How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[Excalibur]

Welcome piccolo chimico. I rendered your post into English to increase the chance of help from forum members. Please post some clear photos of your plant and the fuel produced. Thanks

Hello everyone I'm new to this forum, to start congratulations for the forum you are nice and it is very interesting, having known sin after building my retort. I have some questions for you. I built the reactor with a gas burner double insulated with rock wool high temperature fractionation column 2 plates, pumice catalyst, plate condenser water, vacuum pump and bubbler. time use temperature from 20/420 in 25 minutes precisely, at the end of the process I get the 100/100 product is plastic from oil comes out too dark but not flammable unless it is warm, you give me a help please

[piccolo chimico]

[miku]

nice and simple

[QUOTE=Jetijs;123461]The info is already shared, if you don't understand something or have any questions I will answer them, just ask I am aware that if you see this tech for the first time it might be confusing, but that is why I am here, to answer questions thanks for the info i will try

[Excalibur]

Ermmm??? I use aluminium oxide for conducting heat? zinc oxide is an insulator?
Rockwool is all you need

Jetijs used aluminum oxide bricks to make his pyrolysis reactor. See first page/s of this thread. Refractory wiki lists aluminum oxide, silica, magnesium, lime and fireclays as common firebrick ingredients. Actually, I use what I believe is Rockwool on my reflux. I like it better than Kaowool. So, yes you are correct, it is very possible to use Rockwool as insulation with success.

those figures are for the energy required to distill.... cracking is a little bit more energy hungry especially when using carrier bags as feedstock without a conductive medium in the reactor

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/ne...astic-to-fuel: Bcake:

Thanks for posting. It's great to see people doing constructive things to help themselves.

[ladanivaca]

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/ne...astic-to-fuel: Bcake:

[waterboost]

jonathan, sorry you're having problems. Good insulation can make a big difference to efficiency. We need good economics for heat especially where energy is expensive. I started thinking about how much heat was required to distill hydrocarbons. I searched out a report from mid 90's.

Conventional atmospheric and vacuum crude distillation units require about 100,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units)of furnace energy per barrel processed. Since a barrel of oil contains about 6,200,000 BTU's, the required furnace energy amounts to about 1.6 percent of the processed oil.

One oil barrel= 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters or 35 imperial gallons.

So therefore, 100,000 BTU or 29.3Kw per barrel.

Naturally, the figures are from some very efficient refinery plants where oil companies have been developing their processes over decades. Just how close to that 1.6% us DIY can get will be interesting.

those figures are for the energy required to distill.... cracking is a little bit more energy hungry especially when using carrier bags as feedstock without a conductive medium in the reactor

[waterboost]

the aluminum oxide insulation to be made with bricks.

Ermmm??? I use aluminium oxide for conducting heat? zinc oxide is an insulator?

Rockwool is all you need

[Excalibur]

3mm seemed like a common thickness recommendation from those using electricity heating only. So I reasoned that I would use 5 or 6mm with flame heating. I wasn't able to find a suitable vessel, Then a length of 200mm x 8mm pipe turned up so I made the reactor from that. Honestly, I've not used a reactor with greater wall thickness than 8mm so I don't know how they would perform. I worry that excess heat would be wasted in initial heating because of the thickness and weight. There may be advantages with having a larger steel mass like heat control might become very stable with smooth temperature swings.
Whatever you choose, please view the machine as an experimental prototype so be ready to make changes to improve the design. I'm on my 6th major revision and already it has had multiple upgrades.
Good luck.

[Excalibur]

12mm is plenty thick enough. Reactor wall thickness is a "trade-off". A heavy thickness will take longer to heat but be immensely strong so extra safe. For comparison, my gas/diesel fired reactor is 8mm wall with 10mm floor.
There is a saying within the engineering industry in which I work: "Nothing ever broke because it was too strong!".

The ratiomatic heating was commonly used here 1960s-80's in central heating systems. Popularity declined because of diesel cost increase.
This type should be perfect for your requirements. They are efficient with built-in safety features. They should be adaptable to thermocouple PID thermostat control.

I suggest make a miniature model of your proposed design to test theories and assumptions. A 1/8 or 1/6 scale model of say 1.6mm steel would be easily modified, quickly heated on LPG, etc. Just a thought...

[Beyond Biodiesel]

OK, kedigen, with further clarification, yes, electrical heating with immersion heaters, like electric water heater elements, is a good idea, except you will need electrical feed throws capable of withstanding 425c. They exist, but they are expensive.

Otherwise you will end up with the kind of fire your photos showed. Thanks for the photos. It should serve as a reminder to everyone here that is precisely what can happen if you are not careful enough.

[Excalibur]

Maybe he means putting the heater inside the reactor, that would make more sense.

I'm puzzling over the question too, sorry. I wondered, perhaps he was referring to the matching of feedstock in-flow to the applied heat.
kedigen, please elaborate on the question. I think your meaning is being lost in translation.

[fox32]

Kedigen, I think you are suggesting putting the insulation inside of the retort. I would not think any traditional insulation would work well there, and it would prevent heat from entering the retort to heat the feed stock.


Thanks, Excalibur, that helps.

Maybe he means putting the heater inside the reactor, that would make more sense.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

inside the reactor

Kedigen, I think you are suggesting putting the insulation inside of the retort. I would not think any traditional insulation would work well there, and it would prevent heat from entering the retort to heat the feed stock.

An oil barrel (abbreviated as bbl) is a unit of volume whose definition has not been universally standardized. In the United States and Canada, an oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters or 35 imperial gallons.
Extract from Wiki
The study of crude distillation thermodynamics was from The University of Missouri.

Thanks, Excalibur, that helps.

[Excalibur]

This is very useful data on the thermodynamics of crude distillation; however, I am a bit confused by the barrel= 42 US gallons unit that Excalibur came up with, because I know that the barrel is said to be 55gallons. So I then Googled "convert barels to gallons" and got the following, which confused me even more.

1 Fluid barrel = 31.5 US gallons. So, what is this measurement really based on???

An oil barrel (abbreviated as bbl) is a unit of volume whose definition has not been universally standardized. In the United States and Canada, an oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters or 35 imperial gallons.
Extract from Wiki
The study of crude distillation thermodynamics was from The University of Missouri.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

jonathan, sorry you're having problems. Good insulation can make a big difference to efficiency. We need good economics for heat especially where energy is expensive. I started thinking about how much heat was required to distill hydrocarbons. I searched out a report from mid 90's.

Conventional atmospheric and vacuum crude distillation units require about 100,000 BTUs (British Thermal Units)of furnace energy per barrel processed. Since a barrel of oil contains about 6,200,000 BTU's, the required furnace energy amounts to about 1.6 percent of the processed oil.

One oil barrel= 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters or 35 imperial gallons.

So therefore, 100,000 BTU or 29.3Kw per barrel.

Naturally, the figures are from some very efficient refinery plants where oil companies have been developing their processes over decades. Just how close to that 1.6% us DIY can get will be interesting.

This is very useful data on the thermodynamics of crude distillation; however, I am a bit confused by the barrel= 42 US gallons unit that Excalibur came up with, because I know that the barrel is said to be 55gallons. So I then Googled "convert barels to gallons" and got the following, which confused me even more.

1 Fluid barrel = 31.5 US gallons. So, what is this measurement really based on???