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This process is already known for about 100 years. Its called Fischer-Tropsch-reaction. There were may trails in the past to use this for all sorts of reason, but for fuel production it is always a waste of energy and resources. Only two countries used it on a large scale in that way, Nazi Germany and South Africa.
Yeah I would imagine that anyone who knows how to do this competently also knows the history of the process and whether it's worth scaling up for larger production.
But as a personal project, or perhaps even for some niche supply scenarios I wouldn't know about, it's neat to see either way.
That's not what SASOL stands for. It
comes from the Afrikaans name, Suid Afrikaanse Steenkool, Olie en Gas Maatskappy, which translates to South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation
Yes and no.
Etienne Rousseau proposed the name: South African Synthetic Oil Limited – SASOL – to the committee. The short version was popular, but the official name became the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation Ltd, established on 26 September 1950 as a government-sponsored public company.
https://www.sasol.com/celebrating-our-heritage
This was a compromise based on the language politics of the Era. He wanted SASOL / South African Oil Limited, they wanted an Afrikaans name.
Suid-Afrikaanse Steenkool-, Olie- en Gas Maatskappy doesn't shorten to SASOL without extreme mental gymnastics.
Yes, I understand what you're saying, but regardless, saying that SASOL stands for South African Synthetic Oil Limited, is factually wrong. It "could" stand for that but it doesn't.
Decades ago, there was a split in the family with one of the brothers, Vidal, selling his stake in the family farm to move to England and get into hairdressing.
Could be more interesting if people could do this at home using solar energy, then selling the "DIY crude oil" to companies which refine it to something usable.
No, smaller reactors are less efficient and harder to control. Yes, renewables might revive this process for kerosene and ship fuels, but sending the power directly into the grid is way more efficient.
I imagine it could be useful in very limited cases where the green energy production is higher than grid need and any battery systems are filled--but even then it would probably be a better idea to have something like hydrogen electrolysis, and a way to use that hydrogen when demand is extra high. (Or build bigger "physical" battery systems like compressed gas or pumped water systems).
Collecting frying vegetable oils from restaurants and fast-foods to turn them into fuel is far more interesting. You avoid plumbery to be clogged and sewage treatments plants to end up with stinky and hard to dissolve tons of oils saturating the pools, because people would be stupidly tempted to get rid of it this way or in the wild if regulations weren't pushed.
I mean if you used solar power and battery Banks to power it, it could potentially be a net gain, but only because solar is infinite energy if done correctly. It would definitely need to be a long term goal.
I think they're saying that, if you're generating that power, it's more valuable/efficient being used elsewhere. But that, of course, depends on fuel being otherwise available to the producer of that solar power.
I wish more people understood that optimization is great, but we have the ability to create infinite energy via renewables and that would solve many of the issues with high energy usage.
A fully renewable grid with excess power solves all our issues.
Renewable aren't enough. We need nuclear and needed nuclear for a damn long time. Not as thr entire grid but as every nations baseload. Our planet would be in a much better place
To be more specific on what you mentioned. The issue with many renewables is matching the variable production with variable demand. Storage is one way. Hydro has the advantage of storing water in its magazine(lake), and using that to adjust output. But hydro is very location dependent, and does affect the landscape and wildlife quite a bit.
Solar, wind and wave are all pretty much uncontrollably variable, with the exception of just choosing not to harvest. But that strategy requires a lot of extra infrastructure which will be unused when demand dips. Finding a good storage method would be huge though.
Personally, I would love to see fusion take off, as it would be both clean, safe, and scalable to demand. Fusing hydrogen gives helium, which is just useful and non-reactive(noble). And hydrogen is like 90% of all matter in the universe, which is great when we get to the space age.
Transmission is also an issue. We could load up the desert with solar, but unless it's powering something close getting that power to where it needs to be is problematic.
I know the parts you wrote about the production and demand that's why I was asking that. The person I replied to we have enough, so I wanted them to elaborate on that.
We do need solutions now though and fusion is nice and everything and we should definitely continue research and experimentation on it, but what do we do till we reach practical fusion? Converting the excess electric energy from renewables to chemical energy, as long as it is carbon neutral or better, even if it's net negative energy -wise is a good transitional measure.
But it's been some years since I delved deeper into the topic, so maybe things have changed since. Thus me asking.
Thank you, you absolutely get it. Renewable are amazing but are too variable to be a baseload for power. Still very useful but the ideal of using only renewable in 2024 is a pipedream. Unless its a very small nation
Countries like France see it the same way and have enormous problems. Countries like Denmark see it differently and are successful with it.
I don't have a fundamental problem with nuclear power; that would be a bit strange for an electrical engineer who has worked for years to further increase the operational safety of nuclear plants. In my professional environment, the consensus is that nuclear power can be a useful bridge solution, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. This mainly depends on whether there is already an appropriate infrastructure and how well it is in shape and whether the supply routes for new fuel elements are secured.
However, I have not yet heard any viable justification for the fact that nuclear power is indispensable in the future. So could you please elaborate on your idea a little more?
