How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Jetijs]

Hi Mart.
The quality of the fuel was already tested, it is about 90-95% diesel and 5-10% gasoline. This works great in liquid fuel burners. If you need it for a diesel engine, you just need to heat the fuel to abut 250 degrees till all gasoline evaporates and you now have pure diesel.

[ashtweth]

Unbelievable man, in fact next year we have a few HEMP to replace plastic demo's i am gonna plug the you know what out of this.

Jetijs, this is seriously of use man. Wholly crap thanks a lot Bro.

Ash

[brenie]

Hello Jetijs Master, and team.
Great stuff, you really know how to break things down to the basics.
Many thanks for all your work.
Best wishes for 2011

Regards, Bren.

[Jetijs]

Thank you guys
A good thing is that you should get already shredded plastic from recycling companies very cheap. For example, I got 1000kg of sgredded plastic for around 50$, if all of this is turned into fuel, I get around one ton of diesel. Also the leftover small amount of charcoal can be used by pressing it into briquettes and burning it later in a stove. So you get all kinds of useful products from garbage and nothing is wasted Also waste motor oil can be depolimerized by the same process into diesel

[mklimesh]

Excellent Jetijs.
I seen a video a couple of months ago of the one with the school kids in it and thought it would be a good project. You have explained a few of the details I was a little unshure of. This will be my next project.
Thanks for sharing.

Mike Klimesh

[petar113507]

UNBELEIVEABLE.
Dude.
Jetijs.
Sharing this represents a lot of research from you, and a lot of technical know-how -- much like everything else you share.

Sincerely, Thank you.

I intend on replicating this within the following year, 2011.

What matieral was the boiler chamber made from?

@Ash, I have access to a lot of other plant wastes -- I look foreward to messaging you with your results. I suspect that with a little modification, this process can be tweaked to be functional for many others.

Perhaps testing a mix with bio-diesel?

Regardless, Many thanks to all -- I wish all a good, successful new year,

==Romo

[Jetijs]

Thanks Mike and Romo
The reactor chamber is made out of an old 50 liter steel propane tank, we cut the upper part open and welded on an assembly so that the lid can be bolted on. The flat ring on that the lid is bolted on has a conical groove in it and the lid has an apropriate wedge machined on that matches that groove. The conical shape of these things elliminates the need of a seal, you just bolt the lid on and it will be airtight. I attached a drawing of the lid assembly.

[Guruji]

Plastic fuel

Hi Jetjis nice work. The thing is that one needs fuel to heat the plastic. What if one uses a solar parabola maybe it would work too.
Thanks

[Jetijs]

Guruji,
Yes, you need energy to heat the reactor, but if you do that using electricity, you will only need around 8 cents worth of electricity per liter of fuel, that is cheap. And it gets even cheaper if you use liquid fuel burner to heat the reactor and use the produced fuel for heating. We calculated that such a setup would consume around 7% of its produced yield, but now this thing is self sustaining and you only need to get some plastic I wouldn't bother with solar for reasons I already mentioned:

I am not sure about solar, probably not a good idea as the heat source is no reliable, as you get the heat up, you don't want it to drop considerably until the process is finished, because that would solidify all the melted plastic into a big blob and this would the take forever to remelt. Solar would probably work on very small quantities.

[bugler]

Thanks. I am highly unperienced so I need much more information. I know I am asking too much.

There are grooves cut in them to house the heating coils.

Can you make a drawing of these grooves?

The coils were bought from a kiln making company, you just tell them your power needs, voltages and other stuff and they give you nichrome wire in needed length and diameter,

I don't have triphasic electricity so I think a 2kw monophasic would be a good choice. What would be the voltages, etc needed? It would then be a third of what you have made so it would make 20leters per day. Two coilsin parallel ¿Is that so?
What would be the size of the tank for this smaller unit?

you just need to wind it on a round stick to form a coil and then insert in those grooves in aluminum oxide bricks.

Can you show a pic of the coils?

They are switched on and off using three solid state relays that are controlled by a digital thermostat.

Can you show how they would be assembled?

The thermocouple is located on the lid of the reactor.

What is the termocouple for and how andwhere is it assebled?

There is a metal cage in the barrel that keeps the reactor container apart from the bricks and coils.

What do you mean? The cage is inside the white bricks? Can you show a drawing?

Thanks for your help. This is a really exciting project. I hope I can really make it.

