Pyrolysis of Contaminated Waste Thin Film Plastics to Char

[QualityTime]

Does anybody have thoughts on this subject? This could be the solution to humankind's waste plastics problem. Do not confuse this with gasification

 

[TugboatEng]

Pyrolysis leaves behind charcoal like waste. Pulverize the plastic and suspend the particles in very hot air much like a coal fired boiler, less waste.

 

[3DDave]

Turning the material to charcoal and burying it is a better environmental solution than turning it to CO2.

Still, if it was this easy it would be done already. The technology isn't the hurdle - the funding and desire are.

It does strike me that, thinking of equally unlikely scenarios, the waste could be used to pack in the tunnels left behind for coal and other mining to prevent the eventual destructive subsidence. It removes the waste from the general environment, fulfills a need with material that is otherwise difficult to deal with and, in 50 million years, someone might find it compressed into a useful fuel for the latest round of industrial revolution.

As delightful as that might be, it too is not going to get the funding or the desire to do so.

 

[QualityTime]

Hi All:

While everyone else has concentrated on making energy from waste plastics through gasification or incineration we have taken a different route. We HAVE pyrolysized contaminated waste municipal plastics into char and energy. There is no reason why this char cannot be used for agricultural purposes. It is just that no one has studied it before. The business case is there. The process is GHG negative and we have a solution to the serious pollution problem that we have around the world.

It was me that prompted New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) to turn their biosolids into biochar as a possible solution to meet their GHG goals. If you do your research you will clearly see the benefits of biochar and where the NYCDEP is headed. The business case is there

Furthermore the char can be turned into activated carbon with further processing

I am interested in teaming with an American partner connected to the oil, gas or plastics industry to move this technology forward. We are not advocating the reduced use of plastics or trying to compete against them by making energy. It is just that we have found a solution to the plastics pollution problem. For lack of a better description, we are making charcoal and putting it back into the ground to replace the coal mankind has burned off

 

[TugboatEng]

What gases are being produced during pyrolysis? Could they be used to synthesize new plastics of higher quality than other recycled plastics?

 

[QualityTime]

Synthetic gas is produced. It is used as energy required for the heating process or it can be put into the natural gas energy grid. The process is energy positive. We have access to local commercial sized pyrolysis equipment. In fact this equipment was used to produce biosolids based biochar. We have the academic minds and the resources required for further analysis. It is not something being done in a basement of house. It is just that we need interested entities to provide the financing to further the research. The business potential is staggering

 

[3DDave]

Given that there are already suppliers of such equipment, and no staggering has occurred, what makes your process so special?

Please - Patents issued to you only. I ask for those because it seems like anyone will otherwise be able to just copy whatever it is that you are referring to.

I find that it is exceptionally rare that someone will find a unique use for existing equipment when the sellers of same have significant motive, customer base, and experience to have already explored and rejected that use.

 

[QualityTime]

Yes, there are suppliers of such equipment. Being a supplier does not mean your equipment works or that you understand the importance of feedstock, how to pyrolysize properly or whether the char is any good

There is a science behind turning biosolids, for example, to biochar. There are a lot of issues that have to be addressed before biosolids based biochar is accepted. You have to be in the sewage treatment field to appreciate what I am saying. Very few people have done this. This is the next frontier of sewage treatment

Even fewer people have looked at pyrolysizing plastics into char. Again, there is a science behind this. The University of Toronto Chemical Engineering Department is behind this work. If anyone would know what is going on they would know. The scale of the waste plastics problem is mind boggling

It really is not about a patentable product. It is about getting investors to invest in making equipment from proven technology, marketing it to large scale users, getting the installations and building a brand name.

The need to understand pyrolysis was never there before. The GHG push and government policy changes the paradigm

 

[3DDave]

Begging for money and not one bit of backup data? Those suppliers have people who thought this through and the ones I looked at make the exact same claims as you do. If there was a lot of money to be made they would have figured this out by now. There are lots of University research programs into all sorts of things. Most of them are about getting money with a bit of educational value.

Lot of issues to be addressed? Great. Address them.

If it's not patentable then no one will invest with you. None. Any money they spend with you will be providing future competitors the information they need to undercut you on price. And then the investment is worthless. You cannot take a first-mover position; other companies are ready to move the instant you head for market with proven technology.

Yeah, the scale is mind boggling. So what? Capturing CO2 and methane from the atmosphere is also mind boggling. No money to be made doing so, so there's no one doing so, except for plants gathering the CO2 until they get cut down and set on fire.

 

[QualityTime]

Who said I do not have backup data?

