Plastic waste is an untapped energy source

Pyrolysis fractional distillation is a simple chemical process which converts plastic trash into petrol, diesel, and pure carbon.

Ever since the throw-away culture took root in the 1970s with disposable plastic products, our world's land and water systems have been increasingly polluted by what most believe to be an imperishable and useless waste material. There has not been a popular or sustainable incentive structure in place to motivate its cleanup. It's the tragedy of our time, a point of sadness for many, but with knowledge, we have the power to transmute unfavorable circumstances into new ones that benefit us all.

A chemical process called pyrolysis fractional distillation can be used to turn waste plastic into synthetic crude oil, and distill that crude oil into chemical potential energy in the form of petrol, diesel, and carbon black.

Pyrolysis is the process of thermal decomposition under elevated temperatures, at which combustible gases escape the carbon formations of the material they were previously contained in. It is as old as human history and is the same process involved in charring wood in a campfire. The Aztecs likely used pyrolysis to turn wood into carbon and then mixed this carbon nitrogen rich fertilizer (probably urine) to create biochar. Biochar is a key ingredient of Terra Preta, which the Aztec´s used to make farmland more abundantly fertile than we would naturally expect in the Amazon region. Humans have a longstanding history with pyrolysis.

Fractional distillation, while we all have much less direct exposure to it than pyrolysis, is a more familiar term and more often addressed in public education. Fractional distillation utilizes heat and the varying sizes of molecular hydrocarbon chains to separate various types of fuel from crude oil. Petrol, methane, diesel, jet fuel, lubricating oils, and tar (used in paving roads) are all various forms of hydrocarbons derived from the natural resource crude oil. The industrial world is built upon fractional distillation, and most of our technology would not function without it.

Pyrolysis fractional distillation is the marriage of these two processes. Firstly, plastic is loaded into an reaction chamber and heated to around 400 degrees Celsius. The reaction is optimized if the plastic is shredded in advance due to an increase in surface area, and decrease in volume of air in the chamber.

Pyrolysis is optimal in inert atmospheres because oxygen with sufficient heat and a fuel source causes combustion. We do not want combustion of the carbon structure, nor the various gases that escape from it during thermal decomposition, because in that case, the products we would yield would be ash, wasted thermal energy, and a great deal of pollution - we would be burning plastic and committing a violent environmental crime. We want to turn plastic into crude oil and carbon black; therefore, we must deprive the reaction chamber of oxygen. Therefore, heat is applied to the chamber from the outside.

More advanced pyrolysis machines pump argon gas or CO2 into the reaction chamber prior to heating to displace any remaining oxygen. This further minimizes combustion during the reaction process and eliminates toxic pollutant by-products.

Once thermal decomposition is accomplished, synthetic crude oil in the form of gas rises vertically to escape the carbon structure of the plastic. This leaves behind pure carbon as a by-product in the reaction chamber. Carbon black has a wide range of applications as a material, including as a combustible energy source (coal).

Next, the synthetic crude oil (still in gas form) rises through a chimney collection and is condensed into liquid crude oil as it passes through a radiator. Some of the hydrocarbon chains are too short to condense into a liquid and remain in gas form. These are a combination of combustible gases like propane and methane. We can collect them in balloons and put them through a compressor to fill propane tanks, or we can combust these volatile gases immediately to further heat the reaction chamber and improve the energy efficiency of the machine.

After passing through the radiator and capturing or burning off volatile gases, we collect the stable liquid crude oil in a collection chamber. After which, we apply fractional distillation, heating the crude oil to raise its energetic state and separate the hydrocarbon chains in a tank, such that heavier (longer) chains of hydrocarbons gather at the bottom, and lighter (shorter) chains rise to the top. From there, we simply siphon out the various liquids at their different heights in the distillation chamber, and store them in tanks containing isolated variations of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels.

I hope that this brief posting has raised your interest in pyrolysis fractional distillation. While I have barely scraped the surface here, there are innovators all over the world working with this technology to solve a multidimensional issue, and I, for one, feel a little more hopeful about the future because of these organizations and individuals. Below, I have included a collection of videos that I thoroughly enjoyed watching during my time researching this subject.

Blessings,

-Lluvias Trozzi Newman