Exxon Mobil's 'Advanced' Technique for Recycling Plastic? Burning It (yahoo.com) 120
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:
In recent years — as longstanding efforts to recycle plastics have faltered — Exxon Mobil has touted advanced recycling as a groundbreaking technology that will turn the tide on the plastic crisis. But despite its seemingly eco-friendly name, the attorney general's lawsuit denounced advanced recycling as a "public relations stunt" that largely involves superheating plastics to convert them into fuel.
At Exxon Mobil's only "advanced recycling" facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned. [California attorney general Rob] Bonta's lawsuit seeks a court order to prohibit the company from describing the practice as "advanced recycling," arguing the vast majority of plastic is destroyed. Many environmental advocates and policy experts lauded the legal action as a major step toward ending greenwashing by Exxon Mobil — the world's largest producer of single-use plastic polymer... Advanced recycling, which is also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typically involves heating or dissolving plastic waste to create fuel, chemicals and waxes — a fraction of which can be used to remake plastic. The most common techniques yield only 1% to 14% of the plastic waste, according to a 2023 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Exxon Mobil has largely used reclaimed plastic for fuel production while ramping up its virgin plastic production, according to Bonta.
The executive director of California Communities Against Toxics complains Exxon Mobil's "advanced" recycling is "the same technology we've had since the Industrial Revolution... a blast furnace." (The article also quotes her as asking "How is that better than coal?") And a UCLA researcher who studied the issue blames misperceptions about plastic recycling on "an industry-backed misinformation campaign." He agrees that the reality is "having to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn."
California's attorney general "alleges Exxon Mobil has had a patent for this technology since 1978, and the company is falsely rebranding it as 'new' and 'advanced'... It recently reemerged after the company learned that the term 'advanced recycling' resonated with members of the public..."
At Exxon Mobil's only "advanced recycling" facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned. [California attorney general Rob] Bonta's lawsuit seeks a court order to prohibit the company from describing the practice as "advanced recycling," arguing the vast majority of plastic is destroyed. Many environmental advocates and policy experts lauded the legal action as a major step toward ending greenwashing by Exxon Mobil — the world's largest producer of single-use plastic polymer... Advanced recycling, which is also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typically involves heating or dissolving plastic waste to create fuel, chemicals and waxes — a fraction of which can be used to remake plastic. The most common techniques yield only 1% to 14% of the plastic waste, according to a 2023 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Exxon Mobil has largely used reclaimed plastic for fuel production while ramping up its virgin plastic production, according to Bonta.
The executive director of California Communities Against Toxics complains Exxon Mobil's "advanced" recycling is "the same technology we've had since the Industrial Revolution... a blast furnace." (The article also quotes her as asking "How is that better than coal?") And a UCLA researcher who studied the issue blames misperceptions about plastic recycling on "an industry-backed misinformation campaign." He agrees that the reality is "having to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn."
California's attorney general "alleges Exxon Mobil has had a patent for this technology since 1978, and the company is falsely rebranding it as 'new' and 'advanced'... It recently reemerged after the company learned that the term 'advanced recycling' resonated with members of the public..."
It's a Scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Plastic recycling is 95% scan, 5% facade justification for the scam.
Re:It's a Scam (Score:5, Informative)
It does not have to be. The key is reducing plastic variety and collection that makes sense. In many European countries, for example, PET beverage bottles actually get recycled and are actually turned into new PET bottles.
Re: It's a Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, no it isnâ(TM)t. The majority of plastics cannot be recycled. You need a stream of new plastic to put it in and it costs more energy overall. It IS better to burn it in a high heat environment and use the resulting energy in electricity production or other industrial processes. Plastics are just structured hydrocarbons (basically crystals) it is incredibly hard to restructure them.
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And yet, the article says that at that facility, 100% is:
The author would like to claim that 92% isn't recycled, but it is. The US EPA says [epa.gov]: "Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash and turning them into new products." It's hydrocarbons all the way through.
What's processed into fuel displaces the ne
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I'm not sure of that, I'd rather see those hydrocarbons sequestered in a properly manged landfill than turned into more greenhouse gasses. But it is better than letting that plastic loose in the environment.
Depends. If the alternative is pulling more oil out of the ground, potentially at a higher cost in terms of energy spent and hydrocarbons burned, then burning the plastic could still be a net win.
