If we can’t recycle it, why not turn our waste plastic into fuel?
Follow me as I dip my toes in this topic and perhaps find the best plastic to turn into fuel for diesel or even petrol engines.
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How plastic to energy works
Plastic is made from refined crude oil. Its price and production are dictated by the petrochemical industry and the availability of oil. As oil is a finite natural resource, the most sustainable option would be to reduce crude oil consumption by recycling plastic and recovering as much of the raw material as possible.
There are two types of recycling: mechanical and chemical. Mechanical recycling involves sorting, cleaning, and shredding plastic to make pellets, which can then be fashioned into other products. This approach works very well if plastic wastes are sorted according to their chemical composition.
Chemical recycling, in contrast, turns the plastic into an energy carrier or feedstock for fuels. There are two different processes by which this can be done: gasification and pyrolysis.
Gasification involves heating the waste plastic with air or steam, to produce a valuable industrial gas mixture called “synthesis gas”, or syngas. This can then be used to produce diesel and petrol or burned directly in boilers to generate electricity.
In pyrolysis, plastic waste is heated in the absence of oxygen, which produces a mixture of oil similar to crude oil. This can be further refined into transportation fuels.
Gasification and pyrolysis are completely different processes to simply incinerating the plastic. The main goal of incineration is simply to destroy the waste, thus keeping it out of the landfill. The heat released from incineration might be used to produce steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity, but this is only a by-product.
Gasification and pyrolysis can produce electricity or fuels, and provide more flexible ways of storing energy than incineration. They also have much lower emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides than incineration.
Currently, incineration plants are viewed as an alternative energy supply source and a modern way of driving a circular economy, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and China, where land is valuable and energy resources are scarce. In other countries, although waste incineration is common practice, the debate around human health impacts, supply issues, and fuel trade incentives remains unresolved.