# Plastic and more plastic



## amxfan (Sep 8, 2011)

I did not know where I should post this so I thought it would be safest to put it here. I do "or am learning to do correctly", mostly computer scrap. I get whole systems, and the memory, main boards, drives etc are all easy to do with. Even the cases bring good money when taken to the scrap yard. My issue is the plastic. Front covers, keyboards and keyboard keys and from around PCI and other slots, all add up very quickly. My question is what do other people do with all the plastic scrap? Right now I'm throwing it away but that does not sit right with me since I try to make money from every part of the system, all the way down to the screws and stand offs that I remove.


----------



## gold4mike (Sep 9, 2011)

I'm having the same problem. I don't have enough storage space to save a tractor trailer load of plastic, which is about what you need to find a buyer.

I still take mine to the landfill and pay to get rid of it.

I'd be happy to find someone to give it to so it wouldn't have to be landfill material.

Our local recycle center took it for awhile but stopped because someone was dumping plastic that contained bits of metal and the metal destroyed the the teeth on the shredder that the plastic went through down the line. I made sure to remove the small ferrules embedded in the plastic before I took it in. Most of them are brass. It was very time consuming but I felt it was my responsibility given my pledge to "responsibly recycle" the computers that are given to me.


----------



## silversaddle1 (Sep 9, 2011)

We send it all along with our steel to the scrapyard. We sell it all as shred steel, and the scrapyard has an allowance built into the pricing to account for plastics. It's like car bodys, it's not all steel.


----------



## glorycloud (Sep 9, 2011)

My scrap steel buyer does the same thing with my PC cases.
He buys them plastic and all and I am glad to see them go. 8)


----------



## Ocean (Sep 10, 2011)

Until we have more room at our next facility, we have taken the path of paying Waste Management $57/month to empty a locked dumpster one a week that we can put any recycleable item into.

This includes cardboard, paper, plastic, and any metal items that happen to be too small to cost-effectively remove from the plastic it is attached to.


----------



## amxfan (Sep 11, 2011)

has anyone thought of making two molds "one for the bottom and one for sides" and recapturing the flue heat from the furnace and melting the plastic into crates? or has the EPA made it not worth the while. This is a thought I had but have not checked any laws or EPA guidelines.


----------



## Geo (Sep 11, 2011)

if the landfill is not something you want to do, then you can pyrolize it. ask NoIdea about some details. he has a couple of drawings you can see what it looks like. you can make a catch pan and make plastic ingots. imagine a block of plastic the size of a #10 washtub. it would take a truck load to have that much plastic. wonder if you can find a buyer for it. :lol:


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

Geo said:


> if the landfill is not something you want to do, then you can pyrolize it. ask NoIdea about some details. he has a couple of drawings you can see what it looks like. you can make a catch pan and make plastic ingots. imagine a block of plastic the size of a #10 washtub. it would take a truck load to have that much plastic. wonder if you can find a buyer for it. :lol:



That may be something worth looking into as it sure would be a space saver. Maybe Noidea can add his thoughts on this here.


----------



## joem (Sep 11, 2011)

What information I have gathered on plastic is that it is not recycled generally due to the contamination of other plastics and metals, as well as PVC recylers are rare. All E scrap recyclers here charge you to drop it off so I just include it into my shredded steel or for low end e waste just leave it intact with my loads. If I have too much plastic to electronic ratio some goes into trash, some gets snuck into recycling and some get added to shredded and some goes into my ewaste pile. It's the best I can do right now but it does not mean I won't find a way to profit from plastics as well.


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 11, 2011)

Morning All – when I had the vision/obsession for recycling, plastic was the main problem, along with CRT glass.

The only solution that was beneficial to my recycling program was to develop and understand pyrolysis – 1kg of mixed plastic has the energy potential of approx. 33MJ, of which only 10% is required to keep the pyrolysis system going.

Years ago I mixed 50/50 distilled pyrolysis liquid (b.p. 30 to 120deg C) and gasoline, the motor mower ran like a dream, better than before.

Food for thought.

Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

I have watched a few videos showing that very thing. Maybe we should all build our own fuel refineries. Do you know of a way to make a gas fuel from it rather than a liquid fuel?


----------



## Geo (Sep 11, 2011)

from what i understand it comes out as a gas and needs to be distilled into a liquid.


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 11, 2011)

Morning All – There are two approaches to collecting just gas:

1. Condense the off gas/liquid product, keep the gas and feed the liquid back into the burner
2. Add a catalyst to the plastic (aluminium chloride anhydrous), this will allow the reactor to be run at lower temperatures 300 to 400deg.C and the product is mainly gas in the form of mostly the monomer of the starting plastics.

I store the gas in a truck inner-tube.

