About 7 percent of the world's oil production is used to make plastic. But plastic "is one of the environmentally unfriendly substances produced by man." A plastic soft drink bottle takes 1,000 years to break down completely. Nor can plastic be easily recycled.
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| Coming to a gas tank near you - oil made from plastic. |
The machine is effective in recycling different kinds of plastic into oil. According to the data released by Plastic Waste Management Institute - Effective Utilization doesn't just take into account the 20 percent of recycled plastic. But it also considers the incinerated 52 percent used for energy recovery like generating electric power or heat. [Blest's CEO] Akinori Ito says "If we burn the plastic, we generate toxins and a large amount of CO2. If we convert it into oil, we prohibit CO2 production and at the same time, increase people's awareness about the value of plastic garbage". ...Sounds like a good deal to me. Bring it on - and faster please!
Since the machine employs an electric heater that controls temperature instead of flame, the conversion technology is quite safe. The machines are capable of recycling polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene of numbers 2 to 4. PET bottles that fall under number 1 polypropylene, however, cannot be processed. As a result, a crude gas is obtained that can be effectively used to fuel stoves or generators. After refinement, it can even be used to fuel motorbike, boat or a car. One kilogram of plastic using 1 kilowatt of electricity is capable of producing 1 liter of oil. This approximately costs 20 cents.
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