Envion Oil Generator Turns Plastic Into Fuel

22 September, 2009 02:25:00

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Envion has created a process that transforms plastic waste back into its original form â€“ crude oil.

Envion introduced its first market-ready commercial unit at a demonstration held at the Montgomery County Solid Waste Transfer Station in Derwood, Maryland.

A proprietary breakthrough technology developed and perfected over the past 15 years, the Envion Oil Generator is the first plastic waste to oil conversion platform of its kind. Utilizing plastic as feedstock, the unit employs a groundbreaking process that produces light oil, medium oil, and emulsified oil as output.

A single Envion unit is capable of processing up to 10,000 tons of plastic waste annually, producing three to five barrels of refined petroleum product per ton of plastic waste. This technology is scalable through the addition of reactors, which facilitate the conversion of new plastic waste (as well as plastic currently sitting in landfills) into a renewable and invaluable resource.

The Envion Oil Generator lies in its proprietary process. Building on this foundation, Envion has created a generator that extracts the hydrocarbons embedded in plastic waste without the use of a catalyst.

The reactor, a vital component of the unit, utilizes a heating system that converts plastic into oil through low temperature thermal cracking in a vacuum. Using this innovative approach, the Envion Oil Generator produces oil and power safely, efficiently, and economically through an environmentally sensitive process that produces a net gain in energy recaptured.

Envion said its new generator can consume any type of plastic and convert it into synthetic oil; depending on the type of plastic, one ton can be converted into three to six barrels of fuel. Envion said it costs about $10 to convert the plastic waste into a barrel's worth of synthetic oil; currently, crude oil sells for close to $70 a barrel.

The generator, with a capacity for handling more than 6,000 tons of plastic per year, is a slightly smaller version of what Envion will soon be pitching as its flagship product. The 10,000-ton version, which could produce up to 60,000 barrels, costs $6 million to $7 million to build.

The United States produces approximately 50 million tons of plastic waste per year, the vast majority of which ends up taking up space in landfills. With the ability of a single Envion Oil Generator to eliminate 10,000 tons of plastic per year, at a cost of $17 per ton, the Envion Oil Generator is a cost effective alternative to the $70-$200 cost range of landfill disposal. Additionally, according to the EPA recycling programs process only 6.8% of plastic waste and are also not as cost effective, costing between $50 and $150 per ton of plastic recycled.

[source: Envion]

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