Re: It's a Scam (Score:2)
Here in the Netherlands, where we hug trees for a living, we have to add gas to the furnaces burning household waste because it contains less plastic every year.
So we are recycling plastic in order to do what, exactly? And what do people think happens eventually when it isn't burned?
I hate ExxonMobil with a passion. They're pond scum. They paid a think tank to hire Rishi Sunak in order to increase sentences for environmental activists. The whole leadership is going to be hung from lampposts if the tables ev
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Yes, that's the universal *political* definition of "recycling". But it's not what environemntalists mean by "recycling". The problem with the government definition is that it doesn't actually have any "cycle" in it -- i.e., there is no closed loop from which the matter in products never exit as pollution. Government and industry like the "turn into another product" definition because it allows them to greenwash questionable practices that don't affect the waste stream in a way you can say for sure is a
Re: It's a Scam (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. What Exxon-Mobil is doing is the most effective way to "recycle" plastic. Turning plastic into fuel and offsetting new fossil fuel production is just as effective as reusing the plastic and then pumping new fossil fuels.
There are plenty of good reasons to hate Exxon-Mobil, but this isn't one of them.
If you want to help the environment, stop buying so much plastic crap in the first place. "Recycling" isn't the answer.
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Re: It's a Scam (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. What Exxon-Mobil is doing is the most effective way to "recycle" plastic. Turning plastic into fuel and offsetting new fossil fuel production is just as effective as reusing the plastic and then pumping new fossil fuels.
There are plenty of good reasons to hate Exxon-Mobil, but this isn't one of them.
If you want to help the environment, stop buying so much plastic crap in the first place. "Recycling" isn't the answer.
Ok, then try to sell the public on that fact.
Calling it "advanced recycling" is flat out false-advertising.
Now, if they captured that carbon from burning and turned that back into plastic (you'd need an external energy source at that point) then that would be advanced recycling.
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Re:It's a Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
My personal favourite recycled product is "plastic wood". It's insanely expensive, maybe 4 times the cost of the equivalent wood product, but it's amazing stuff. It's a great way to create a damp proof course/membrane at the bottom of a wooden structure (which also is immune from woodworm) - in the olden days you might use a sacrificial bit of batten which you'd heavily treated, but now there's no need - a bit of plastic wood and you're good for decades. The stuff you buy is properly quality controlled and you can get it with structural ratings if you want too, so it's not "a cheapo shoddy product" by any means.
Ultimately though, this is a chicken and egg problem. Plastic wood (IMHO) has its place in a lot of construction - and could replace a few uses of uPVC and the like (ie. stop making new plastic, and re-use some old stuff). However, the price needs to be much lower and the availability needs to be much better too (right now you can only buy it from a couple of specialists, so shipping is ruinously expensive). When it starts appearing in the average builders merchant, then it'll get used.
Even if it is used in all construction though, it'll probably only still use up maybe 1% of all plastic waste :-(
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I use that stuff too whenever I have to replace wood that has rotted. I question its long-term stability but the only way to find out is to try it.
The main reason I question it is because old-school plastic house parts like siding and various trim do not stand the test of time. After less than 10 years the vinyl siding on my house was so brittle you can snap off a piece with your hand. With that said, it's been at least 25 years at this point and it's still on there with only a couple holes here or there ca
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Is this the stuff that makes up TREX decking? The wooden deck we installed in ~2013 is failing (and it shouldn't be, but that's a different conversation) and I'm looking for better-than-wood options to replace it.
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We recycle PET here in the USA too. And they do actually get turned into new bottles. At least Coca-Cola and Crystal Geyser are using the post-consumer bottles. You can ID them easily once empty because you can see they are slightly discolored towards black where the bottles are thick around the neck.
Unfortunately a lot of idiots don't know that we've had the technology to recycle all plastics with fluid bed pyrolysis for decades, so they keep shouting about how it cannot be recycled, which is exactly what
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>> so they keep shouting about how it cannot be recycled,
Of course it can. In practice it just is not happening, because economics are bad.
So, in economic terms, it cannot be recycled because it costs way too much.
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No, saying we cannot is just conserving the environment. Because it's much more environmentally friendly to burn plastics than recycle them.
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>> it's much more environmentally friendly to burn plastics than recycle them.
Nope. What is environmentally friendly is not extract the oil in the first place.
