Description of Challenge
Plastic waste. Oceanic plastic gyre. Recycling.A Gaia University graduates explored a pyrolytic thermal depolymerization process as a potential solution for the Pacific plastics gyre. The desktop unit he explored uses 1 kilowatt of electricity to convert 1 kilogram of plastic into 1 liter of oil, at a cost of around US $0.25.
Solution
One of the Gaia University graduates who was a co-founder of Surfers Without Borders began exploring this pyrolytic thermal depolymerization process as a potential solution for the Pacific plastics gyre. The desktop unit he explored uses 1 kilowatt of electricity to convert 1 kilogram of plastic into 1 liter of oil, at a cost of around US $0.25 (see first link).
Working under the auspices of Global Village Technology, they looked into starting a pilot depolymerization project as part of their financial permaculture and transition towns efforts in Mexico in 2012. Some of the barriers they came up against are that it has not yet been commercialised for small scale, prototypes were expensive and unreliable, and the remaining fraction of unusable, unconvertible gaseous ‘waste’ was toxic and difficult to deal with in concentrated form. There are larger plants operating in Japan, however, using scrubbers to isolate the toxins for disposal (see second link)
A Piedmont Biofuels coop in North Carolina was relatively profitable until recently (when the cost of ingredients spiked and federal subsidies were withdrawn from biofuels leaving fossil subsidies intact), was looking into plastics feedstocks that could replaced recycled cooking oil (see third link).
WU is a similar scale running in Switzerland — 50 kg/hr. His conclusion also was that it is an immature technology that will take a period of development and investment to become viable. Still, it will likely happen in the not distant future, barring financial collapse the global economy. It can substitute for both diesel and natural gas.
