How to turn plastic waste into diesel fuel cheaply

[kedigen]

OK centrifuge as a simpler way. but only said they had no water and mud. They say the color will not change much. sold marine type centrifuges. used. I can get from them.
also the density of the cleaned items 0740. such as xylene. very flammable. I need to diesel.

[wheels]

OK centrifuge as a simpler way. but only said they had no water and mud. They say the color will not change much. sold marine type centrifuges. used. I can get from them.
also the density of the cleaned items 0740. such as xylene. very flammable. I need to diesel.

Pyrolysis is the easy part. If you are wanting to make Fuel and especially in quantity you are producing it in, you require a proper Refining plant. You need good multi stage filtration that is capable of handling the volume of liquid produced. The very first stage of it will be coarse water and sludge removal and then on in stages increasingly getting finer particle removal. High speed Centrifuge can remove particulates down to as small as 0.01 of a micron.
As I said in an earlier post, some of the coloration of the various fuel weights, are partly the natural color. Heavy weight will be darker than light weight fuels with the very light weights being clear.
For breaking up the Fuels into their specific gravities, you need to refine the liquid further. You need specific and very well controlled temperatures on each pot. Remember that real Diesel is a specific weight of oil. It is not made by taking a Heavy weight and then thinning it down with something really light weight. The same goes for the Diesel you are producing. You want to have a specific narrow band of Fuel weight. You do not want too much of anything above or below .8 SPG, as these other hydrocarbon components burn very differently. Some can burn too fast causing knocking and excessive heat, or burn poorly producing too much soot and black smoke and clog up the engine and cause excessive wear.

[Col]

Managing vacuum

Actively pumping out liquid from a (diesel) tank will create a vacuum so the situation will need to be managed. Vacuum will lift water out of the bubbler, drawing it upstream unless there is a suitable draw-back arrestor

What if I counter the vacuum by bleeding some inert purge gas into the diesel tank? That will cost money though. But I expect the pressure needed would be generated by only a small quantity of the inert gas. Or I could use some off-gas from a previous run, though I expect to burn all of it under the retort.

[Excalibur]

What if I counter the vacuum by bleeding some inert purge gas into the diesel tank? That will cost money though. But I expect the pressure needed would be generated by only a small quantity of the inert gas. Or I could use some off-gas from a previous run, though I expect to burn all of it under the retort.

Inert gas won't burn when it gets to the burner head so I think LPG could work out better. I believe a simple gas-jar is a good seamless solution. It will give a half psi or so back pressure automatically providing there is the quantity of off-gas resident. The gas-jar has another very important feature though. During times of high off-gas production, this when off-gas supply to the burner needs to be restricted. The gas-jar automatically accommodates that surplus.

Notice to readers of diydiesel blog:
It came to light yesterday that some Orion-retort details pages of the blog haven't ever been accessible!! I've corrected this now but it means that the additional info is added to the 16 existing pages. The writings elaborate on instrumentation and technical articles.

[Col]

Right, thanks.
How does the gas jar accommodate the surplus of off gas during the times when it needs to be restricted? Is it just that the outlet from the gas jar is small? Or do you have a regulating valve?

[Excalibur]

Right, thanks.
How does the gas jar accommodate the surplus of off gas during the times when it needs to be restricted?

It works on a "displaced water" principle. It expands or contracts to suit the volume of gas it stores. There is no restriction on the speed at which the gas will come or go from the gas-jar itself.

Is it just that the outlet from the gas jar is small? Or do you have a regulating valve?

The regulating valve is a regular ball valve acting as a flow restrictor and is close to the burner. Better would be a gas valve with a bit more fineness to the adjustment, like that of LPG or oxy/acetylene equipment. Perhaps I fit this type in the next upgrade.

This page shows gas-jar schematic

[rozier56]

rozier56

Wondering if there is anybody out there that has a water restriction scenario?
When it comes to having to recycle cooling water, what seems to be the best solutions?

[Excalibur]

Wondering if there is anybody out there that has a water restriction scenario?
When it comes to having to recycle cooling water, what seems to be the best solutions?

I haven't got water restrictions but I'm guessing that water shortage is preventing you from cooling the vapor stream to the fullest extent required.
So I'm trying to imagine your set up and how you could operate with a limited amount of water.
My thought is to use an old car radiator with attached 12v fan to cool the water by continuously recycling with an electric water pump. A possible refinement would be fit a temperature sensor to the diesel tank so that the pump only runs when the tank exceeds the set temperature. In this way the volatile fractions are efficiently re-evaporated from the diesel and shunted downstream to tank #2.

[wheels]

Wondering if there is anybody out there that has a water restriction scenario?
When it comes to having to recycle cooling water, what seems to be the best solutions?