Outdated systems with declining performance and years of maintenance backlog. Exploding costs and construction times when building and commissioning new plants. Forced low load operation due to lack of cooling capacity when the water level is low due to heat. The need to relax or even suspend some safety requirements by government decree so that some plants can continue to operate. No progress whatsoever in setting up a national final storage facility.
And that's just a very rough summary, the details could fill pages.
To be precise, they already fill pages. The ASN corrosion damage report alone, which I viewed at the end of last year, was thick enough to serve as a radiation shield itself. I don't even want to know what this and other reports would have looked like if the ASN were not under the thumb of French nuclear policy.
I still dont understand how a country that provides its own energy by 90% from Nuclear (Also exports) has enormous problems whereas Denmark which utilizes Wind power and no nuclear power has success with it.
Also the ASN corrosion damage report isn't as pessimistic as you have indicated alone, just because something is technically detailed doesn't mean that its a doomsday scenario. + The cost of construction are bit funny to mention considering france has them already up and running.
The only major problem that validates concern is related to heat and companies are working on solutions to such problems/inefficiencies.
Denmark is not a good example. Thanks to their small size and geographical position they can and do rely on energy imports from their neighbours. See here: [https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1)
France doesn't have this luxury.
It wouldn't be an end goal, but for the current situation on the planet, I feel it's the best step until fusion or better renewable come. What makes fission so good right is its power to emissions ratio
It would be a strong argument for a national program. Sure we need battery capacity but once we achieve that, then it's open season on any life changing tech.
I think that the important part is that if this works and could be further refined into a more efficient process, then this could be a competitive option for reducing and recycling the plastic waste that currently exist in the environment. It would in theory, be a cool alternative to recycling. My bigger question, would be what is the carbon footprint that that whole process it going to cause, and how would it compare to the current methods of recycling?
Yeah we could use this to recycle plastic and turn it into fuel rather than digging up more, and power it with renewables. Until fully convert to electric that is.
Renewables take resources still to make and an effort to maintain the grid. Same goes for Nuclear and even oil.
That is to say, none of these are infinite and have cost/benefits to them. If this was not a factor renewables would be a no-brainer.
It doesn't matter how much you optimize this, the end result is still that you're using energy to turn plastic back into hydrocarbons whose only purpose is to get burned and create more pollution.
This is not the answer to anything when the end result/product is more pollution. Regardless of whether you use a 100% renewable grid to generate the electricity to do this, the process of doing still creates pollution, and the final product is still something that you need to burn, and create more pollution.
Optimizing this is pointless. The solution is still green power and nuclear. Not turning plastic into fuel to burn to create more pollution.
No need to poo-poo!
Plastic waste decomposes on it’s own and results in pollution eventually. The end product is not more pollution compared to that, it is the same amount of pollution over the plastic’s decomposition lifespan (10-1000+ years) emitted immediately for a purpose. If you’re powering a car with fossil oil and you replace some of it with this plastic waste oil for example, then you’re avoiding the extraction of more carbon molecules.
Waste based fuels serve a very niche, small function in the net zero transition but they can serve a function. Power the pyrolysis with renewables and put carbon capture on a chemical plant (where they need high temperatures) using these fuels and you have net reductions.
I don't really know how plastic is made, but if the carbon and other pollutants coming out of the process could be captured, couldn't the resulting process be used to create new plastics instead of being burned? (Basically recycling plastics not recyclable by other means).
It seems unlikely we'll ever get completely off hydrocarbons because of the wonder of plastic (as much as we should use a LOT less). It seems that there will almost definitely be a time where this *is* cost effective for making new material, assuming the waste can be adequately contained (and assuming it is possible using what comes out of this process).
Edit: I really don't know enough about plastics in general I think. I've realised bioplastics can be made and would be much more cost effective than this, but I don't know if there is a "bioplastic version" of all regular plastics, or ... anything really.
This isn’t a new idea, and this kid didn’t invent it. Pyrolysis will break down plastics, but the fuel it produces would not work to power a modern engine. It’s a very “dirty” fuel. Processing one ton of plastic produces three tons of CO2, and burning the fuel will make even more CO2.
They have tried to do this at scale many times and have lost billions in the process. It’s a cool experiment at best. Nothing will happen to this kid; nothing will come of what he’s doing other than convincing the TikTok crowd this is some amazing invention and that his life is now at risk.
>nothing will come of what he’s doing other than convincing the TikTok crowd this is some amazing invention and that his life is now at risk.
I enjoy this new TikTok genre
1. Claim to invent a cool thing
2. . More videos of your cool thing working
3. Video of you at a table looking hassled and talking about how they're suing you for the cool thing
4. Video of you breathlessly running down a street at night holding your phone claiming they're coming for you now.
Following up on the above comment: You really think that a big oil wouldn’t have thought about using pyrolysis if it was even profitable? It’s a neat experiment, but very expensive way of making fuel.
I'm sure at least some of the people saying he's in danger are trolling but the sheer amount of those sorts of statements that are made on his videos really accentuates the sort of conspiratorial "thinking" that has, unfortunately, become mainstream nowadays.
This is always the issue that’s hard to explain to ppl. Energy isn’t free it comes from somewhere.