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Let's just go straight to the end then. For people like you who hate modern humans, it would be best if our lives were impossible.
Re: It's a Scam (Score:1)
That's ignorant at best and thus par for you
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Ignorant of what exactly? That soup on works of art is the best way to reduce CO2 emissions?
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>> Saying "cannot" there is just oil industry bootlicking.
Nope.
It's recognizing their B.S. that is used as a justification to market single use plastics like PET bottles.
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It's entirely relevant that the idiots here who think they're smarter than everyone are more than a decade out of date, and therefore contributing to the problem while also complaining about it. -1 bitch-ass coward
Time to go back to wood (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from some specialty stuff like teflone and silicone, we'll just have to go back to lignin/cellulose based chemistry.
Re:Time to go back to wood (Score:5, Insightful)
That's nice to say, but you have to think about what the goal actually is with plastic products.
Take food packaging, for example. Why does a box of cereal come packaged in thick plastic bags inside the cardboard box, or granola bars in aluminized plastic wrappers, or whatnot? The answer is gas permeability. How long your food lasts is directly proportional to how much access oxygen and water vapour have to them. The polymers (sometimes multilayered) that are used have *extremely* low permeability, and thus, allow food to last far longer without quality degradation. This prevents food waste on a massive scale and significantly lower costs and increase available options to consumers. Trying to come up with a biopolymer that matches these properties, maintains them through the point of sale, but then quickly breaks down as soon as you throw it in the landfill without any special treatment, is a really big ask. I'm not going to say "impossible", but it's certainly not something we have today.
Okay, well, what about structural plastics? To this, I'd say, exactly what sort of structural plastics do you want breaking down on you? How is a buried plastic sewage pipe supposed to know the difference between "being in the ground and handling your sewage" and "being in a landfill"? Do you really want all of your plastic pipes, fittings, casings, etc breaking down due to warmth and moisture?
There are certain categories of things, like grocery bags, that one can get away with having a polymer that steadily degrades upon exposure to moisture, etc. But this not most plastic uses.
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Just because the feedstock is renewable doesn't mean the plastic is biodegradable. They make bakelite from lignin for instance.
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I presumed that that was your goal. What is even the point of taking a good non-biodegradable substance and replacing it with an inferior non-biodegradable substance?
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It's more expensive, so inferior in that respect, but eventually you can replace all oil based chemistry with lignin/cellulose based chemistry ... it's all just hydrocarbons. Nature can recycle burned plastic to new trees on human timescales, but not to new oil.
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And are also MASSIVELY more expensive and resource-intensive to produce than a couple gram plastic pouch.
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And are massively less resource-intensive to resterilize and reuse, over, and over, and over again than a plastic pouch.
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Yes if you sterilize and reuse the glass at home. If the bottles are sent back to manufacturer for reuse, then the fuel in the logistics is more than the oil needed to produce a plastic bottle.
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It depends on the weight of the plastic bottle and on the distance to factory. Studies point out that you can't assume reusing glass bottle is better. For light plastic bottles, or for far away factories, single-use PET is always better. Here literature:
"LCA of Glass Versus PET Mineral Water Bottles: An Italian Case Study" Recycling 2021, 6(3), 50; https://www.mdpi.com/2313-4321... [mdpi.com]
"The results of the analysis highlighted that the PET bottle packaging system was globally the most environmentally sound soluti
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Problem with this analysis is that it didn't take into account that many if not most people are litter bugs and discard the single use PET bottles into the environment. As the study didn't factor in the long term environmental cost of the plastic pollution from these filthy dirty people its conclusions are worthless.
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You're going to have to reuse it a lot.
Almost nobody does that in the real world, anywhere near the energy and resource difference between the two products.
Re: Time to go back to wood (Score:2)
Glass is not great for everyday carrying of stuff. Think grocery shopping with glass containers. First pothole would shatter them all.
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Re: Time to go back to wood (Score:2)
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Yes, plastic makes processed foods cheaper than fresh foods. But is that really a good thing?
Re: Time to go back to wood (Score:1)
"Teflone"? Sorry, that's hilarious!
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Global starvation because food logistics no longer function the way they do today.
About three food poisonings per person per year with debilitation and death that comes with it.
Massive amount of energy consumption on refrigerating things we don't need to refrigerate to date to desperately try to keep massive health risks from food poisoning from being even higher.
