Man invents machine to convert plastic to oil

Sorry. The link should be fixed now.

So oil shows up in the water, what's left in the container that they shoved the plastic into? A bunch of toxic crap or... ?

That's pretty epic. Gotta love the Japanese, they are very innovative.

Actually I don't think so. The process is basically vapourizing the plastic which is a pretty homogeneous material. The vapour then condenses in the cold water and as it does it forms oil. Very promising method to eliminate waste plastic from the environment.

I imagine in a few years some company will develop a method to do this efficiently on a boat, head out to the massive plastic island and have themselves a floating oil producing platform.

Well this little machine is truly cool but the theory has been around for awhile now. An engineering friend of mine was working at this back in 97. There are US firms doing it too.

No big deal to convert plastic into oil, since plastic is made from oil. I had friends in uni who made a cocaine analogue from plexiglass - ain't organic chemistry grand.

The question is whether the energy from the oil is more than the energy required for the conversion. Of course really environmental costs of waste plastic would have to be considered in that equation too.

If you look around on the internet, there is a grade 5 science project thing that shows you how to make plastic from a gallon of milk. Oil is used for most comercially available plastics.

I think it is awesome, small enough to be in a home or community centre. I am curious as well what the cost of using one would be with regards to energy but if it isnt going to waste than I dont see a problem better than just tossing into the ground somewhere.

1 gallon of oil will require the electricity generated from 2 tonnes of coal

Excellent.

that was my only concern, how much power does the 'heating' draw?

But I still like it, plastics are recyclable but if ppls do not see the value in just blue bin recycling, then maybe this way they will see oil instead of garbage.

It's just a microwave,what kind of power does that take? 1200 watts? Power that with solar panels and a battery bank. Still works for those countries where the people are living in mountains of plastic garbage.

His microwave just uses frequencies that work on plastic instead of water. Probably doesn't have to be that powerful, most plastic melts at a pretty low temperature...

Converting plastic into oil? Isn't plastic made of oil? I can convert plastic into oil with a Bic lighter. Hell, I can turn the Bic lighter into oil with another Bic lighter.

Now they just need to reverse the process, use it in the Gulf, and then make the worlds largest Frisbee.