[Stoves] Distilled thinking on oil from plastic wastes --- from Japan...

[Bryce L Nordgren]

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 4:17 PM, Richard Stanley
<rstanley at legacyfound.org>wrote:

> Have you all seen this : Whats going on here "under the hood": A still ,
> really is it just a simple still? .
> Hmm, new work for moonshiners or  the 'Pewa makers' in East Africa and same
> for every other nation that has any history of local moonshine making.
>
>
This video set me to googling. It's just dry pyrolysis.

You can buy a complete plant if you want: (In the US:
http://www.polymerenergy.com/; In europe:
http://207.57.92.209/wordpress/?page_id=7) Ozmotech's claim to fame is that
they spent a couple of years making the resultant oil suitable for
on-the-road use in 1st world environments. Like gasification, it sounds like
something which is trivially easy to accomplish in rough form, but very
tricky to do correctly.

If water/steam is added to the pyrolysis mix, there is a variant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization

If you take the numbers from the table "Average TDP Feedstock
Outputs<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization#cite_note-7>"
TDP would seem to produce 70% oil, 16% gasses, 6% solids, and 8% steam. No
idea what is produced from dry pyrolysis. Probably depends on the conditions
of pyrolysis.

This guy's gizmo seems like it may be a good fit for village level
plastic-to-energy, particularly in places that mainly use the oil for
generators or are not encumbered by 1st world environmental regulations. The
big question is: is it affordable to the people who can make use of it?
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