[naturejab] shows off his solar powered pyrolysis machine which can convert scrap plastic into fuel. According to the video, this is the world’s most complex hand-made pyrolysis reactor ever made. We will give him some wiggle room there around “complex” and “hand-made”, because whatever else you have to say about it this machine is incredibly cool!
As you may know pyrolysis is a process wherein heat is applied to organic material in an inert environment (such as a vacuum) which causes the separation of its covalent bonds thereby causing it to decompose. In this case we decompose scrap plastic into what it was made from: natural gas and petroleum.
His facility is one hundred percent solar powered. The battery is a 100 kWh Komodo commercial power tank. He has in the order of twenty solar power panels laying in the grass behind the facility giving him eight or nine kilowatts. The first step in using the machine, after turning it on, is to load scrap plastic into it; this is done by means of a vacuum pump attached to a large flexible tube. The plastic gets pumped through the top chamber into the bottom chamber, which contains blades that help move the plastic through it. The two chambers are isolated by a valve — operating it allows either chamber to be pumped down to vacuum independently.
Once the plastic is in the main vacuum chamber, the eight active magnetrons — the same type of device you’d find in your typical microwave oven — begin to break down the plastic. As there’s no air in the vacuum chamber, the plastic won’t catch fire when it gets hot. Instead it melts, returning to petroleum and natural gas vapor which it was made from. Eventually the resultant vapor flows through a dephlegmator cooling into crude oil and natural gas which are stored separately for later use and further processing.
If you’re interested in pyrolysis you might like to read Methane Pyrolysis: Producing Green Hydrogen Without Carbon Emissions.
Although before solar power was as popular as it is today, the same process was on the go quite a few years before:
https://www.2oceansvibe.com/2013/04/16/cape-town-inventor-william-graham-invents-incredible-plastic-to-fuel-converter/
https://allianceearth.org/pops-turns-plastic-trash-power/
The vertical videos wouldn’t be that bad if they were centered in the column and about 50% bigger.
I think the vertical video trend has unfortunately increased, formerly due to stupid people who didn’t realize they could and should record the preferable in most cases 16:9 video format just by simply turning their phone 90 degrees, because it’s now the standard format of YouTube shorts and Tik Tok content.
It’s because you hold your phone upright, and the shorts are content made to be viewed on the phone.
No no no it was Apple and iPhone users telling the rest of the world they couldnt understand how seeing 50% of the video with the actual context blurred out was actually better. I think if you dig even a little bit you will find this godawful mess has been going on for a while and probably wont go away now that the world has gone full retard. Much like hover menus that cover the entire page and having to close 4 different “help” chat boxes just to see an air fryer recipe… Our best bet is to hem this in with AI. Tell it those videos are unacceptable references due to half of the info being missing. I am working on a similar project with wiki fandom and its ad placed web scraper ass. Generates zero content and instead scrapes known resources and reposts crap with ads everywhere in case you arent hip to it. I just put a block on tiktok videos. I just look at the stills and can tell it is a glory show about the influencer and not the actual item. Most sit in their cars reading bullet point printouts from amazon which is incredibly sad and somehow very correct as to their role in society. Zero shits given and sweaty profits for days. Youtube shorts get a similar treatment thanks to a couple of cleverly placed adblocks. Anyway, just glad I got to live through the useful part of the internet for a while.
TL;DR, please take your meds.
These people never owned a camera much less seen one so they wont know to flip their phone 90deg.
You know people used to hold their cameras at 90 degrees to make portrait shots right?
And before the rectangle photo, many of them printed out a square aspect ratio.
Or just maybe these people are producing content for those without computers who and only consume content on their phones.
Man who cares about those chumps
It’s really down to the poor ergonomics of holding the thing with one hand and securely as well. Taking proper shots with one hand is clumsy and dangerous lest the phone fall out of fingers holding it by the edge and trying to get one of those fingers to hit the button to shoot. Two hands can do it but it’s still risky, better button placement and safe screen edges would help.
Maybe I’m missing something but is there a write up of this project anywhere or this just a summary of a YouTube short and its transcript? Would love to know more about this project but all I see is an erratic run through and links to products used.
It looks like some local Gyro Gearloose from Chicago who’s trying to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel for “free energy”. From their youtube channel, it looks like the guy was experimenting in his garage trying to pyrolyse various stuff into fuel, and then got a $100k grant to build the big reactor.