I can appreciate what you are trying to say but because you are not informed I think you take a simplistic view of things. Suffice to say that that NYCDEP is spending an awful lot of money to reduce GHG's by changing their biosolids program. On this front there are a number of young companies vying to get the NYCDEP's attention.

As far as for no money to be made for capturing CO2 etc that is the purpose of carbon credits. When carbon credits comes into play the need for this technology will become apparent from a business case point of view.

 

[3DDave]

It may be simplistic, but you are the one failing to find investors.

Carbon credits are there to allow polluters to continue to pollute at sometimes increasing levels.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/carbon_credit.asp

Just configure a business to claim it would have polluted more and then get credit for doing what was the original plan. Profit! No carbon is actually removed or release avoided. No different than farm subsidies to not plant certain crops to keep the prices up.[ignore][/ignore]

No one is capturing CO2 on a level or with permanence to make the slightest difference.

I said you failed to present any back up. I see that you missed the obvious colloquialism in saying so.

 

[QualityTime]

The following comes from the NYCDEP website

Biosolids
After digestion, the leftover solids are then dewatered. Dewatering is a process where the solid components of sludge are separated from the liquid components mechanically (we use centrifuges). Not all of the city’s 14 wastewater treatment plants have onsite dewatering facilities. Those facilities without dewatering capabilities transport their solids through force mains or marine vessels to in-city treatment plants that have onsite dewatering capabilities. After dewatering, the leftover solid product of the processed sludge is generally referred to as “biosolids.” The city’s biosolids are managed by outside contractors who take it to landfills for disposal or further process it to recover its value as a nutrient-rich soil amendment.

As part of the mayor’s plan for OneNYC, we have a goal of zero-landfilling of biosolids by 2030. This means we will develop a program to reuse all biosolids beneficially. [highlight #FCE94F]Some of the further processing technologies that can be used to qualify biosolids for reuse include composting, drying, and gasification or pyrolysis.[/highlight] New York City produces about 1,400 tons/day of biosolids or about 60 truckloads! Such a large quantity spread out over our 6 dewatering facilities means that our beneficial use program will need to be diverse and include multiple types of further treatment.

NYCDEP is spending $55M/yr shipping biosolids to landfills half way across the country. They want to stop landfilling because it causes GHGs. Biosolids have a negative image in the eyes of the public. It was me that made them seriously think about the potential of pyrolysis and biochar. They have their consultants putting together a long term biosolids plan. Demonstration scale testing on the chosen biosolids handling alternative to collect data will be done for 3 years at one of their 14 sewage plants. I estimate the capital cost to install pyrolysis facilities and related infrastructure to be in the order of $550M. Then there are the lucrative facility operating contracts that bring in continuous revenue. The company I am dealing with on this initiative is already on the stock market. They are a young clean tech company. It is nice to have a patent but that is not the only way to make money

Governments and municipalities will pay to solve the waste plastics problem

 

[3DDave]

You are right. If you have a gullible government spending tax payer money it's possible to get a piece of that. Those solar road projects get funded all too often and Theranos was also looking to get a chunk.

However you have moved the goal posts from thin film plastics to biosolids. And it appears there are a lot of companies already doing that. Having the company you are shilling for remain a secret seems counterproductive, but at least it's not blatant advertising.

 

[QualityTime]

3DDave, you do not seem to appreciate the problem society has with waste thin film plastics. Using your logic the government are suckers that get fleeced all the time and there is no money to be made with sewage treatment so why do it?...hmmmm. I can tell you that there are many companies that provide all sorts of equipment to sewage treatment plants AND none of it is patented. Companies are clamoring to sell their product to the plant. In many cases there are competing manufacturers of the "same" equipment

For your information, there are less than one handful of companies into pyrolysis of biosolids into biochar at the scale I am talking about. Everyone else is a mom and pop show concentrating on different feedstocks

To me, the plastics industry, oil and gas industry would be interested in my technology. This technology would clean up the industry's image. They seem to be only familiar with gasification. Just like sewage, waste plastics, waste organics are coming to you 24/7 because the collection infrastructure is already in place. Economies of scale

 

[TugboatEng]

I don't understand what you expect to gain. Carbon is effectively sequestered in plastics. Pyrolysis and combustion both release carbon in to the atmosphere.

Your plan is flawed because we can combust plastics for power generation, offsetting our hydrocarbon dependence while also eliminating plastics without excess energy investment. Plastics only make up some 10% of our oil consumption. They could easily be filtered into our energy needs without increasing our carbon production.

How do you plan to handle halogens on your biochar?