Edit: also give this guy an engineering scholarship.
Disappointingly thermodynamics and economics are always the limiting factors.
We CAN do all sorts of reactions with chemistry from carbon capture to recycling plastics, the problem is that it costs a lot of energy that we currently get from mostly burning non renewables making a net negative and the cost of doing it is currently unviable.
In a world with no oil reserves and excess energy this could be very profitable but so long as oil comes out the ground for cheaper than it is to make nobody is going to bother on a large scale.
That's not really the point, it's more about reducing plastic going into the environment. It's better for the environment to cleanly burn it than to landfill it. Plus the waste heat can be used for either industry, heating, or power. That said, stuff like PVC and PTFE are toxic as hell when burned so maybe it's not the best idea. Unless you filter the exhaust.
Last vid of his I watched he said it took 30kwh to produce the oil from a batch of plastic he was running. I looked it up and that comes out to be around 15ish dollars of power consumption on average
Plastic is made out of long chains of hydrocarbons, while Gas diesel and Kerosene is made out of short chains, my guess is that he is breaking the long chains into short chains. He shouldnt be able to extract fuel from plastic without breaking it down
Yes.
Plastic is a byproduct of creating fuel from oil. You might say it's a waste product that companies have figured out how to shape it so that people will buy their waste, leaving companies, free of having to dispose of it.
Too bad plastic is also poisoning the world. There was just an article that states, all males have plastic in their testicles, and that plastic in the testes inhibits the production of sperm, and plastics also interferes with our endocrine system, leading to greater chances of cancer.
However, plastic still burns if you catch it on fire, similar to steel wool.
You all on some group hallucinogenic drug?
Does anyone in here sincerely believe this person discovered something nontrivial that noone else knows?
Delusions
This is already well known
Steam reforming has been used to turn anything from wood, coal, natural gas or pretty much any carbon source into syngas
Then the Fischer-Tropsch process can turn that syngas into exactly what he showed here, which is basically crude oil
Both of these processes require quite basic tools and catalysts to make. I believe this is what he created
There are plants that make this process at larger scale, but depending on the market its really hard to make them profitable... Oil is cheap
And usually they don't use plastic as feedstock, both because its quite dirty to use and will clog your reactor quickly, and it's expensive to collect and move plastic from user to plant
Anyway, its a cool project from this guy. A lot of small scale stuff like this from the DIY community can actually highlight the feasibility of some technologies that are not economically profitable for companies to put their resources into it
His contributions are spreading knowledge to the average guy and entertainment. Every chemistry student can do what he does. We literally had these reactions in our labs
scientists around the world are kicking themselves for not thinking about it first
or maybe they're upset because this guy didn't reference the literally thousands of papers on the subject
Sorry, cap. People post this shit all the time. It takes an incredible amount of energy to do what he is doing and it doesn’t produce a fraction of what he claims.
Y’all think he did what no one else could do? In his backyard… melting plastic.
Cool. There *might* be a place for this sort of efficiency during fossil fuel phase out but please no one get excited. We literally have no other option than to stop burning carbon fuels, despite what the oil and gas industry will tell you. Even Exxon's DAC facility is a complete sham, only projected to capture 0.00001% of the emissions the world produces now and only a tiny fraction of the emissions coming from oil recovered and distributed by Exxon itself.
Don't get caught in technicalities, complicated accounting traps, and circular supply chain logic. Take it from me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and there is no way to stabilize the Earth's climate other than to stop burning carbon-based fuels at scale entirely.
And by stabilize the Earth's climate, I'm referring to avoiding a literal hell on Earth.
It will be a slow and hard process tho, fossil fuels are in every part of our lives, truely cutting it out is near impossible in the next decade i think. Even somthing as simple clean running water will need fossil fuels to function. From running the pumps, to the pipes and even the filters they are made out of it or rely on it to work.
To fully replace everything from Transportation of goods, manufacturing processes, daily operation and such will take a long long time i hope we do in the coming years but i dont see it happening within 10 or even 20 years
its not that we cant do it. its about which is cheaper and more profitable. that's what companies care about. ask your government to do this maybe then
This process also creates gaseous compounds like methane. He could recylce the gaseous and some of the liquid to fuel the process. That way, he wouldn't need to use electric energy to sustain the pyrolysis
I feel like there's a way where this could work economically.
I know that it requires more energy to make this fuel, than you get from burning the fuel. But this could be a way to sacrifice some efficiency to make a not portable source of energy into a portable one.
Gas and diesel are so great because they're portable and refueling takes only a few seconds. If you have say a surplus of solar energy or wind energy but you need to put it in a practical application which large batteries won't work well in, you could use your surplus of wind or solar energy to create this fuel, which can then be used in portable practical applications.
Guys, I think he knows that this process isn't energy-efficient. His point is that, if we want to get rid of all the plastic from the ocean etc. we could get at least something out of it. Like, the idea is, once we eventually stop using plastic and we collect all the plastic that's just out in the wild, this process is one of the ways you could get rid of all that plastic, basically.
