Comments on: New Envion Facility Turns Plastic Waste into $10/Barrel Fuel

By: Mark Zhang

Mark Zhang — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:19:00 +0000

very good idea, we can provide waste plastic pyrolysis plant that can produce the oil. http://www.pyrolysisoil.net

By: ldavis

ldavis — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:46:31 +0000

This is Awesome! Recently I saw some pieces on shows like CNN and the journal with Joan Lunden on PBS that were talking about issues and solutions for industrial recycling. This kind of thing takes it to the next level. Of course it’s not as good as eliminating oil altogether but it will help get rid of some of the waste for now. I hope they do well.

By: Ladyapalot

Ladyapalot — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:33:23 +0000

Save three birds with one stone, clean up the landfills, reduce our carbon footprint, and pull the rug out from under OPEC. A dream come true? …sigh

By: kbrand

kbrand — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:06:25 +0000

SSP:

Why would you sell the barrel of oil $5.80 when the current cost is around $60?

Change your calculations to a more realistic $30 per barrel and the ROI is around 4 years.

Additionally; the article seems to suggest that all of the barrel would go to motor vehicle fuel instead of the 19 or so gallons that are traditionally netted from a normal barrel of crude. This would drop fuel prices even more.

42 gal / bbl at $30 per bbl = $0.71 per gallon.
19gal / bbl at $60 per bbl = $3.16 per gallon

This would also make more crude available for other petroleum based products and should lower their costs.

By: ssp

ssp — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:31:34 +0000

Revenue:
10,000 tons * 4 bbl/ton = 40,000 bbl / yr
40,000 bbl * $10 / bbl = $400,000 / yr

Cost:
Say $0.10 / gal average to produce and 42 gal / bbl), each barrel costs $4.20 to produce.

Profit:
40,000 bbl * $5.80 = $232,000 / year

ROI:

$5,000,000 / $232,000 ~ 21 Years!

Seems a bit long to me for this to work out, but maybe my math is wrong.

By: keildar2005

keildar2005 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:49:33 +0000

DCV, I hate idealogs like you. You want to a) force people into doing the right thing, thus abridge freedom. You need to persuade people. b) close down an american made company that cost jobs because it is not your vision. c) refuse to see that a prosperous america can afford to move away from oil.
for example the average buyer of the Toyota hybrids make 113000 a year and a better indicator of wealth than a doctorate. for example see the vision of cheaper fuel would cost us say 200 billion a year instead of 700 billion a year. The money stays in the US instead of going to the middle east. Also the feds with out lifting a finger will get extra billions go spend. We can afford with this extra money to buy a Toyota or make a solar panel and put it on the roof. We could have been off of Oil earlier if the government hadn’t ban drilling in Alaska and drilling off the coast. And At least we could have afforded the higher prices of natural gas. A cleaner alternative. But no your not a progressive you don’t want to progress. you are a purist. You are a progressive after the progressives at the turn of the century. you are an anti capitalist.

By: Davhan

Davhan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:03:21 +0000

Do the math. 10,000 Tons per yr. = 4 tons / hr. This thing is a tinker toy!

By: Chris Coles

Chris Coles — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:28:43 +0000

This is very good news and looks like they have followed the path taken for centuries by anyone manufacturing charcoal. In that process, all they do is fill a sealed container and gently heat the contents to drive off everything other than the carbon as charcoal. So we should expect that they are doing exactly the same thing, but in a way that gathers the “smoke” to process it into new fuel. So they are in fact taking the plastic and returning the majority of the petroleum used to manufacture it back to a form of petroleum that may be used as new fuel. That is a wonderful way to use the waste plastic and every effort should be used to encourage the use of this system.

By: Stefan Mux

Stefan Mux — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:28:37 +0000

@DCV: But on the other side it could be financial feasable to harvest the great pacific garbage patch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

By: Mage66

Mage66 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:36:26 +0000

There is that huge deposit of plastic bits in the mid Pacific that could be removed and used for this process. I don’t see a downside to this.

By: DCV

DCV — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:34:57 +0000

This sounds very bad for the environment — there will be no need for alternative fuels or even energy efficient cars for years to come if they can start mining the landfills for cheap fuel. Burning oil is burning oil, no matter what the oil was before.

Of course, there’s no mention of EROI, so maybe it won’t take off.