BP Partners With Plaztics-To-Fuels Company

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Following up from my older post on US Govt. position on cracking waste plastics to fuels, BP has agreed to offtake the production from just such a facility here in the US.

http://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/new...reement-with-bp

Production is small at a little over 1000 BPD but it's a start. The facility will also produce specialty waxes. Could waste plastics to lube base stocks be next around the corner?
 
That's awesome news...

(Still shake my head at the posters who consider plastic at landfill as "sequestration")
 
Glad to see that the U.S. is finally utilizing waste product for fuel rather than letting it sit in the ground.
 
Originally Posted By: RamFan
Glad to see that the U.S. is finally utilizing waste product for fuel rather than letting it sit in the ground.


Well said! Oil -> plastic -> oil with a little chemistry makes too much sense.
 
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Originally Posted By: RamFan
Glad to see that the U.S. is finally utilizing waste product for fuel rather than letting it sit in the ground.

Well said! Oil -> plastic -> oil with a little chemistry makes too much sense.

It's not "a little" chemistry, the process is thermodynamically unfavorable kind of like pig -> sausage -> pig. There will have to be a net input of energy which may come from combustion of other plastic waste.
 
There was much more energy put in to create the plastic to begin with. Olefins are scarce if present at all in crude oils made by nature (syncrudes are a different story). Steam crackers and cokers use brute force thermal cracking, no catalyst to lower activation energy or provide product selectivity. In this case it's more like sausage - pig - sausage with pyrolysis at the end step.
 
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Originally Posted By: andyd
At last, a use for old styrofoam?


Yes and more, if you follow the link in the article to the technology company's web site, there's more in-depth info on plastic numbers 1 through 7 unsorted & unwashed as well as carpets and tires used as feedstock. End residue char product could be a partial substiture for coal or coke.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Originally Posted By: RamFan
Glad to see that the U.S. is finally utilizing waste product for fuel rather than letting it sit in the ground.

Well said! Oil -> plastic -> oil with a little chemistry makes too much sense.

It's not "a little" chemistry, the process is thermodynamically unfavorable kind of like pig -> sausage -> pig. There will have to be a net input of energy which may come from combustion of other plastic waste.


Perhaps you should focus on the meaning of what I said - the importance of getting rid of excess plastic to make oil is a good thing - rather than my poetic license taken in the amount of chemistry required.

Or

If you had heard me in verbal conversation you would have understood my meaning better.


Pick one.
 
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Perhaps you should focus on the meaning of what I said - the importance of getting rid of excess plastic to make oil is a good thing - rather than my poetic license taken in the amount of chemistry required.

Or

If you had heard me in verbal conversation you would have understood my meaning better.

Pick one.

Nah, you can pick.

What I meant was that to deconstruct disparate polymers into the desired precursors (and do it in an industrial environment) with a reasonable yield is not easy.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Perhaps you should focus on the meaning of what I said - the importance of getting rid of excess plastic to make oil is a good thing - rather than my poetic license taken in the amount of chemistry required.

Or

If you had heard me in verbal conversation you would have understood my meaning better.

Pick one.

Nah, you can pick.

What I meant was that to deconstruct disparate polymers into the desired precursors (and do it in an industrial environment) with a reasonable yield is not easy.


No harm no foul then ...

Agreed...it takes energy and know how to crack long carbon chains to shorter, or to combine shorter chains to make longer. I have been accused of oversimplifying in the past....
 
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Originally Posted By: JLTD
Originally Posted By: RamFan
Glad to see that the U.S. is finally utilizing waste product for fuel rather than letting it sit in the ground.

Well said! Oil -> plastic -> oil with a little chemistry makes too much sense.

It's not "a little" chemistry, the process is thermodynamically unfavorable kind of like pig -> sausage -> pig. There will have to be a net input of energy which may come from combustion of other plastic waste.


Perhaps you should focus on the meaning of what I said - the importance of getting rid of excess plastic to make oil is a good thing - rather than my poetic license taken in the amount of chemistry required.

Or

If you had heard me in verbal conversation you would have understood my meaning better.


Pick one.


None of the above.

The polymers are assembled from monomers derived from brute force thermal cracking of crude oils & NGLs (sausage) along with some production from fluidized catalytic cracking units (FCCU's).

Assembly of the monomers into specific polymers followed by molding those polymers into desired shapes / thicknesses, etc. requiting plenty enery (pig)

Pyrolosis for thermal decomposition of poymers into char residue and petrolem /petrochemical mixture (sausage).

No more seperation science nor energy is required gor recovery from pyrolysis than yhe initial fractionation of crude oils & NGL's, with ptoper cuts then bein routed to conversion units (steam crackers, cokers, FCCU's) which then have their own fractionation trains. It's actually likely less.

I do have over 2 decades first-hand experience with such -how about you? Your profile's a ghost.
 
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I'm just wondering if to feed this process reliably they are going to 'mine' plastics out of landfills, or just start diverting non-recyclable plastics from the recycling stream.

If we found an economical way to 'mine' all the plastic that has been thrown away over the decades, we'd basically have an endless feedstock source.
 
The problem really is that we have too much plastic waste, too contaminated to be recycled profitably.

If we can burn them clean (i.e. high temp burner so no dioxin is created, and flue gas scrubbed) it would be fine. Turning them into fuel is good too. I think most of those feed stock would be free from trash pickup, and reduced cleanup cost from dumping.

I'm waiting for the day when we can easily recycle plastic trash into more valuable products, like wood substitute for construction (fiber enhanced 2x4 made out of recycled plastic?), or MDF like board for IKEA furniture.
 
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