Irish company Trifol reconstituting plastic into aviation fuel.

iamstop

I find the concept interesting but technical detail is scant in this article at best. They use the word 'sustainable' liberally in this article. 10 times in the body and once in the headline. I have to wonder, how 'sustainable' is it to reconstitute waste plastic into fuel?

https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2024/0822/1465952-trifol-resources/

I mean, it seems great to be diverting waste plastic from the land fill, but if you're just going to burn it (creating CO2) then where in that equation is the sustainable part? Does sustainable not mean that there is a cycle that feeds back into it's self or that the source is natural and regenerating? Plastic is neither of those things. What am I missing?

rn

In the green mantra of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" this is clearly in the last, least environmentally friendly "recycle" category.

It certainly solves an environmental problem posed by a lot of plastic waste. It's turning waste into something useful. But ultimately it's turning plastic into liquid that will be turned into energy+ waste gas, much of that will be CO2.

It would be great if plastic recovered from the sea could be processed in this system.

I wonder how much energy the process requires to produce the output products?

iamstop

I was wondering the exact same thing. They are talking about being carbon negative in the article but I can't see how that is possible considering it takes carbon to produce the plastic in the first place. The article just doesn't pass the smell test.

the_amazing_raisin

My suspicion is that it takes a significant amount of energy to turn plastic into useful liquid fuel

Long polymer chains needs to be broken down to make plastics easier to burn and change state to liquid. AFAIK this is done using a combination of heat and chemical treatment

All this is to say that it probably isn't economical to produce compared to fossil fuels or even biofuels

So it'll only work as an industry if there's considerable subsidies or if it allows the industry to avoid certain carbon taxes

In any case, I can't see how it's an overall positive for the environment. Yes it's better than dumping plastic into landfill or using fossil fuels in planes, but is this the limits of our ambition?

We should be cutting down on plastic waste and trying to give people real alternatives to flying (I'm still dreaming of a high speed rail tunnel to the continent)

Capt'n Midnight

The energy efficiency rule of thumb used to be ~50% from oil to plastic and ~50% from plastic to oil

magicbastarder

as above - the aim should be to strive towards a future which would starve this process of input.

Robert333111

Transforming plastic into fuel ('wax, very high-quality diesel, […] aviation fuel, or Naphta - which is a very low octane form of petrol' - see article linked by the first post), sounds desirable because of the enormous amount of plastic waste which contaminates the land of many countries, and of the oceans.

Unfortunately, this process is not only weird but also obnoxious for the following reasoning:

Firstly consider not just this specific process, but at the wider view:

1. Plastic is made from oil based products in the first place, while also consuming significant amounts of "dirty" energy.
   By "dirty energy" I refer to energy sourced from fossil fuels that when used produce "Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions" "HGGE".)
2. Converting / transforming waste plastic back into fuel, will again use significant amounts of dirty energy while also emitting toxins such as heavy metals.
3. When these fuels (being transformed / converted from plastic), are used they will again produce HGGE!

Some regions provide the option to recycle at least hard plastic which at least is the right thing to do. Here, by "recycle" this means converting the plastic into new plastic.

There is no substitute for reducing the making of plastic products.
For those who are old enough, consider this - What, for example, happened to those paper bags?!