You don’t usually get much in the way of reporting from these guys. They’re busy inventing and quite protective about their stuff.
Gyro Gearloose… man that’s a stumble way down memory lane.
The entire channel is “DIY plastic to fuel free energy” themed.
Also, “don’t watch prawn” kind of zealotry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upAo_S_PbQc 🤡
My bullshit detector goes off the scale on that one.
Also, after searching for “Julian Brown” I’m starting to get serious TempleOS vibes:
I think he needs help, not funding.
I was thinking a budding Doc Brown character. Maybe we’ll get some time travel out of this?
I’ve been following him for years and he really is onto something. What’s novel is his use of microwave magnetrons, which seems to me to be more efficient. He’s not the first to do it, but he’s making it popular.
His two downfalls are 1.) He doesn’t detail how it works so you can reproduce it 2.) He doesn’t perform rigorous testing showing efficiency or waste byproducts.
I want to know how to build one even if it’s less efficient because I am a prepper and this could be quite useful post-apocalypse, even if it’s less efficient is less efficient and even if there are toxic byproducts. I’ve told him several times, please sell plans. Waiting and watching.
Or 3.) there’s no real estimation of cost per gallon of fuel.
One curious thing that happens when you start scaling things up beyond demonstration quantities, you have to start paying people to operate the machinery and the logistics, and you have to start paying people to bring you the waste plastic and carry the toxic wastes away to safe disposal.
Even if you are considering the process as a “prepper”, it’s worth noting that you don’t want to accumulate piles and piles of carcinogenic waste in your own back yard, or even in your own town, because it kinda hurts your long term survival prospects.
Enshittification strikes again (and again and again). I’d be wholly unsurprised if the article itself was an AI summary of an AI synopsis of an AI edited short on everyone’s favourite AI filled video platform. Yaaaaay for us.
Absolutely a hack.
This guy is poisoning himself with super carcinogenic compounds which is why plastic pyrolyisis doesnt work.
This is TRL-3-5, design not reliable for scaling up, not economical. Plenty of surprise with clogging, paraffin etc….toxic residues, non convertible fillers etc…
Net energy balance?
Deeply negative. A microwave magnetron is about 50% efficient so he’s wasting a ton of energy heating the plastic, but he’s not counting his losses because it’s “free” from the solar panels.
There’s nothing wrong with this approach. He’s using equipment that’s cheap and easily repurposed to prove a concept. You only care about efficiency when you’re looking to scale up and expand the project beyond a hobby or proof of concept.
There’s a lot wrong with this approach when you can just burn the plastic and scrub the exhaust gases and be energy-positive fairly easily. But steam turbines in power plants don’t get clicks.
That depends. Do you want electricity or hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are easier to store for latter use than electricity at large scale and also much lower mass per unit of energy.
Plus a gas burners is easier to make than an electric one. But again it all depends on use case.
Scrubbing the exhaust ‘gases’ isn’t exactly a trivial undertaking, and to actually burn waste in a safe energy positive way tends to be rather tricky when the waste isn’t well sorted as the burner setup to be efficient and complete combustion kinda needs to be designed around the intended fuel. Or you end up pumping in lots of refined fuel and air to make sure the heat remains high enough the heavier stuff should break down enough to burn at least a bit. Technically energy positive, but economically or environmentally worth it is rather more debatable.
This approach on the other hand has the potential to turn waste into useful feed stock for new plastics, or on demand refined energy you can burn relatively safely anywhere etc.
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive by any means, both approaches have some merits.
Plastic incineration for energy is a science.
Been done for decades in some of the most ‘sniff their own farts’ nations on earth.
As Foldi says, you can’t burn pure plastic, but you don’t have to.
The analysis isn’t complicated.
The first three exist, but in different enough places to make comparisons tricky.
Control case: Plastic is mostly sorted for theater, then landfilled, new fuel is burnt.
Control case2: Plastic is washed down rivers with other trash, new fuel is burnt.
Control case3: Mixed waste, including plastic, plus gas is used as fuel for power, waste handled with augers. Less new fuel is burnt. New plastic is made from fuel. Bad burning plastics banned.
Proposed case: Plastic is turned into toxic liquid/gas sludge at great cost. Figuring out how to burn it is ‘someone else’s problem’. Energy cost is ‘arm waved’ away by pointing at solar panels. Six figure government grant was the point.
