caught in the water via the condensing tube and hey presto the oil floats to the surface.
I presume that its some sort of pressure container because he tightens the lid on with some big bolts like a pressure cooker....

[BDG]

Nothing different to cracking and fractional distillation. It is a bit of nonsense really. It is only worth doing if a couple of criteria are met:

1. Electricity is so cheap and oil so expensive it is economic to create temperatures of 400C (which does take a hell of a lot of energy)
2. Electricity cannot be used for the purpose the oil is being created.

It is much cheaper to run your car on the original energy, the electricity, than expending energy in the collection, transportation and cleaning of then processing plastics.

Already it is much cheaper to travel on electricity than traditional combustion and compression engine set ups.

The only way it could become economic is if we just could not get out hands on the element to create batteries and we had ran out of crude. S' gonna HTF when we run out of crude and you would just be better off weaning yourself from oil dependant technology sooner rather than later.

[Grumpy Grandpa]

A bit different but this brings it to mind - I read somewhere that during WW2, old oil was converted to glycerine. That could be useful if it could be replicated on a small scale...

Apart from looking after your hair RS, it can be used to produce ethanol and is used in the production of nitro. (Don't ask me how - I Googled it! )

[Carnebwen]

(3 June 2013, 21:53)BDG Wrote: Nothing different to cracking and fractional distillation. It is a bit of nonsense really. It is only worth doing if a couple of criteria are met:

1. Electricity is so cheap and oil so expensive it is economic to create temperatures of 400C (which does take a hell of a lot of energy)
2. Electricity cannot be used for the purpose the oil is being created.

It is much cheaper to run your car on the original energy, the electricity, than expending energy in the collection, transportation and cleaning of then processing plastics.

Like those bullshit feel good stories about some African teenage girls inventing a power source from urine then? Uses more energy than it can make and it's already invented and called a battery.