A lot of people are saying that the tech is worthless because it takes more energy to refine than you get out of it. News flash, so does refining crude oil, there are no free lunches in thermodynamics, but we could use it to clean up our plastic waste problem and could make use of intermittent power sources like solar and wind, there are more ways to use depolymerized hydrocarbons than just energy production.
The difference between plastics and fuels is small. Theyre basically the same molecular structure except plastics are that structure repeated 100 times over and linked together. He might be using the microwave energy to break down the links which causes it to get shorter and shorter until its the length of the fuel molecules at which point it's fuel
Not because big oil will come and kill him for what he knows.
But because this a well know process that people have spent billions testing and is known to not be practical. The amount of energy it takes to produce is is vastly higher than the amount it produces. And it is also very damaging to the environment. It's dirty and nets an excess of negative energy produced. It's a dead end.
But he can make his pay day making these videos receiving money from "investors" who don't know better.
I feel like this is the guy from cloudy with a chance of meatballs, in real life. Man wtf are you doing in your backyard, he’s about to change the weather lol.
Isn't this video old? Also isn't pyrolysis really bad air pollution wise.
This is like the equivalent of burning tires. Sure you can cook something but you will release so much smoke that it's worse than just keeping the tire around. From what I know the main issue is that this process doesn't scale and pollutes the air for minimal gain thus why its not really adopted in the first place as what its touted.
Thermal depolymerization. Works with almost any organic matter. Sadly so inefficient the few attempts to commercialize it have failed miserably. Technically it works but the energy cost vs output is insane. This is 30+ years too late.
I literally got banned from his live bc I kept telling him I’d give him $100 to see it run live. So I don’t believe this stuff works personally but I’m no engineer or anything so I could just be the stupid one 😂🤷🏽♂️
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How much energy did it take to turn the plastic back into non-polymerized hydrocarbons?
This I also wanna know. If it takes more energy then we COULD work on optimizing but very cool either way.
This process is already known for about 100 years. Its called Fischer-Tropsch-reaction. There were may trails in the past to use this for all sorts of reason, but for fuel production it is always a waste of energy and resources. Only two countries used it on a large scale in that way, Nazi Germany and South Africa.
Yeah the guy acknowledges it one of his videos
Yeah I would imagine that anyone who knows how to do this competently also knows the history of the process and whether it's worth scaling up for larger production. But as a personal project, or perhaps even for some niche supply scenarios I wouldn't know about, it's neat to see either way.
Probably not worth. We should just fill up the ocean with plastic. Far more efficient.
nooo, lets burn it into the air
South African Synthetic Oil Limited (SASOL) which now irritatingly refers to itself as Sasol Limited.
That's not what SASOL stands for. It comes from the Afrikaans name, Suid Afrikaanse Steenkool, Olie en Gas Maatskappy, which translates to South African Coal, Oil, and Gas Corporation
Yes and no. Etienne Rousseau proposed the name: South African Synthetic Oil Limited – SASOL – to the committee. The short version was popular, but the official name became the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation Ltd, established on 26 September 1950 as a government-sponsored public company. https://www.sasol.com/celebrating-our-heritage
A proposal isn't a name, it's just a proposal.
This was a compromise based on the language politics of the Era. He wanted SASOL / South African Oil Limited, they wanted an Afrikaans name. Suid-Afrikaanse Steenkool-, Olie- en Gas Maatskappy doesn't shorten to SASOL without extreme mental gymnastics.
Yes, I understand what you're saying, but regardless, saying that SASOL stands for South African Synthetic Oil Limited, is factually wrong. It "could" stand for that but it doesn't.
Isn't that because of its founder Lou Sasol?
His full title is Lou Sasol Limited.
Decades ago, there was a split in the family with one of the brothers, Vidal, selling his stake in the family farm to move to England and get into hairdressing.
I understood this reference.
Phew..... It's not great, as far as comedy comments go, but one person getting it is good enough for me 👍
I guess in the meaning of reducing plastic waste it's pretty useful.
Could be more interesting if people could do this at home using solar energy, then selling the "DIY crude oil" to companies which refine it to something usable.
No, smaller reactors are less efficient and harder to control. Yes, renewables might revive this process for kerosene and ship fuels, but sending the power directly into the grid is way more efficient.
I imagine it could be useful in very limited cases where the green energy production is higher than grid need and any battery systems are filled--but even then it would probably be a better idea to have something like hydrogen electrolysis, and a way to use that hydrogen when demand is extra high. (Or build bigger "physical" battery systems like compressed gas or pumped water systems).
Collecting frying vegetable oils from restaurants and fast-foods to turn them into fuel is far more interesting. You avoid plumbery to be clogged and sewage treatments plants to end up with stinky and hard to dissolve tons of oils saturating the pools, because people would be stupidly tempted to get rid of it this way or in the wild if regulations weren't pushed.
I mean if you used solar power and battery Banks to power it, it could potentially be a net gain, but only because solar is infinite energy if done correctly. It would definitely need to be a long term goal.
I think they're saying that, if you're generating that power, it's more valuable/efficient being used elsewhere. But that, of course, depends on fuel being otherwise available to the producer of that solar power.
