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Why are countries being so stupid about plastic trash and recycling?

Vashon

Active member
Banned


Australia isn't the only, but they are incinerating this stuff. They are are spending more energy treating it like fire wood than it takes to convert the majority of the mass into usable fuel and hydrocarbon stock.


The small 1-gallon continuously charged reactor was assembled and operated for several months, gathering data for scaling up the process. It was charged with 100 g of plastic every 5 minutes. Over 44 runs, the reactor processed shredded waste plastics including food waste packaging, agricultural film, and shredded gas tanks as well as high density polyethylene regrind in some runs to establish ideal conditions. The low boilers (methane, ethane, butane, propane, and hydrogen) were analysed with a gas chromatograph (CG) and quantified. The resulting fuels underwent typical petroleum tests including automatic distillation and flash and pour point evaluation. The fuel output consisted of a diesel/naphtha mix. GC testing showed a total absence of wax-like hydrocarbon chains in the C20-C60 range. Additionally hydrocarbon production was predominantly in the C13 diesel range

If you want an explanation of this and what it means on a smaller scale,
its a guy treating plastic the same way some people were treating used cooking oil in the mid 2000s, as free fuel stock.

There seems to be 6 billion metric tons of plastic waste that has been produced and is around somewhere, in landfills or piles of trash. Thats 40 billion barrels of crude oil derivatives. Or around five years of total US consumption. Thats a lot of material that isn't being reclaimed, and lazy morons are trying to incinerate away.
 
Its cheap as shit though. Like it comes out to under 1$ a gallon for the diesel you get, then theres the other stuff too. And it scales up and down very well. You could literally fuel all the garbage trucks off of the diesel and natural gas produced, with naptha left over.
 
You said it.

Lazy.
Actually, not all plastics can be recycled (that is why there used to be different types of plastic recycle bins, each family of plastics requires different methods to recycle). So unless you've got a literal creation engine (basically a nano-fabber) stuck up your ass, a lot of the plastic is going to be either burned or in landfills.
 
Actually, not all plastics can be recycled (that is why there used to be different types of plastic recycle bins, each family of plastics requires different methods to recycle). So unless you've got a literal creation engine (basically a nano-fabber) stuck up your ass, a lot of the plastic is going to be either burned or in landfills.
Ok cool. Find the plastic that thermal depolymerization doesn't work on.
 
Ok cool. Find the plastic that thermal depolymerization doesn't work on.
What I think they mean is that it isn't cost effective in our capitalist system to try to recycle it. Perhaps you should try a command economy instead to remove the financial incentive to fuck the planet for a few % more on the quarterly earnings report.
 
What I think they mean is that it isn't cost effective in our capitalist system to try to recycle it. Perhaps you should try a command economy instead to remove the financial incentive to fuck the planet for a few % more on the quarterly earnings report.
Yes because command economies have done so well before...
 
What I think they mean is that it isn't cost effective in our capitalist system to try to recycle it. Perhaps you should try a command economy instead to remove the financial incentive to fuck the planet for a few % more on the quarterly earnings report.
The main cost is gathering up all the material, separate from other stuff. The processing itself is extremely cost effective, the only issue being is toxic exhaust, which is an isue with refineries as well.
 
What you are seeing an example of, I think, is government policy-makers not understanding how new technologies can change the game. They simply don't know that something currently seem as useless waste is potentially a raw material - let alone that the market for it is almost there.

Or maybe they don't want to turn plastic trash into gasoline because "hydrocarbon fuels baaad".
 
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