This is just one of out countless problems with this idiocy. On the bright side, outside hyper-neurotic Westerners, the world is going the exact o
I don't get it (Score:2)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
That's fine for thermoplastics and it's fine so long as you don't care about eg what colour it is. Not all plastics respond to heat by melting (there are quite a wide variety of plastics that undergo polymerisation with heat, so heating them makes them more solid, not less), but the big problem of this kind of direct-use recycling is that it only works if you can first sort the plastic into all the different types and colours. There are only a middle-sized handful of basic plastic types, but there are a dizzying array of small variations for different purposes. If all you care about the material properties is that they can go through a 3D printer and make something that's solid enough when you overengineer it to a degree then that's fine; if you care about cutting every last penny from the cost of producing things and about making things that are "just right" then it's not going to cut it.
You also need to be able to effectively remove all the labels and any residue of foodstuffs etc. That's easy enough to do on a small scale for your household recycling but it's labour intensive; it's quite difficult to do very cheaply and at a large scale. The advantage of the "advanced recycling" process is that it involves a refining step that removes all the contaminants.
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The difference is you're dealing with clean feedstock streams of specific, pure plastics with the exact composition you're looking for. That's not the real world. Plastics are immensely diverse (even within a given category, like ABS or PLA), with very impure feedstock streams, with many plastic products even containing multiple types of plastic on the same product.
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And that is a problem. It could be solved though. Just have a small set of easily separated plastics as common, and require markers and put taxes on anything else. Of course, that requires regulation and corporate greed is not ok with that.
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Plastics are diverse for a reason, not on a whim. And they're inherently going to get jumbled up. And they inherently degrade in usage. Recycling of plastics, as in "reuse", is just not realistic for the vast majority of plastic products.
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Yeah, it really does. Colour, texture, tensile strength, compressive / flexural properties, machining properties, machining precision, ductility, and on and on varies hugely between product lines.
I'm sorry, but plastics are not, cannot be, and never will be, one-size-fits all.
They're not completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, compared to making plastic and then dumping it, and compared to pulling fuel out of the ground and burning it, this is actually an improvement - the carbon is used twice, once as a plastic and then again as a fuel. It's not exactly a circular economy though.
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They want to argue that turning plastic into fuel isn't recycling. It is, and any fuel produced reduces the amount of new fuel needed. It's not "destroying" it, it's recycling it. As the US EPA says [epa.gov]: "Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise
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The best you can do. Just don't call it recycling. (Score:4, Interesting)
Drop the facade. Plastic is fuel with very useful extra steps. The amount of plastic that we produce is dwarfed by the amount of fossil fuels we turn into CO2 without that great intermediate form. Turning plastic waste into fuel is the right way to get rid of it.
Re:The best you can do. Just don't call it recycli (Score:4, Informative)
Agreed. I hate greenwashing, but getting mad at turning plastic into fuel is beyond stupid. And what exactly does the date of the patent have to do with anything, vs. the date at which you're technologically and economically able to make the first production-scale unit? Do they have this notion that patents are always issued just days before the product becomes viable at scale? That's not how the real-world works.
Plastics are a feedstock that is immensely diverse, varying impure, and whose products have generally chemically degraded since their production. Depolymerizing them (and then using the product liquids and gases in whatever is most economically efficient at the time, whether that's new polymers, vehicle fuels, heating fuels, lubricants, etc etc) is usually going to be the best option. It is not the same thing as just burning plastic, where you recover only the thermal energy with no value-add, and with generally unclean combustion.
Even if the ultimate product is something you're going to burn, first off, (A) it's a value add, as you're not going to be shoving plastic bottles into your gas tank; it's a far more useful product; and (B) you're going to get far cleaner combustion from shorter, simpler, contaminant-free fuels than you are from raw solid plastics (which also commonly contain things like chlorine that you really don't want in your combustion, not just hydrogen and carbon - PVC for example is over half chlorine by mass)
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Agreed. I hate greenwashing, but getting mad at turning plastic into fuel is beyond stupid.
I hate plastic garbage, in fact if I could I would ban plastics except for a handful of limited applications. Burying it in a landfill still represents re-sequestering fossil carbon while truing the plastic into fuel and burning it means de-sequestering fossil carbon and making the problem of atmospheric CO2 levels worse so given the choice I'd prefer not to make the problem of atmospheric CO2 levels any worse than it already is.