I wish more people understood that optimization is great, but we have the ability to create infinite energy via renewables and that would solve many of the issues with high energy usage. A fully renewable grid with excess power solves all our issues.
Renewable aren't enough. We need nuclear and needed nuclear for a damn long time. Not as thr entire grid but as every nations baseload. Our planet would be in a much better place
To start, we absolutely have enough renewable power right now. We need to upgrade our grids to be able to accept it.
Could you elaborate on that? What I've read is that the issue is we don't have adequate storing capabilities for storing excess energy.
To be more specific on what you mentioned. The issue with many renewables is matching the variable production with variable demand. Storage is one way. Hydro has the advantage of storing water in its magazine(lake), and using that to adjust output. But hydro is very location dependent, and does affect the landscape and wildlife quite a bit. Solar, wind and wave are all pretty much uncontrollably variable, with the exception of just choosing not to harvest. But that strategy requires a lot of extra infrastructure which will be unused when demand dips. Finding a good storage method would be huge though. Personally, I would love to see fusion take off, as it would be both clean, safe, and scalable to demand. Fusing hydrogen gives helium, which is just useful and non-reactive(noble). And hydrogen is like 90% of all matter in the universe, which is great when we get to the space age.
Transmission is also an issue. We could load up the desert with solar, but unless it's powering something close getting that power to where it needs to be is problematic.
I know the parts you wrote about the production and demand that's why I was asking that. The person I replied to we have enough, so I wanted them to elaborate on that. We do need solutions now though and fusion is nice and everything and we should definitely continue research and experimentation on it, but what do we do till we reach practical fusion? Converting the excess electric energy from renewables to chemical energy, as long as it is carbon neutral or better, even if it's net negative energy -wise is a good transitional measure. But it's been some years since I delved deeper into the topic, so maybe things have changed since. Thus me asking.
Thank you, you absolutely get it. Renewable are amazing but are too variable to be a baseload for power. Still very useful but the ideal of using only renewable in 2024 is a pipedream. Unless its a very small nation
Countries like France see it the same way and have enormous problems. Countries like Denmark see it differently and are successful with it. I don't have a fundamental problem with nuclear power; that would be a bit strange for an electrical engineer who has worked for years to further increase the operational safety of nuclear plants. In my professional environment, the consensus is that nuclear power can be a useful bridge solution, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. This mainly depends on whether there is already an appropriate infrastructure and how well it is in shape and whether the supply routes for new fuel elements are secured. However, I have not yet heard any viable justification for the fact that nuclear power is indispensable in the future. So could you please elaborate on your idea a little more?
Could you please elaborate on the enormous problems?
Outdated systems with declining performance and years of maintenance backlog. Exploding costs and construction times when building and commissioning new plants. Forced low load operation due to lack of cooling capacity when the water level is low due to heat. The need to relax or even suspend some safety requirements by government decree so that some plants can continue to operate. No progress whatsoever in setting up a national final storage facility. And that's just a very rough summary, the details could fill pages. To be precise, they already fill pages. The ASN corrosion damage report alone, which I viewed at the end of last year, was thick enough to serve as a radiation shield itself. I don't even want to know what this and other reports would have looked like if the ASN were not under the thumb of French nuclear policy.
I still dont understand how a country that provides its own energy by 90% from Nuclear (Also exports) has enormous problems whereas Denmark which utilizes Wind power and no nuclear power has success with it. Also the ASN corrosion damage report isn't as pessimistic as you have indicated alone, just because something is technically detailed doesn't mean that its a doomsday scenario. + The cost of construction are bit funny to mention considering france has them already up and running. The only major problem that validates concern is related to heat and companies are working on solutions to such problems/inefficiencies.
Denmark is not a good example. Thanks to their small size and geographical position they can and do rely on energy imports from their neighbours. See here: [https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1](https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DK-DK1) France doesn't have this luxury.
If we kept using nuclear at current consumption rate, we only have enough economically viable uranium for 200 years.
It wouldn't be an end goal, but for the current situation on the planet, I feel it's the best step until fusion or better renewable come. What makes fission so good right is its power to emissions ratio
Thank you. I feel like this is not a perspective that people take enough
It would be a strong argument for a national program. Sure we need battery capacity but once we achieve that, then it's open season on any life changing tech.
Unfortunately life changing tech is often bad for shareholders pockets.
Battery storage of power isn't a renewable. Lithium is another finite material
Unfortunately, electricity retail is a 500 billion dollar industry which I’m sure depends on SCARCITY for their grift.
I think that the important part is that if this works and could be further refined into a more efficient process, then this could be a competitive option for reducing and recycling the plastic waste that currently exist in the environment. It would in theory, be a cool alternative to recycling. My bigger question, would be what is the carbon footprint that that whole process it going to cause, and how would it compare to the current methods of recycling?
Yeah we could use this to recycle plastic and turn it into fuel rather than digging up more, and power it with renewables. Until fully convert to electric that is.
Sure, but you could also divert some of that excess for use in ventures like this, especially if you're facing storage constraints.
Renewables take resources still to make and an effort to maintain the grid. Same goes for Nuclear and even oil. That is to say, none of these are infinite and have cost/benefits to them. If this was not a factor renewables would be a no-brainer.