As forum members are becoming aware of my fondness for pyrolysis, I should get together a start to finish of a simple pyro unit with lots of pictures, with the hope of sparking new ideas and maybe help other reek the benefits of Pyrolysis.

In the seventies and eighties there was a big push for the development of this technology, in my view they over complicated the process leading to eventual failure, as a result, investors became very very weary, even to this day.



Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

Cheap or efficient fuel is not something that investors would be interested in. They are out to make the most money, not help the environment or the people. 
Could this gas be compressed into a liquid form, such as Liquid Propane is? If so, it could be stored in metal tanks, just as the Liquid Propane is. I would be interested in seeing some pictures and learning more about the process you use. 
Thank You, Claude


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 11, 2011)

Claudie said:


> Could this gas be compressed into a liquid form, such as Liquid Propane is? If so, it could be stored in metal tanks, just as the Liquid Propane is. I would be interested in seeing some pictures and learning more about the process you use.
> Thank You, Claude



Hi Claudie - The gas product is a mixture, contains hydrogen, methane, ethylene, etc. the partial preasure of the mixed gas makes it very difficult to compress.

Methane biogesters tend to use very large rubber bladders for this reason and hence the inner tube I use.

Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

How much fuel, would you guess, could be refined from 500 Kilograms of plastics?


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 11, 2011)

Claudie said:


> How much fuel, would you guess, could be refined from 500 Kilograms of plastics?



Hi Glaudie – The products of pyrolysis are rather a large jumble of compounds, from low molecular gases to high molecular oligomers (wax like). 

The fractional distillation of the liquid fraction can yield a fuel suitable for the average automobile; however, it should be diluted with either ethanol or petrol due to the high aromatic content, which has the potential to eat away at the rubber in carburettors. Has a high Octane number.

Due to the different partial pressures of the gas mix, it is very difficult to pressurise, the presents of hydrogen gas in particular.

I like to incorporate the pyrolysis unit into the exhaust of my furnace, this way I can run the furnace from the pyrolysis vapours fed directly into the burner. 

I have often wondered about using such a unit to heat water for say, swimming pools, hot pools, industrial cleaning, and the list goes on.

Here’s a good example, I was contacted by a rubbish transfer station owner who wanted me to design and build a ten tonne capacity green waste drier, based on using the extra heat from pyrolysis of plastic. The theory behind this was to reduce the weight (removing water) of the green waste so they would pay less for tipping, as prices are based on tonnage. I said NO, purely on moral grounds.



Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

NoIdea said:


> Claudie said:
> 
> 
> > How much fuel, would you guess, could be refined from 500 Kilograms of plastics?
> ...



Can you explain that statement with more detail? I am not sure I understand what you mean.


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 11, 2011)

Hi Glaudie – Hmm ok, I can see the ambiguity in my statement. Try this.

I have a furnace which runs on waste engine oil, this furnace has an exhaust vent/flue, it is here the reactor is placed, utilizing the waste heat from the furnace, paralyzing the plastic, producing fuel for the furnace, at which point the start-up fuel is turned off.

Note: Once the plastic is running to completion, the start up fuel is turned back on to crack some of the oligomer products sitting on the bottom of the reactor along with carbon residue.

How that?


Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 11, 2011)

I understand now. It sounds like you have a nice set up there. I have been looking for a way to heat the small building that I do what I do in. Something like this would solve two problems at once. I would have a place for the plastics and I would get heat from it. I am in Iowa, we can have some pretty brutal winters here. 

If there is anything that you would like to share with me about the construction of your setup, my e-mail address is [email protected]


----------



## amxfan (Sep 13, 2011)

Great info here and I thank you all for it.

Honestly a lot of what was said went way over my head but then again I'm not a chemist. 

@Noidea

I'm working on building a furnace like the one shown here http://en.howtopedia.org/wiki/How_to_Treat_Hospital_Waste The only difference is mine is going to be a little bigger. My plan is to power it with a waste oil burner like the one seen here http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/oilburners02.html I'm still waiting on a few pieces and parts to put it all together. My question is when I hear the word reactor I think nuclear. Can you please explain in layman's terms what goes in the flue and how it catches the gas. I'm also not real sure on how to connect it back into the waste oil holding tank. lastly you burn the plastic and capture the gas to reuse it "if I'm following" do you burn the plastic when you incinerate other products? and use the recaptured gas to fuel the flame or is it just a way to get rid of the plastic. 

