Turning plastic into petroleum: 2-in-1 solution for plastic waste

Pollution from plastic waste, nylon and oil depletion are two of the many human problems facing. And the "most nominated" solution for these two problems is turning plastic waste into gasoline.

Decomposed plastic, just created gasoline

Polyethylene is the most popular plastic in the world, creating almost everything from food packaging, plastic bottles, plastic films to nylon bags. On average, about 100 million tons of polyethylene resins are produced annually.

Polyethylene is made from fossil fuels and can be converted back into oil and diesel fuel.

Theoretically, Polyethylene is made from fossil fuels and can be converted back into oil and diesel fuel. However, this is not simple because plastic is a very stable compound.

In 2016, Zhibin Guan - a Chinese chemist from the University of California, joined the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (China) to find a solution to this problem. The solution is to use chemical catalysts to resolve polymers.

This substance separates hydrogen atoms in the compound, causing carbon atoms to bind together. But once linked, the catalyst breaks it, causing carbon to bind to hydrogen again. This process repeats continuously, helping scientists to change the structure of polyethylene into diesel, or even creating gasoline.

A significant advantage of this method is that the temperature needed to decompose plastic is only 175 degrees Celsius , much lower than most other methods of 400 degrees C or more.

The decomposition time of up to several days with high catalyst price is still the limitation that makes this technology not widely used. However, this is also an expected solution to solve the problem of plastic waste disposal.

Solution made in Vietnam

In Vietnam, turning plastic and rubber into fuel is also a topic of interest of many research groups. One of the typical directions of this research is the technology of waste plastic pyrolysis into FO oil being introduced by the Center for Science and Technology Information and Statistics (CESTI).

This is the technology developed by the Research Center for Petrochemical Technology - Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. Not only solve the problem of waste plastic treatment, this system can also convert up to 60-70% of the volume of rubber, plastic waste into FO oil used as furnace fuel in the boiler industry, kilns. , evaporator, chimney or for internal combustion engines of ships .

Model of waste plastic pyrolysis system into FO oil.

The method used by the research team is plastic pyrolysis, high temperature waste rubber into gas form and condensation. The amount of oil collected will be separated by the floating properties of the oil.

In addition, the gas obtained from the pyrolysis process is also rotated to make the system's operating fuel, thereby saving considerable fuel consumption.

Units and businesses interested in this technology can contact Ho Chi Minh City Technology Exchange, 79 Truong Dinh, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City for advice and learn more.