"Gold" from plastic bottle

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In the US state of Maryland was first shown in the plant receives oil from ... refined petroleum products - plastic trash.

Plastic transformed the modern world. Today, it is found everywhere - in homes, where we live, in a pot, with which we eat, packaged in consumer and industrial equipment, clothing and shoes. Plastic warms and protects us, entertains and transports. The text of the notes typed using a plastic keyboard and looking at the display case and many details which are made of plastic. But this abundance is, as always, and the reverse side.
The plastics industry is growing steadily, over the past 50 years it has increased by 20 times - up to 260 million tons per year. Extremely bad decompose under natural conditions, it forms deposits, whole mountains and islands, almost devoid of life. On the largest of them we wrote in the article "The Great Garbage way." All massive programs for recycling and re-use are not effective enough - according to experts, in the United States less than 4% recycled plastic - about 2 million tons per year. In this 46 million is simply thrown out, accumulate in nature. So the problem of plastic still require effective solutions.





Developers Envion companies offer to recall the origin of plastic - that it is made from oil and gas, and thus contains a lot of chemical energy is not generated, which means to throw just throwing money away. That is why Envion was tasked to learn how to make full use of this valuable energy resource. After 15 years, the solution presented to the public.

Developers plant was designed Envion Oil Generator (EOG), the reactor is in a low-temperature vacuum holds a non-catalytic cracking of plastics, polymers, expanding to more short-chain hydrocarbons. The output is suitable for the use of energy, similar to the natural oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons. Development reaches 62% of the original weight of the plastic. Furthermore, during operation emits oxygen and carbon dioxide (in very small amounts) and some residual coal ash.



Construction EOG is designed in such a way that the plant he feeds himself, using some of the products of the reaction to produce the necessary energy. The current version of EOG almost Mobility: she is going on a movable platform sizes of 14, 3x4 m, and is able to process annually up to 10 thousand. Tons of plastic, producing each ton of 3-5 barrels of oil (ie, more than one million gallons per year). Each such "generator oil" may be increased in scale by simply adding new reactors without the need for expansion of the entire system.

With the plastic substrate prior to the reaction, it is in this sense EOG almost omnivorous. He is able to simultaneously process a mixture of polymers of different structure and degree of density, almost all of which are widely used in modern industry. According to the developers, EOG can "umyat" from 60 to 80% by weight of a variety of plastics waste - and turn them into oil.

Thus this method of disposal of plastic is very inexpensive and requires only about 30 US dollars per ton - compared with 200 dollars, which are necessary when using other existing methods. However, even more effective and simple way of turning waste into effective energy can give us the bacteria



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