New invention can turn your plastic bags into fuel at home

[The Straight Story]

New invention can turn your plastic bags into fuel at home

Plastic bags help you carry your groceries home, they make excellent liners for smaller-sized trash cans, and now they can help you to heat your home. A Japanese inventor has found a way to convert plastic grocery bags, bottles and caps into usable petroleum.

Plastic bags are, of course, made from petroleum to begin with, but it is not the same kind of petroleum that is used in fuel. In order to turn home waste into home power the machine heats up the waste plastic and traps the vapors created in a system of pipes and water chambers. Finally, the machine condenses the vapors into crude oil, that can be used for heating on the home level.

This is not the first device of this kind. A large power plant which is located just outside of Washington, D.C., is currently testing a similar process for use on the community level. This is simply the first device of this kind that is meant for use on a single-home scale.

The machines conversion process can turn two pounds of plastic into one quart of oil, using only one kilowatt-hour of energy. The crude oil produced can then either be used in a power generator or be further refined into gasoline, though one would need a second machine to complete the refining process and create gasoline.



http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-plastic-bags-fuel-home.html

[formercia]

1. It would be easier and cheaper not to make the plastic bags in the first place..

Just in time for plastic bags being outlawed.

[The Straight Story]

3. Might come in handy to recycle all the old ones

Buy one machine for a county, have people bring em in, etc

[glowing]

2. Wow.. That is pretty damn neat.

[NV Whino]

4. I'm just trying to calculate how many bags make a pound

Nice thought, but it doesn't appear to be too efficient.

[Tesha]

5. I'm unclear on why polyethylene can't be directly burned to make energy.

Long-chain alkanes should be cleanly burnable, no?
They might require a specialized burner, but why go
through the step of turning them into oil first?

Tesha

[formercia]

7. Good Point

The simplest solution is usually the best.

When I was taking Chemistry, back in the early seventies, I played around with converting scrap polyethylene back to gas using MNO2 as a catalyst.

I came to the same conclusion you did.

[Chimichurri]

6. very very cool.