technology New Machine can convert plastic back to oil

[Moss 95]

This happend years ago, but is still pretty cool.Scientists in Japan have successfully managed to convert plastic into oil with a machine that heats it up, then collects the gasses which are cooled down with water,or something along those lines.The oil is usable right off the bat, but can be further refined.Great stuff.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGGabrorRS8#t=

 

Edit:It seems to skip for me,but if it does, just watch from the start.And I Can't embed to save my life :l, so if somebody would be kind enough to embed it, then i would be greatful.

Edited August 23, 2013 by MOSFETv2

[Planty 1,052]

This looks super cool, but surely there has to be a drawback?

 

Like it must be pretty energy hungry otherwise we should role this out and do it for all the non biodegradable stuff !

[Scootalove 10,685]

That sounds like a wonderful scientific breakthrough when it comes it converting another substance to make another. Well done, Japan.

[MichaelxXxTrixie 433]

This is an excellent solution, Japan always does great in this field of research. Now we can have more of a drive to clean up and collect plastic.

[aoEAF2FBvC0MIo2Q 3,671]

There's also this Canadian company doing the same thing by John Bordynuik.

 

 

Suppose the reason why we're not seeing too much of this technology out there is that industries need time to grow. Though somewhere I wonder if this really is a viable thing to do on a large scale or if it's better as a small-scale technology. A similar question I have with biofuels in general. As an industry, I'm not too sure how it would fare since room for growth is very limited but such a technology would be lucrative to have in the household as it could be very close to a dream when doing the housekeeping as not only does it get rid of some of the trash for you, it also makes trips to the pump less frequent.

[NavelColt 22,877]

This looks super cool, but surely there has to be a drawback?

 

Like it must be pretty energy hungry otherwise we should role this out and do it for all the non biodegradable stuff !

 

This is an excellent solution, Japan always does great in this field of research. Now we can have more of a drive to clean up and collect plastic.

 

The drawback being that it's promoting the extended use of fossil fuels, which is just going to continue worsening global warming :3

[Pixelated_Puffin 12]

We should take all the plastic in the Pacific Ocean

And turn it into an island!!

My math says it should only take about 500 years :3 ...

Maybe turning it into oil is a better idea

[GhostPony750 958]

Great thing, but this must be quite expensive to produce. But well, it's a great way to get rid of plastic parts, like Toyotas.

 

They will always find a way to produce fuels, which is a good new.

[Fhaolan 4,468]

I remember dealing with this kind of stuff when I was a Chemical Engineer. The main drawback is that the energy used in this process vastly outweighs the value of the recycling. It will get better as they figure out additional tricks and techniques, but at the moment it's not viable.

 

It's the same reason why 60% of the stuff you put into recycling actually ends up in the dump anyway. It's technically possible to recycle all of it, but there aren't enough recycling plants and the cost of actually doing the recycling processes is a lot higher than you'd want. It's getting better all the time, but it's got a long way to go.