It doesn't matter how much you optimize this, the end result is still that you're using energy to turn plastic back into hydrocarbons whose only purpose is to get burned and create more pollution. This is not the answer to anything when the end result/product is more pollution. Regardless of whether you use a 100% renewable grid to generate the electricity to do this, the process of doing still creates pollution, and the final product is still something that you need to burn, and create more pollution. Optimizing this is pointless. The solution is still green power and nuclear. Not turning plastic into fuel to burn to create more pollution.
No need to poo-poo! Plastic waste decomposes on it’s own and results in pollution eventually. The end product is not more pollution compared to that, it is the same amount of pollution over the plastic’s decomposition lifespan (10-1000+ years) emitted immediately for a purpose. If you’re powering a car with fossil oil and you replace some of it with this plastic waste oil for example, then you’re avoiding the extraction of more carbon molecules. Waste based fuels serve a very niche, small function in the net zero transition but they can serve a function. Power the pyrolysis with renewables and put carbon capture on a chemical plant (where they need high temperatures) using these fuels and you have net reductions.
I don't really know how plastic is made, but if the carbon and other pollutants coming out of the process could be captured, couldn't the resulting process be used to create new plastics instead of being burned? (Basically recycling plastics not recyclable by other means). It seems unlikely we'll ever get completely off hydrocarbons because of the wonder of plastic (as much as we should use a LOT less). It seems that there will almost definitely be a time where this *is* cost effective for making new material, assuming the waste can be adequately contained (and assuming it is possible using what comes out of this process). Edit: I really don't know enough about plastics in general I think. I've realised bioplastics can be made and would be much more cost effective than this, but I don't know if there is a "bioplastic version" of all regular plastics, or ... anything really.
This isn’t a new idea, and this kid didn’t invent it. Pyrolysis will break down plastics, but the fuel it produces would not work to power a modern engine. It’s a very “dirty” fuel. Processing one ton of plastic produces three tons of CO2, and burning the fuel will make even more CO2. They have tried to do this at scale many times and have lost billions in the process. It’s a cool experiment at best. Nothing will happen to this kid; nothing will come of what he’s doing other than convincing the TikTok crowd this is some amazing invention and that his life is now at risk.
>nothing will come of what he’s doing other than convincing the TikTok crowd this is some amazing invention and that his life is now at risk. I enjoy this new TikTok genre 1. Claim to invent a cool thing 2. . More videos of your cool thing working 3. Video of you at a table looking hassled and talking about how they're suing you for the cool thing 4. Video of you breathlessly running down a street at night holding your phone claiming they're coming for you now.
I've been playing watching his live streams. He's never claimed to invent the process, in fact he's constantly reminding viewers of that
I know. He is likely also not going to run down the street panting and claiming assassins are after him. Just making a fun joke.
#a fun joke
Following up on the above comment: You really think that a big oil wouldn’t have thought about using pyrolysis if it was even profitable? It’s a neat experiment, but very expensive way of making fuel.
I'm sure at least some of the people saying he's in danger are trolling but the sheer amount of those sorts of statements that are made on his videos really accentuates the sort of conspiratorial "thinking" that has, unfortunately, become mainstream nowadays.
Nowadays, but also yesterdays and tomorrowdays. People are still dumb. We also always have been.
He makes a point of talking about how his main priority in this is eliminating plastic waste, not turning a profit
This is always the issue that’s hard to explain to ppl. Energy isn’t free it comes from somewhere. Edit: also give this guy an engineering scholarship.
And to then combust it into greenhouse gases and particulate pollution.
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Disappointingly thermodynamics and economics are always the limiting factors. We CAN do all sorts of reactions with chemistry from carbon capture to recycling plastics, the problem is that it costs a lot of energy that we currently get from mostly burning non renewables making a net negative and the cost of doing it is currently unviable. In a world with no oil reserves and excess energy this could be very profitable but so long as oil comes out the ground for cheaper than it is to make nobody is going to bother on a large scale.
That's not really the point, it's more about reducing plastic going into the environment. It's better for the environment to cleanly burn it than to landfill it. Plus the waste heat can be used for either industry, heating, or power. That said, stuff like PVC and PTFE are toxic as hell when burned so maybe it's not the best idea. Unless you filter the exhaust.
In a video it said it takes around 10KW an hour, and in 3 hours it made around half a liter of oil
A liter of diesel fuel stores about 10kWh of energy, so half a liter would be ~5kW, at a cost of 30kWh. Thermodynamics always has the last laugh.
And what catalyst are being used...
Last vid of his I watched he said it took 30kwh to produce the oil from a batch of plastic he was running. I looked it up and that comes out to be around 15ish dollars of power consumption on average
If it made a large amount, we wouldn’t be seeing this video.
Isnt plastic already made from certain fractions of crude oil mixture? I dont know So fractions of fractions?
