New technology converts waste plastics to jet fuel in an hour

If that’s true and if it’s economically viable then this is breaking news.

I guess the Q is how much energy it takes. One can make lot of things out of lots of things, if you put in enough energy (and money)

Peter wrote:

I guess the Q is how much energy it takes.

This is one of the major questions, indeed – the other question is how suitable the technology is for real life application and scaling. Biggest challenge in all processes for waste management esp. if they use catalysts is how well they cope with contamination. It is one thing to design a laboratory process that can convert 100% chemically pure polyethylene to something. It is something completely different if this polyethylene is contaminated with fat, yoghurt, paper, printing ink, … which you can not avoid in real life waste management applications (despite in a small fraction like production waste). Starts with the fact that they need to heat it to 220C to start the process – real life waste might catch fire at this temperature already…

They say an hour at 220 deg C. What you get is hydrocarbons of the same, or lower (heavier), quality that the plastic was made of in the first place, and this needs to be refined in the normal way before it can actually be used. Still, using all that waste plastic for something useful must be a good thing.

This process is for PET recycling. There are already today lots of high quality products being made out of recycled PET. Switzerland recycles 82 % of its PET (2018 figures). What you need is a good infrastructure for collecting PET separately from other plastics and a populace that is mildly intelligent to differentiate between PET and other plastics, and interested in protecting the environment. Also the alibi collection systems for all kinds of package waste which other countries are running (eg Gruener Punkt in Germany) are actually a barrier to entry for a good PET collection system.

Interestingly enough that good overall recycling result didn’t stop our greens from demanding a depot on plastic bottles, which would have forced people to bring back bottles to shops instead of dropping them into one of the 56000 containers you can find all over the country. Luckily some people recognized that their initiative was pure virtue signaling.

Rwy20 wrote:

Also the alibi collection systems for all kinds of package waste which other countries are running (eg Gruener Punkt in Germany) are actually a barrier to entry for a good PET collection system.

Great story, but not true!

In Germany more than 90% of PET bottles are collected (423 about of 467 kt, 2019 numbers) through a deposit system – and greener Punkt is pretty effective to capture the remaining 10%.
In total 98% of PET bottles in Germany are collected in the recycling system. Guess that does indeed qualify as a “good PET collecting system”.

I always thought the German system of bottles with a “pfand(?)” Was a good recycling system. Costly environmentally in other ways perhaps, but good nonetheless. It is my view that most educated people want to “do their bit” and will try to recycle if given the opportunity to do so. I feel that recycling is one area where the EU could have taken the lead and mandated a simple colour/symbol system for different packaging and products that was uniform with bin colour/symbol. Right now this stuff isnt even unifirm within one county/department/region, let alone across one country!!

skydriller wrote:

I always thought the German system of bottles with a “pfand(?)” Was a good recycling system.

We have the same system in Norway, and have had it as long as I can remember. As a kid we used to find bottles and exchange them for money. It has changed lately. It used to be glass bottles only. Then plastic bottles started to appear, but they couldn’t be used. This has changed. Today only cans and plastic bottles can be used Glass bottles has to be thrown in containers, no money back.