Work the comparison using ‘tons of CO2’ if you prefer.
Same answer as $, as usual.
Also ‘Danger Will Robinson!’:
Fire and explosion risk in neighborhood.
Zoned for chemical plant?
Shades of radioactive boy scout.
Not as smart as he thinks he is, but who was at that age?
Also:
Schitzos lose an average of 1 IQ point per episode.
Is real physical disease.
Often start very smart, but after years of being off meds, they remember being smart, remember language of smart.
But dumb AF now.
e.g. Unibomber. Manifesto disorganized mess that could only fool an even dumber reporter.
e.g2. TempleOS dude.
Perhaps this guy?
Important he stay on meds.
So, it’s a WW2 Holzgas technology, but with plastic and microwave oven parts? Wow.
“In Germany, around 500,000 gas powered vehicles were in use at the end of the war due to the lack of petroleum.”
They even had Tiger tanks running on holzgas and LPG
https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/nazi_germany/gas-powered-fahrschulwanne-tanks.php
Imagine the carcinogens! I’d stick with the holzgas!
Sounds like a recipe for toxic dioxines.
I was fully expecting any criticism to be quickly deleted in the comments section..
I’ll go against the grain and say if you scaled this work the world would be better for it..
It already has been scaled up. Resynergi, has a microwave pyrolysis facility in Rohnert Park (near the East Bay; SF Bay area).
An article, I read, said this plastic sourced fuel is worse for the environment than burning bunker fuel. Both because it is such an energy intensive process to make it, and the combustion products are terribly polluting. Makes sense, PFOA, flame retardants and all kinds of other toxic nasties in the source plastic.
So, world probably not better for it.
And how many toxic nasties are in crude oil!
If the products of that location are ‘terribly polluting’ it implies nothing more than a lack of refinement in the final products, or oil lobbyist working hard to protect their money maker with false equivalents or something. In fairness it being bad wouldn’t be a shocker – the scale of oil refining is always a huge volume probably several orders of magnitude higher, which makes it so much easier to do the job economically.
Energy intensive it certainly always will be – but it is at least in theory a clean way of turning darn nearly forever waste we are creating ever bigger mountains of into good raw feedstock for many things including fuel. Which will when you get around to burning it somewhat offset the energy intensive process required to produce it by doing useful work on demand – and if you ever look at the energy expended extracting and shipping oil products around that isn’t a new problem either! So if you are creating this stuff strictly with its own solar generators or excess grid power due to a solar/wind excess event then the energy intensity to make it becomes almost irrelevant.
So yeah get this concept to work well and scale up and then the world will absolutely be better off for it, a mountain of waste being recycled into raw feed stock of the sorts that have become almost foundationally essential, and all effectively for free (at least if the power source is the excess spikes of renewable energy, otherwise just for very little cost).
No, crude oil isn’t full of PFOA or other incredibly nasty additives that are literally made from oil. If they were in the oil, we wouldn’t have to make them.
It is full of many nasties, they can be different ones and some of the same but in different concentrations to the ones you’d get in from using already refined plastic as the feedstock, but crude oil is full of shit you don’t want in it!
Crude oil has sulfur and heavy metals, but those are removed. The point is that we refine oil to get rid of them.
What we add to plastics is chlorine and fluorine, bromine, etc. in forms that aren’t easily disintegrated by low grade heating, because they are incredibly strong bonds, which is the reason why we use them. The problem is that such chemicals are passed through to the resulting fuel, which means your “plastidiesel” car is now pushing out teflon fumes, or, the materials are concentrated in the waste stream of the plant and not adequately handled.
Indeed, though that waste stream if you do it properly shouldn’t actually be a problem – as we actually want to introduce that ‘toxic waste’ into the new plastics, and here they already are! So it shouldn’t be a deal breaker for this style of recycling if you can do it right – by its nature you should be effectively creating at worst a slightly dubious mix of highly concentrated additive rich plastic like sludge that will be good enough for mixing into highly refined hydro-carbons thus creating still high quality new plastics suitable for most things.
Hopefully it’d be better than that and really close the loop enough that while you might well still burn some of the pure enough to be safe useable as fuel outputs the plastics you’d get out are functionally exactly what you wished them to be. After all huge mountains of plastic waste already so a closed loop won’t actually really solve that problem unless you can find good ‘forever’ uses of the mountain you process. Where cutting down on fresh extraction of hydrocarbons as you are using up the waste instead will eventually turn that mountain into a closed cycle of useful plastics and very eventually lots of biomass that used up the CO2 from burning it.
