Hi Stocktrain , I am sure the company believes its plant uses less energy than what is in the diesel output , I just have my reservations based on what is available in the media and looking at the retort they have the energy to maintain that at guessing 500 C continually would seem high :
Dynamotive tried converting bio mass via pyrolysis , (which I would have thought would have been an easier task than plastics as shorter carbon chains ) they went under - (ensyn technologies does pyralysis profitably but with bio mass (wood))
Then there is/was Cynar that had Rockwell Automation (ROK cap $20B) work with them , they put in three pyrolysis plants in Europe , but do not hear anything of them now .
There was a paper put out by the City University of New York that showed about a 40% increase in prodn by adding 50% plastic to a bio mass feedstock for a gasification plant -page 33 however if you work out the MMbtu of the methane produced it is still less than the energy put into heating it initially, 0.18MMbtu goin in and 0.1259MM Btu in the methane produced yet one would think gasification is inherently more energy efficient than pyrolysis !
But it does Seems a lot more simpler and more energy efficient to gassify the plastic into syngas then use the syngas as a reducing agent in iron blast furnaces
Or maybe use the plastic as feed stock in a combined heat and power plant (CHP plant ) if the scrubber tech is up to spech ?
Or alternatively add the plastic feed stock to a Fluidised Bed catalytic cracking unit as found in oil refineries.
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