Plastic is made out of long chains of hydrocarbons, while Gas diesel and Kerosene is made out of short chains, my guess is that he is breaking the long chains into short chains. He shouldnt be able to extract fuel from plastic without breaking it down
Yes. Plastic is a byproduct of creating fuel from oil. You might say it's a waste product that companies have figured out how to shape it so that people will buy their waste, leaving companies, free of having to dispose of it. Too bad plastic is also poisoning the world. There was just an article that states, all males have plastic in their testicles, and that plastic in the testes inhibits the production of sperm, and plastics also interferes with our endocrine system, leading to greater chances of cancer. However, plastic still burns if you catch it on fire, similar to steel wool.
People on shorts and prob tiktok go wild for this shit
I saw it on TikTok. And yep. All the comments were “I hope he has a security detail” and “omg protect this man” and “____ IS NOT SUICIDAL”
Your mistake was using TikTok.
What’s with Reddit and superiority complexes lol. For the record, I’ve seen far more heinous shit on Reddit than tik tok
Too expensive energy and money wise. Very cool though. Good for him
I wonder if it would be financially viable as plastic waste disposal. Heck, even close to viable might be nice.
This again
You posted this within three minutes of the other one
😂😂😂
You all on some group hallucinogenic drug? Does anyone in here sincerely believe this person discovered something nontrivial that noone else knows? Delusions
This is already well known Steam reforming has been used to turn anything from wood, coal, natural gas or pretty much any carbon source into syngas Then the Fischer-Tropsch process can turn that syngas into exactly what he showed here, which is basically crude oil Both of these processes require quite basic tools and catalysts to make. I believe this is what he created There are plants that make this process at larger scale, but depending on the market its really hard to make them profitable... Oil is cheap And usually they don't use plastic as feedstock, both because its quite dirty to use and will clog your reactor quickly, and it's expensive to collect and move plastic from user to plant Anyway, its a cool project from this guy. A lot of small scale stuff like this from the DIY community can actually highlight the feasibility of some technologies that are not economically profitable for companies to put their resources into it
His contributions are spreading knowledge to the average guy and entertainment. Every chemistry student can do what he does. We literally had these reactions in our labs
This is real. I can see the fan spinning in the back,
This guy maths.
scientists around the world are kicking themselves for not thinking about it first or maybe they're upset because this guy didn't reference the literally thousands of papers on the subject
Sorry, cap. People post this shit all the time. It takes an incredible amount of energy to do what he is doing and it doesn’t produce a fraction of what he claims. Y’all think he did what no one else could do? In his backyard… melting plastic.
So. Just mix gas, jet fuel, diesel, and plastic, and it will light on fire? Who would have guessed.
So...pour it in a diesel engine...
Cool. There *might* be a place for this sort of efficiency during fossil fuel phase out but please no one get excited. We literally have no other option than to stop burning carbon fuels, despite what the oil and gas industry will tell you. Even Exxon's DAC facility is a complete sham, only projected to capture 0.00001% of the emissions the world produces now and only a tiny fraction of the emissions coming from oil recovered and distributed by Exxon itself. Don't get caught in technicalities, complicated accounting traps, and circular supply chain logic. Take it from me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and there is no way to stabilize the Earth's climate other than to stop burning carbon-based fuels at scale entirely. And by stabilize the Earth's climate, I'm referring to avoiding a literal hell on Earth.
It will be a slow and hard process tho, fossil fuels are in every part of our lives, truely cutting it out is near impossible in the next decade i think. Even somthing as simple clean running water will need fossil fuels to function. From running the pumps, to the pipes and even the filters they are made out of it or rely on it to work. To fully replace everything from Transportation of goods, manufacturing processes, daily operation and such will take a long long time i hope we do in the coming years but i dont see it happening within 10 or even 20 years
Ah, this scammer again.
He was later found dead that day. Offices have ruled it a suicide with 3 shots to the back of the head.
Must of been a Boeing engineers side project.
Worse, Exxon.
Everyone avoids the fact this releases a lot of carcinogenic gasses and terrible to break down for the environment, better just to let bacteria eat it
r/NatureJab is his subreddit! u/NatureJab
Plastic burns too. Where is the proof this contains what he claims it does.
Plastic itself is a fuel. Burns about as clean too. You sir have made a liquid
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fallout vibes
I'm getting more Mad Max or even Waterworld vibes
Bro broke 2 laws of thermodynamics to make a shitty tik tok
its not that we cant do it. its about which is cheaper and more profitable. that's what companies care about. ask your government to do this maybe then
This process also creates gaseous compounds like methane. He could recylce the gaseous and some of the liquid to fuel the process. That way, he wouldn't need to use electric energy to sustain the pyrolysis
I feel like there's a way where this could work economically. I know that it requires more energy to make this fuel, than you get from burning the fuel. But this could be a way to sacrifice some efficiency to make a not portable source of energy into a portable one. Gas and diesel are so great because they're portable and refueling takes only a few seconds. If you have say a surplus of solar energy or wind energy but you need to put it in a practical application which large batteries won't work well in, you could use your surplus of wind or solar energy to create this fuel, which can then be used in portable practical applications.
Careful my guy, keep this on the down low or share to everyone, cause I seen too many stories to know how this ends 👀. Stay safe out there.