 

[QualityTime]

Yes, the carbon is sequestered in the plastics but for how long? Then there is the leaching and pollution aspects which everyone is really concerned about

I don't think the plan is flawed. Making char is good for agricultural purposes. There is a business case behind this. They are lesser requirements for fertilizer, lesser use of water, higher crop yields, cleaner waterways and healthier soil. To me people will pay for char. The Inca were doing this a thousand years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkGWfRu3Y84

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUAEa4ORAkY

As far as for halogens in plastics there are no halogens used in municipal waste thin film plastics. There are halogens used in making plastics such as PVC but PVC is not in our typical municipal waste

As far as for halogens in biosolids based biochar, at high enough pyrolysis temperatures the bonds are broken and are not longer an issue. The same would apply to halogens in plastics, if there are any

Please note that pyrolysis is not incineration. Google it. Unlike incineration, there is no fire with pyrolysis because there is no oxygen. Nobody likes incinerators because of nasties such as dioxins

Through pyrolysis making synthetic gas from waste plastics is but one route to solve things. Solving the plastics problem will require multiple approaches...not one and only one. However, one cannot produce energy cheaper than the energy companies. Competing against the energy companies is not our goal. We want to gain a friend not an enemy

 

[Pud]

The problem as I see it is that gasification is wasteful.

There is plenty of research going on to convert plastics to their constituent monomers and repolymerise back into polymers.
Here's one of many Google results:

https://innovation.ox.ac.uk/licence-details/converting-waste-plastics-back-constituent-monomer

H


Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.

 

[3DDave]

Since when are thin film plastics considered "bio" anything?

A business case includes a rate of return and that rate of return is typically the selling point. If they are selling something, they name a price. Lacking mention of either tells me there is neither.

The advantage to carbon in the soil is that it is converted to CO2 by microorganisms and not stored. Mechanical replenishment of carbon is no better ecologically than the use of inorganic fertilizers to make up for soil depletion. It is a short-term storage strategy.

I'm in the middle of soy-bean, corn, and wheat acreage. I'll let you know if I ever see a raw-carbon spreader.

Oh - here's a Mom and Pop competitor you wrote about -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOUwg37N-40

They "hope to see, over time" some benefit. That was three years ago. Nothing since.

This article:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248100

suggests that actual bio-based char, such as wood chips and chicken droppings, are effective because they contain oxygen. Seems like plastic pyrolysis is the opposite of that.

This has all the hallmarks of a sales push similar looking to convince people to take a waste product with no previous demand by suggesting it's the best thing to use.

 

[QualityTime]

3DDave

I called the pyrolysis product of waste plastics "char" not "biochar" If you understood the chemistry behind the makeup of plastics it is all H and C molecules. There is no reason why the char cannot be used for agricultural purposes. The reason why it is not is because no one has studied it for that purpose because there was no need to. Now there is a need to. This probably is not a new idea. These ideas keep getting recycled over and over again over time. It is just that now we understand things better.

Showing you the business case in this setting takes too long and is a waste of time

I would totally disagree with you on the point that carbon in the soil is converted to CO2 by microorganisms and not stored.

I'll go one step better than a mom and pop operation example you provided for me. I will give you my competitor's website...ready....

https://www.bioforcetech.com/.

Again, this is an emerging market.

There is a really big time competitor that is really gasifying their biosolids but are claiming to make biochar. They are fibbing but they see the potential in the market I am in.

https://ariescleantech.com/

Read this site

https://www.beyondoilnyc.org/

BTW my background is in sewage treatment. I have been designing custom sewage plants for municipalities for 40 years

Char is just carbon. You and I know it as Home Depot charcoal. Different feedstocks have a different fixed carbon percentage. Wood based char and plastics based char have no nitrogen or phosphorous in it. Biosolids on the other hand does have nitrogen and phosphorus in it. The pyrolysis heating process, however, drives out a lot of the nitrogen. The phosphorus is left intact. How do you get nitrogen back into the biochar? You inoculate it by, for example, mixing it with compost.

Wood based biochar and plastics based char does not have any nitrogen or phosphorus to begin with. The biochar/char has to be innoculated. Besides agriculture, the applications for biochar and its more potent cousin, activated carbon, in the gaseous and aqueous pollution control field alone is staggering. All this from a waste nobody wanted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=188CPDgJw6c&t=3s

Look at the 32.50 mark on this video

https://documentaryheaven.com/modern-marvels-carbon/.

We make activated carbon from biochar

 

[QualityTime]

For your information the Chinese are the leaders in this field