I don’t really care about the tech, but I find it hilarious how enraged people are that guy got a mention..
Normally here criticism to something like this gets insta-deleted.. Something about this guy makes people forget their posturing..
Dephlegmator? Why use such a ridiculous term that nobody else uses? I’m a chemist and this is just a fancy word for a reflux condenser. Just one of many things that smells like the usual BS here
Sounds like the guy made up the name himself, likely because with no formal training he has no idea what the rest of the world has already made, and named. The core issue of “self taught” tends to be those gaps. Hence reinventing things, like here.
Too bad they never self teach using Google and/or a library.
Old:
‘Two years in the lab can save you fifteen minutes at the library!’
Except he didnt make it up, The term was first used in the 1820s by Samuel Frederick Gray to describe an apparatus for separating components of a vapor by partial condensation.
Despite Jacobs assertion that nobody uses the term, Its quite commonly used by alcohol distillers.
https://tinyurl.com/3s6j34jc
https://tinyurl.com/2a4j4vd6
https://tinyurl.com/5n8xxp8d
https://tinyurl.com/3xwh7dp2
Today I learned… “dephlegmator” edition.
I think it is great that people are enthusiastic and try to apply old ideas to new(ish) problems. Maybe this is viable to handle plastics and get some usable fuel out of it? Maybe small scale plants make sense?
But the video (and likely the project) is still missing the serious discussion about “should we”.
Toxins and waste? Do flame retardants, colors get broken down or will they be left in the chamber? Should you BBQ with the generated gas? (I guess you might need to scrub the chamber every few days and discard some nasty toxic stuff? Better not to put food on a gas fire)
What is the energy balance? How much electricity for fuel? Even with solar, it is not free. Comparison to direct burning of the plastics? (I suspect you put in a lot of power per usable fuel)
Capex? From the last build they should know how much it cost, how much the next one would cost (including the PV and batteries, maybe some more safety, minus the learnings). How much plastic can you turn into fuel? (I suspect if the plant is 100k, then it will never recoup the investment)
There’s a reason these are old tech that no-one uses. Indeed, several reasons, and you’ve cover most of them.
The guy who made this is named Julian Brown aka Naturejab, and he has tons of videos online of him making and running this machine and converting plastic waste into various fuels and crude oil. Check him out on discord and Facebook.
This is not The First! Akinori Ito has been doing this for over 10 years now with a much more compact, energy efficient, and safer design. Even 10 years ago he had a better design than this guy in this report. I’m glad he’s trying help recycle trash waste, but this is not new tech, and this man is not some grand pioneer.
Maybe it’s one of his small innovations that will end up going into the scaled up, cleaner, more efficient setups that then improves the world. It doesn’t have to be all at once.
There is some company trying to make such plant in Denmark.
https://www.makeenenergy.com/products-solutions/plastic-waste-recycling/about-plastcon
From a perspective, this plastic is trapped carbon, even if it is plastic and polluting by nature, this is still sequestrated carbon…
Is this such a rejoice to free up that sequestrated carbon in the atmosphere? I would agree to transform it into something more neutral to nature, but into fuel? Come on…
Theres nothing new about what he is doing here, plus the outputs are full of carcinogens. If he really wants to “change the world” he should figure out how to remove those chemicals from his fuel. I really dont get the hype over this. He already nearly killed himself once and yall are encouraging it!
When I saw the words “solar” and “pyrolysis” together, I was expecting direct concentrating solar thermal, by way of mirrors. Not PV, batteries, and magnetrons. Surely that would cut out some efficiency losses, even if it can’t run 24/7?
Indeed, that was where my mind went too – no doubt using the solar energy to generate some electric too, as the process really wants some automation for thermal control, no doubt a few motors etc and thus electronic brains as well.
But I’m not disappointed it is not either, as this concept is rather more controllable and reliable – you might not get as many process cycles on a good day, but building up energy across the bad days means you’ll still get some reliable cycles.
What does disappoint is how vague and unfinished the process is – I’m not sure I’d even call this stage a minimum viable product, its more a minimum viable demonstration of some methods that could become part of a final product/process.