I am using a water chiller that I made from an old Dehumidifier. Many if these units are little compressor fridge units. I simply split the condenser from the evaporator, which is very easy to do and placed another small radiator, from another old unit, directly after the cooling radiator. The water is pumped by a small pump around in a closed circuit through the radiator and back to the water jacket I have around the still Pot. It is not perfect, but it does work by dropping the temp about 3 degree from just plain air be blown through the radiator. However, I am going to immerse the two radiators in a small bath of water/antifreeze and that should help transfer the heat far better.

[sunilkm153]

Wondering if there is anybody out there that has a water restriction scenario?
When it comes to having to recycle cooling water, what seems to be the best solutions?

These days industrial cooling towers are available in small size also they are cheap these fibre reinforced plastic cooling towers can be made in capacity as low as 2 Tr which I feel is sufficient for your DIY project I am using the same FRP cooling tower with 5 Tr capacity which has excellent cooling capacity

[chacowako]

a good read for people just reading this thread

http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/4303/1/Thesis_fulltext.pdf

[Col]

distilling petrol

Hi guys
I have been given 4 x 200L drums of petrol from an automotive workshop. It is very clear and seems clean. I don't know whether it was drained as straight petrol or a diesel - petrol mix. I also scored a 60L drum of diesel from the same place so I am assuming the drums of petrol are mostly just petrol as they have at least made an attempt to keep the two fuels separate. It is obviously an accumulation of fuel from many jobs so I think it will need to be separated / distilled before use.
I was hoping to just distil the petrol between 30C - 210C and use it in my car. Does anyone know whether that will have an adverse effect on hydrogen or additives that may have been added after the distilling process at the refinery? Would I be turning the petrol back into the naptha product that we wouldn't want to put in our cars?
Thanks in advance
Col

[wheels]

Hi guys
I have been given 4 x 200L drums of petrol from an automotive workshop. It is very clear and seems clean. I don't know whether it was drained as straight petrol or a diesel - petrol mix. I also scored a 60L drum of diesel from the same place so I am assuming the drums of petrol are mostly just petrol as they have at least made an attempt to keep the two fuels separate. It is obviously an accumulation of fuel from many jobs so I think it will need to be separated / distilled before use.
I was hoping to just distil the petrol between 30C - 210C and use it in my car. Does anyone know whether that will have an adverse effect on hydrogen or additives that may have been added after the distilling process at the refinery? Would I be turning the petrol back into the naptha product that we wouldn't want to put in our cars?
Thanks in advance
Col

Do you have a Diesel Vehicle at all? I would add the liquid you think is Petrol into Diesel, but at no more than 10%. A Diesel engine can cope with that just fine.
The big issue with distilling the Petrol is that you may still have oil in the finished product and while the Petrol engine may run OK, you may have a smoking issue with the exhaust output. It takes just a little Diesel added to a Petrol engine fuel tank to make the Engine produce Blue smoke terribly.
You could try distilling with a lower High point Temperature. Like maybe 160Deg instead of 210Deg and then add the lighter product to bought Petrol to ensure you have all the additives. But then you will end up with a heavier weight product to try and dispose of. Maybe sell it or give it away to a friend with a Diesel Vehicle or add it to heating fuel or something.

[Excalibur]

Good score on the free drums of fuel!! There's a number of things to consider but the first thing I'd do is measure the SG. Possibly the drums will contain 'miss-fuel'. This is the fuel drained from vehicles that have had the wrong product pumped in to their tanks.
Without knowing what the SG is, I believe you have good base stock for making homebrew diesel. The SG will have to be tweaked to .82 - .85 SG.

[Beyond Biodiesel]

Hi guys
I have been given 4 x 200L drums of petrol from an automotive workshop. It is very clear and seems clean. I don't know whether it was drained as straight petrol or a diesel - petrol mix. I also scored a 60L drum of diesel from the same place so I am assuming the drums of petrol are mostly just petrol as they have at least made an attempt to keep the two fuels separate. It is obviously an accumulation of fuel from many jobs so I think it will need to be separated / distilled before use.
I was hoping to just distil the petrol between 30C - 210C and use it in my car. Does anyone know whether that will have an adverse effect on hydrogen or additives that may have been added after the distilling process at the refinery? Would I be turning the petrol back into the naptha product that we wouldn't want to put in our cars?
Thanks in advance
Col

I agree with Excalibur, good score; and check the specific gravity of the contents of the drums. If they match either gasoline or diesel fuel, then all you need do is filter them down to about 1-micron, and run them in the respective engines, and forget about distillation.

Even if the sg of the gasoline containing drums is to heavy for running on a gasoline engine, and you have a diesel engine, then just blend it with some relatively clean waste oil to .850sg, settle it for about 2 weeks, then filter it down to about 1-micron, and run it until it is gone.