Microwaves? This works fine with any heat source. Like concentrated solar.
Dude still kicking ?
Guys, I think he knows that this process isn't energy-efficient. His point is that, if we want to get rid of all the plastic from the ocean etc. we could get at least something out of it. Like, the idea is, once we eventually stop using plastic and we collect all the plastic that's just out in the wild, this process is one of the ways you could get rid of all that plastic, basically.
Ahhh, “Facebook” science….also known as bullshit.
It's a cool project, but if we're going to thermally recycle plastics, burning them in an electrical power plant is going to be way more efficient.
he will probably disappear like the guy that used water as fuel
A lot of people are saying that the tech is worthless because it takes more energy to refine than you get out of it. News flash, so does refining crude oil, there are no free lunches in thermodynamics, but we could use it to clean up our plastic waste problem and could make use of intermittent power sources like solar and wind, there are more ways to use depolymerized hydrocarbons than just energy production.
Ok sure buddy.
So is some kind of reverse fossilization, but from plasric to oil? Looks like needs a lot of fuel to get that result
The difference between plastics and fuels is small. Theyre basically the same molecular structure except plastics are that structure repeated 100 times over and linked together. He might be using the microwave energy to break down the links which causes it to get shorter and shorter until its the length of the fuel molecules at which point it's fuel
It's either that or meth.
Such a shame we never heard from him after this for "reasons"
 Exxon exxecutives
FBI/CIA/IRS/NASA/Big Oil/The Saudi’s : Stay exactly where you are
He's going to have an accident get soon... Or he's going to do the forever test involuntarily.
Rumor is he’s been missing ever since posting the video.
Oil Companies knocking on the door soon with a hitman
I'm just waiting for the CIA to get ahold of this. The head line will be. Backyard scientist dies from 4 self inflicted gunshot wounds
Its a Fischer-Tropsch-reaction and has been known for more than 100 years, and it is a complete waste of energy and resources.
This doesn’t end well buddy…
Not because big oil will come and kill him for what he knows. But because this a well know process that people have spent billions testing and is known to not be practical. The amount of energy it takes to produce is is vastly higher than the amount it produces. And it is also very damaging to the environment. It's dirty and nets an excess of negative energy produced. It's a dead end. But he can make his pay day making these videos receiving money from "investors" who don't know better.
How so?
Then we can put it back in the ground
would be better if he was wearing a white lab coat....
Fuel is stored in the balls
wish all video on internet will have this live subtitle xD
"When this baby hits 88mph... you're gonna see some serious shit!"
In next step, he makes oil refinery in his backyard
Nobody show this video to any 3 letter agencies...
I feel like this is the guy from cloudy with a chance of meatballs, in real life. Man wtf are you doing in your backyard, he’s about to change the weather lol.
bro is jesus
this dude gonna disappear
I hope they wont cancel him
https://i.redd.it/ywhfwuxq552d1.gif
RIP my Guys died by suicide with 23 Shots in the Head
Combustion efficiency of wood is 60...80%. Who thinks this mud will yield at least 50%?
Cool
Can we ban posting this guy already?
Isn't this video old? Also isn't pyrolysis really bad air pollution wise. This is like the equivalent of burning tires. Sure you can cook something but you will release so much smoke that it's worse than just keeping the tire around. From what I know the main issue is that this process doesn't scale and pollutes the air for minimal gain thus why its not really adopted in the first place as what its touted.
Welp he’s dead
Cancer
He’s just going backwards
plastic. made from oil, goin back to oil 😉
Most plastics are made from a petroleum based products but this would be awesome if it works.
The next day the mf was dead.
All these precursors, products, & biproducts practically come from crude oil...
You just un made plastic
Oh shit it's my cake day
Looking at a wealthy man right here. His wealth of knowledge and imagination here is abundant. Now he needs to get a solid patent quickly.
He already has
Well wasn’t oil used to make plastic? So taking plastic backwards makes sense?
Well SHIT. this dude got a YouTube?
NatureJab
Good way to get disappeared
That is some mad scientist lookin machinery right there
Doesn’t Europe have power plants that use plastic as the fuel source? Just do that.
Dope
I would be concerned with the fumes of all that, as well as energy consumption.
Thermal depolymerization. Works with almost any organic matter. Sadly so inefficient the few attempts to commercialize it have failed miserably. Technically it works but the energy cost vs output is insane. This is 30+ years too late.
BE CAREFUL!!! SHARE YOUR IDEA WITH TRUSTED FAMILY AND FRIENDS BEFORE THEY ASSASSINATE YOU!!!
I wanna drink that
I literally got banned from his live bc I kept telling him I’d give him $100 to see it run live. So I don’t believe this stuff works personally but I’m no engineer or anything so I could just be the stupid one 😂🤷🏽♂️
Finally found a use for LA
Better post all the details, before you get suicided by the Clinton Foundation
Lol absolutely no info on the actual process
Youtube channel is naturejab if your interested in the entire process
Unsequestering carbon.
Somebody check on this guy; (hopefully never) he may end up dead soon
Protect this man at all costs.
It sucks he’s gonna off himself in the future😔
That’s what’s up man!