Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Recycling Plastics To Create Plastic Pyrolysis Oil

By Yesenia Velez


As landfills begin to grow, and space grows more scarce, new solutions must be found to combat the problems of consumer culture. Unfortunately plastic containers are easy and cheap for manufacturers to use and it is unlikely they will reduce their use of it significantly. However, science is finding ways to create use for discarded packaging by turning it into plastic pyrolysis oil.

Plastic can be found in nearly all mass manufactured goods in various forms marked with complicated abbreviations. Walking into any grocery chain, it would be difficult to walk a few feet without running into multiple products using it in their packaging. Small bags of candy are placed in a larger bag to hold the small bags. Produce is packaged in PETE 1 containers. As shoppers leave their products are bagged in HDPE2 grocery bags. When these consumers are done with products they place their garbage in cans lined with more bags. So all of this garbage ends up at the local landfill.

It's true that some recyclable material does end up in recycling centers, but not all of it. Many people think recycling is too much trouble. Some are confused by all the numbers and don't know what items they can recycle. Then there are people are willing to recycle but can't because there are no recycling programs in their town or city. For all these reasons, much recyclable material ends up at the local dump.

When recyclables do arrive at recycling centers they must than be sorted. Not all centers can recycle everything. In fact, when it comes to plastics, many centers only take 1 and 2. So a lot of what gets picked up and looked through is not able to be used. So while recycling should be encouraged, it takes a lot of work and can be inefficient.

Happily, modern technology has found a way to create fuel to power machines from discarded plastic. So this discarded material is being used to run machines. And it's all made possible through pyrolysis.

When a material is heated at a high enough temperature it decomposes. This process is called pyrolysis and it's byproducts include carbon, oil and gas. Plastics and tires are two popular materials being used in pyrolization but scientists are discovering ways of pyrolizing many other materials as well. Pyrolysis allows conservation of all material by not exposing it directly to flames but surrounding it with heat.

In order to pyrolize any material, it is first chopped or shredded into a manageable size and then fed into a pyrolizer. The pyrolizer then heats the material. Each pyrolizer is made to pyrolize a specific material efficiently. Each will be set for a specific heat and leave room for the material to expand as it gets hotter. The heat that is dissipated is very clean.

Although it would be foolish to downplay the importance of recycling, it's not enough to take care of the large amount of waste being produced. The future of energy and waste management may be pyrolysis. It creates usable materials and no waste. plastic pyrolysis oil is a very usable product that is created out of what people are just throwing away.




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1 comment:

  1. Pyrolysis oil is a synthetically made oil that is making great progress in replacing petroleum based products.

    Plastics Pyrolysis Oil

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