[Jetijs]

Hi bugler.
Look at this picture:
http://www.emuprim.lv/jetijs/plog-co...m/zupa-006.jpg

there you can see the cut slots in the bricks that house the coils. They are cut in the following configuration:


Yes, you can use single phase current and 2kW of power should be enough for about 20 liter reactor container. You can use either one heating element rated for 2kW or two 1kW ones in parallel. The voltage used is mains power so 220v in Europe and 110v in US. I don't know exactly the specs of the nichrome wire, but something around 1-1.5mm diameter wire should be used, you just need to get such a wire and measure the resistance of it for say a meter, then based on your power needs, you calculate the total length of the wire. For example, if the wire has say 30 Ohms of resistance per meter and you need it to work at 1000w of power, then at 220 volts that would be 4.54 Amps, so you need to get the wire so long that its resistance will limit the current to 4.54A. So if the resistance per meter is 30 Ohms, then at 220 volts 7.33A of current will flow through that wire, that means 1.6kW, that is too much, in order to get 1kW of power we need to increase the wire length till the total resistance of the wire is 48 Ohms, that then would be around 1.6 meters of wire. Hope this helps.

Here is how the electrical circuit would look like in your case of single phase current:


I use digital temperature controller, you can get them on ebay for about 40$, something like this:


The relays are of solid state type, like this:

These are about 15$ a piece. The temperature controller monitors the temperature in the reactor and sends 12v impulses to the bottom contacts of the solid state relays that turns them on and off so that the needed temperature is maintained.
A thermocouple is a temperature sensor, this is the thing from where the temperature controller gets the data from, it is a small metal piece with two wires coming out of it, the metal piece is put where the temperature needs to be monitored and the wires are connected to the temperature controller. It looks something like this:
http://www.deltat.com/uploads/images...or_plastic.JPG

Here you can see the metal cage upside down:

And here you can see it in the whole assembly:


This cage does not let the reactor chamber touch the bricks and coils. I think this should be easy to get from the pictures.

I hope this helps.

[bolt1]

Excellent work but it always needs a workshop and a couple thousand bucks spare to make a LOT of stuff to save energy. The gasifier units are similar and run generators on farms etc using wood chippings. It saves thousand's a year on fuel costs.

That said once you have your DIY diesel fuel it makes sense to upgrade the vehicles with all possible fuel saving devices including HHO. Its a bit of a waste to run your Hummer Diesel when it only does 8 mpg

[redrichie]

Hi Jet,
Thanks for this. Very important work you and your friend have done. I have a question. Is the burning process toxic. To us or the environment? Release of hazardous fumes into atmosphere?

[Jetijs]

Hi redrichie
Polyethylene and plypropylene are pure hydrocarbons, only they are arranged in long chains. If you chop those chains into shorter ones, you get oil, if you chop them even shorter, you get diesel, and if you chop them again, you get gasoline and eventually burnable gas. So nothing else than hydrocarbons. This means that the burned gasses can only produce some co2 and water vapor when the gas mixes with air and burns, but way less than a typical car engine.

[bugler]

Jetijs. I really appreciate the effort of patiently explaining details that for you are too obvious.

How do you get a non oxygen environment?

I would like to know in detail the dimensions.

Could you tell me (please think in a 2kW macihne so I guess it would be 1/3 high) the height and diameter of the external tank.

The internal diameter of the white inner rings? What are the dimension of the bricks?
Could you tell us the dimensions of the internal cage?

Can you show us the holes and bolts (or whatever you use) for the thermocouple and for the coils?

There is a metal cage in the barrel that keeps the reactor container apart from the bricks and coils. You just slide the reactor container in, bolt the lid on and connect the condensing reservoirs and off you go.

What is the material between the whilte ring and the external tank? Do you use it also in the bottom of the tank?

The cage you have showed us it doesn't have solid walls so the plastic will fall down to the bottom of the tank. How do you keep then the reactor container apart from the bricks and coils?

The pipe from the lid goes through three condensing containers

Can you show us the inside of the condensing containers?

you should get already shredded plastic from recycling companies very cheap

This is going to sound silly but could you show us a pic of the shredded plastic so I have a good idea when I try to buy it?

The reactor chamber is made out of an old 50 liter steel propane tank, we cut the upper part open and welded on an assembly so that the lid can be bolted on. The flat ring on that the lid is bolted on has a conical groove in it and the lid has an apropriate wedge machined on that matches that groove. The conical shape of these things elliminates the need of a seal, you just bolt the lid on and it will be airtight.

Do you mean the external tank is a 50 liter one?
What are the dimensions of both grooves? How do you make them?
Could you please, show us more photos of the upper lid?


I would like to replicate first this machine and then when you have the one burning the fule to heat the plastic I would like to replicate it also.

Thank you very much for your help.

This project sounds really interesting. What a shame that the Japanese sell them so expensive. There is a market for cheaper ones.

(talking about Japanese it reminds me of a Pink Floyd song: YouTube - Pink Floyd Final Cut (12) - Not Now John )