My goal with the furnace is to incinerate the boards at about 1100F - 1500F then pulverize them with with a rig very similar to yours. From there I'm not sure yet lol. I have been looking at electrowinning cells but all the ones I can find "to see how they are made" use cyanide with S/S cathodes. I want to stay away from cyanide but I'm finding it very hard to find out what anodes and cathodes are used and what flow rate when used in a Sulfuric solution. But that's another thread on another day,


----------



## Geo (Sep 13, 2011)

actually when you pyrolize something it should never burn. i guess it would be more like bake instead. the sealed unit should never have enough oxygen to support combustion, if it did it would surely explode. plastic is really only a small percentage of solid material and the rest is oils and resins. plastic can be compared to ice, as long as the temperature is cool enough it stays solid but if it warms enough it becomes a liquid and the resins evaporate when it reaches this liquid state and turns into a gas. when you cool this gas back down a percentage turns back into a liquid. almost the same way they refine oil into gasoline.


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 13, 2011)

Morning Amxfan – Geo is very correct about not having air in your reactor. Reactor is defined, in this case, as a sealed vessel where thermal chemical reactions occur, producing a solid, liquid, and gases.

The reason air is firstly removed and then prevented from entering the reaction vessel, is eliminate oxygenated and chlorinated by products (dioxins, chloro-carbons, etc) from being generated then released into the atmosphere.

I did look for a previous post where I uploaded this wee picture of mine outlining the basic principle of pyrolysis. Here it is again, sorry for the double up.




Correctly speaking, the unit you have in mind to build is an incinerator, where air is introduced into the reaction vessel. Pyrolysis, loosely speaking is a high temperature distillation unit.

Hope this helps in some way to clarify pyrolysis and the term reactor.

P.S. Try your best not to complicate your design, stay simple, less to go wrong.

Regards

Deano


----------



## Geo (Sep 13, 2011)

what kind of door or hatch do you use on your reaction vessel?


----------



## amxfan (Sep 13, 2011)

Thanks Geo. That helped.

I think I will get the other process down to a science before I worry about trying to incorporate plastic into the equation.

@Noidea

I'm not trying to make it to complicated, I'm just trying to make it run as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The idea of using waste oil sounds great since it removes the need of propane.


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 14, 2011)

amxfan said:


> @Noidea
> 
> I'm not trying to make it to complicated, I'm just trying to make it run as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The idea of using waste oil sounds great since it removes the need of propane.



Hi Amxfan – Sorry for the misunderstanding, the comment was not directed at you, it’s just a general comment I like to use. I have seen many processes with all the bells and whistles and the owners wonder why they are running around adjusting this and that.

Again, I apologise.

Now, enough of me trying to describe my unit, so here are a few pictures of its 
Construction.





The reactors (LPG bottle) door is easier to explain via a drawing rather than my dribbling.




The tube sticking out of the reactor (LPG bottle) extends into the reactor till about an inch from the top, or the bottom of bottle, depends on how you look at it.

The end of the tube (coming from the reactor) that goes into the furnace (another LPG bottle) goes into burner. This unit is started using wood chips and a blower, so in my case, the tube goes into the end of blower, about an inch from the exit end of the blower tube.





After it’s all assembled, yet another LPG bottle acts as a flue and heating chamber. An outer skin made of heat resistant material (Rockwool?) is required for better efficiency.

BTW: Other than the cost of a cutting wheel and a little power, the cost building this unit was nil.

Regards

Deano


----------



## Claudie (Sep 14, 2011)

Thank you Deano, for taking the time to load the pictures and explain this to us. Am I safe to assume that this unit uses a low CFM blower


----------



## Geo (Sep 14, 2011)

very inventive. my aluminum smelter is a 100# propane bottle on its side with a small frame to keep it from bending in the middle. the blower goes in from the bottom and the flame is directed to the top end where the aluminum puddles. a square hole in the top to feed and i wrap the top end about a foot and a half with fiberglass insulation. it gets hot enough to collapse under its own weight without the frame for support. i can pour about 1,000 pounds of ingots with 1 100# bottle of fuel. the propane tends to freeze in the tank after 30-40 minutes of running so i cut a plastic drum in half and place the bottle inside and fill with water. i can tell when im running low on fuel when the tank starts to float. :lol:


----------



## NoIdea (Sep 14, 2011)

Claudie said:


> Thank you Deano, for taking the time to load the pictures and explain this to us. Am I safe to assume that this unit uses a low CFM blower



Hi Claudie - The blower is a very special design, I call it a vacuum cleaner :mrgreen: 

Deano


----------



## Geo (Sep 14, 2011)

lol. i use the same type of blower. mines an old canister type.


----------



## Claudie (Sep 14, 2011)

A vacuum cleaner, hmm. Never heard of such a thing. I have a few draft inducer blowers left over from my days in the heating & cooling field, I think one of them will do.


----------



## joem (Sep 15, 2011)

Claudie said:


> A vacuum cleaner, hmm. Never heard of such a thing. I have a few draft inducer blowers left over from my days in the heating & cooling field, I think one of them will do.



Yeah my wife says I never heard of a vucuum cleaner either


----------



## Claudie (Sep 15, 2011)

:lol: LOL


----------