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This is not about what they do. This is about how they sell it.
At this time, burning plastic, with all the modern precautions, is probably the only thing that works reasonably well outside of some specialty uses like PET bottles.
Re:The best you can do. Just don't call it recycli (Score:5, Interesting)
This is literally what they do. It's thermal decomposition. With traditional burning of plastic waste, you add air and get out a mixture of CO2, H2O, and a lot of pollutants (fly ash, nitrogen compounds, chlorinated compounds, etc). With thermal decomposition, you use little or no oxygen (depending on the process there may be other gases added, such as H2) and get what's predominantly a mix of oil, natural gas or syngas, and coke, with water vacuum-stripped; the goal is specifically to NOT oxidize the carbon, and to NOT get rid of the gas (although there is some oxygen present in the feedstocks themselves). At this point it is basically the same sort of mixtures that you find in fossil feedstocks, and are blended into existing fossil feedstocks. These then go through various refining / separation processes as usual to yield the desired mixtures for end products or feedstocks for new production processes. There is no ash, no nitrogen oxides, and chlorine for example forms HCl which reacts with caustic to form NaCl (salt). Industrial salt is often used in the chlor-alkalai industry, though if sufficiently purified it can also be used as road salt.
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"Wonderful"? No. Wasteful and stupid? Yes. Better than sending it to the landfill? Yes again, but that is a _really_ low bar.
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Where does this standard of yours even come from? Do you apply this standard also to, say, paper and wood products, whose ultimate fate is to rot? Things rust, degrade, rot, shatter, chip, break, corrode, embrittle, and so forth across the board. Certain ones are more durable than others, but then again, those also usually tend to represent orders of magnitude more resource investment in their production.
The fact that most products are not immortal should not be some shocking thing that people have diffi
Re: The best you can do. Just don't call it recycl (Score:1)
100%
This was the obvious solution staring at us all in the face. How did EVERYONE miss it?
Exxon/Esso should be hailed by the world for finally seeing this. Genius. The person who thought of it should be given keys to the world.
The facade is everything to the booboisie. (Score:2)
The public are not and never will be techies. Tech is magic to them. They require something like religion/superstition where they need only obey, not think, and this is because they and no one else sets conditions for their engagement.
The beastmob require utterly cynical engagement. They cannot choose to be different. See who they elect to lead them. There is not something missing or broken they can change, they are what they are.
They demand the facade so give them what works.
Surprised?! (Score:3)
Meanwhile, they're increasing plastics production as much as they can to increase profits.
Here's a new improved, advanced technology idea, framed in a way that ExxonMobil can relate to:
"In light of the pressing exigencies surrounding contemporary environmental stewardship and the overarching imperative to safeguard natural ecosystems for the collective benefit of present and future stakeholders, it is hereby proposed that the widespread utilization of polymer-based synthetic materials, colloquially referred to as "plastics," be subject to a comprehensive, preclusive legislative and regulatory framework that effectively mandates the cessation of their production, distribution, and usage within the jurisdiction. Such a framework, in its application and enforcement, would not only mitigate the deleterious environmental externalities historically associated with said materials but also serve as a pioneering, forward-thinking paradigm of eco-centric innovation, emblematic of a transformative shift toward sustainable resource utilization and waste minimization, thus heralding a new epoch in material science and environmental policy."
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If someone decided to sue ExxonMobil over their lies about recycling, I hope that the settlement will be like the one they got for VW where they're forced to fund the electric car charging network. Something like requiring 2 fast DC car chargers at every Exxon station would be very helpful for the charging network.
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why are they charging us for platic bags? (Score:1)
Re: why are they charging us for platic bags? (Score:1)
The 1980s called and wants their forests back. Save the forests!!!!!! Use plastic.
The gullibility defies explanation.
It's OK, the return of the glaciers by 2000 will make this all moot.
Re: why are they charging us for platic bags? (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s all emotion based. No logic or facts needed. Cradle to grave doesnâ(TM)t matter. Just like EV are sold on the basis of operating effects while new. Not considering power to recharge sources or manufacturing
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So, does the lower cradle to grave energy cost of a plastic bag versus alternatives outweigh the environmental damage of plastic debris in the ecosystem? And given the environmental improvements of our energy grid and transportation system since the widespread adoption of plastic bags, does that lower energy cost still convey the same benefits as it used to?
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So, does the lower cradle to grave energy cost of a plastic bag versus alternatives outweigh the environmental damage of plastic debris in the ecosystem?
It's a tradeoff. Cleaner air, dirtier water. But it's a lot easier to put nets across the top foot of the mouth of every river and add a boat bypass than it is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere, so probably, yes.
And given the environmental improvements of our energy grid and transportation system since the widespread adoption of plastic bags, does that lower energy cost still convey the same benefits as it used to?
Trucks are still diesel, and fewer things are shipped by train these days, so the benefit is probably greater now.
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I'm always startled when people wonder why we distrust authority. Because they're often WRONG, shockingly so, and pretend like they never were.
Sounds good (Score:3)
It's turned into a useful product instead of being dumped in a landfill or the ocean. If we ever stop burning fuel then we can worry about recycling it into non-fuel.
Re:Sounds good (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep. Once you depolymerize it, you're going to turn it into whatever is cheapest for those feedstocks at that point in time. In this era, we burn lots of fuel, so that's what they mostly become. If that changes, the product stream will change. It's really that simple.
I'm really happy to finally see this technology being done at scale. It's taken a long time to get to this point, to get the process efficient enough to be practical.
Cannot we dump plastic in plates subduction zones? (Score:1)
Seems like win-win:
1. we get rid of the plastic
2. we get rid of carbon
Long term it might be a problem as we may need carbon but short term it looks like some kind of a solution...
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Sure. If you can a) wait a few millennia and b) dig _really_ deep. Might be more feasible and eco-friendly to shoot it to the moon...
Are oil companies inherently evil or something? (Score:5, Informative)
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My guess is that after deciding to lie about climate changes in the 1970, they lost all inhibitions and morality. Understandably, if you do something _this_ fundamentally evil, most other things you can do, including the one discussed in the story here, are small things.
Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazet... [harvard.edu]
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It looks that way, yes. No idea what caused that. Too easy to get rich if you already have no morals?
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Well ... (Score:2)
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Indeed. It is also a nice example of a lie by misdirection.
Recycling is a dangerous waste of time (Score:3)
And the rabbit ... (Score:1)
... hole got deeper and deeper. Seems the oil guys do not have kids to worry about the future.
Why not just get a nuclear plant and depolymerize? (Score:2)
I've wondered about these companies that has so much plastic, what is wrong with setting up a gigawatt nuclear power plant near some coastal area, and using thermal depolymerization to boil all the waste stuff into mineral oil, which can be used for all kinds of things. Yes, this is energy intensive, but doing it this way gets it completely out of the environment, and once set up, nuclear is relatively inexpensive, or if that isn't feasible, solar/wind. At least this gets it out of the environment.
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There are probably ways that involve fractional distillation and are no more energy intensive than the processing of petroleum.
Plastic to fuel processes cause cancer (Score:2)
EPA just revoked their permission to manufacture fuel from plastic after a journalist investigation found that the process creates several cancer causing chemicals.
fuel (Score:2)
Making something into fuel is not exactly "just burning it."
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Yea, I'd draw a distinction between just burning a pile of trash, versu running an incinerator-generator and hydrocracking or other plastic-to-fuel chemistry. I think it's reasonable want to convert the significant amount of unrecycable plastic into energy. Skim all that ocean plastic and throw it into an incinerator, get a little energy to fund the project and start addressing a serious ecological problem. Medical waste is almost entirely plastic, and if you want to crack it into engine oil, then by all me
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Synthetic lubricants and hydraulic fluids are hydrocarbons cracked from either crude oil or natural gas. They can be re-refined back into lubricant stock indefinitely, but the sludge that remains is more difficult to get anything useful from. It's got copper, iron, zinc, phosphorous, sulfur, but also all the other chemical modifiers that get added in to the motor oil blends. I have no idea what happens to that sludge. Some of the volatiles vacuumed out of the distilling phase are burned to heat the refinery
Plastic "recyclying" has always been a lie (Score:2)
I don't recall the industry telling the truth about it, ever.
And their copying of the recycling symbol numbering scheme was just that - a scheme, or a scam.
Also why are we still using so much black plastic, which all goes straight to landfill?
It's still used extensively for food containers, for restaurant & food court takeaway and for frozen meals.
Again, why??