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I'm guessing the answer is, "Because you can already burn the plastic directly." Presumably burning this oil would have the same levels of pollution as burning the plastic in the first place, but also takes extra energy to produce.

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Also, plastics can contain all sorts of nasty toxic surprises. Better to burn it at a centralized location with proper filtering and treatment than having little batches or mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity.

> Better to burn it at a centralized location with proper filtering and treatment than having little batches or mystery oil of varying quality and toxicity.

If we can assure that the output meets a standard should we burn it, then certainly we should be able to assure the output meets a standard should we refine/convert it.

And the conversion of plastic into oil will have cost much more energy, producing the same pollution in the end.

But at least we save some landfill space. Also micro-plastics contamination is everywhere.

In the USA, landfill space concerns are based on a hoax. Landfill space is a function of landfill development, and there’s no shortage of spaces to create landfills.

I am not talking about running out of space in general. I am talking about taking a hill covered with trees or farms, and turning it into a hill of garbage. Surely you can see why I would prefer a natural hill?

If you can burn it, there is no point in burring it. We're still taking a lot of stuff from underground and burn it for energy, why not burn the stuff we already have above ground?

Landfills amortize the carbon emissions. Keeping the plastic's carbon temporarily sequestered in a landfill puts it somewhere other than the atmosphere. Eventually we'll have to do something with all that carbon, but we're better off burying it until we get a better handle on emissions in general.

You can still burry the soot after you burned the plastic.

Most of the carbon is going to end up as CO2 in the air, though.

You don't need to burn it in an open field ...

You can used a closed system so that the waste is actually all captured. Or you can have a more continuous system that'll capture/scrub the output.

Unless you capture it, as Amsterdam has been doing.

CO2 capture is a scam, perpetrated by the petroleum industry to make people think it's okay to burn more fossil fuels.

You would be right, IF we were to not take out any other fossil fuel to burn. But to bury the plastic now it just means we will dig for an equivalent quantity of coal, oil or gas to burn. We will burn some stuff regardless, we might as well burn what we already have, instead of burying it and digging for new stuff.

Since this consumes electricity, the energy need could be filled by running the converter at peak hours for renewable energy, so effectively soak up excess energy to recover oil that's already out of the ground. Which would be a net win in terms of energy, possibly even financially depending on the investment costs for that device. Assuming it even holds up to the promises.

All these processes best done in centralized plants with quality controls, not in bench processors.

It is more efficient to burn it, generate electricity and charge a EV battery with it, than it is to convert it to fuel (consumes energy) and burn it in an internal combustion engine (very low efficiency due to small scale).

It's much easier to purify the burning waste products than raw trash. It is much less varied.

Other than if you have a Mr Fusion you can’t run a car off of solid plastics. But, I assume some additional steps are required to make it usable. The site doesn’t detail the possible uses of the the oil, but generally liquids and solids can be used in different situations. The oil could also be used as lubricant rather than an energy source.

I don't know if most households have enough use for lubricants to be able to consume a quantity equivalent to 80% of the volume of plastics they're disposing of. My door hinges and bike-chains can only be so smooth. Even if it was converting it into usable motor-oil (which I doubt it is) I don't think I could consume that much.

I suppose if it's usable for a kerosine type of lamp maybe, but is it pure enough to not present respiratory issues? And why would I need a kerosine lamp?

Yeah I don’t think it’s the next Nespresso and they probably need to detail the use cases better. But I can see this useful in a machinist shop that might have a lot of waste plastic from packing materials etc.

Airplanes run off kerosene, so that's a sizeable market if this fuel is good enough

No chance the FAA lets people use homemade recycled plastic oil in their turbojet engines. Jet turbines are very tolerant of different fuels, but this is a bridge too far.

Many people still have ICE cars, you left that intentionally out?

I mentioned motor oil

No way I'm trusting oil made from random household waste plastic as the primary lubricant in my car engine. What are the lubricating properties? What are the breakdown characteristics? High temperature resilience? Presumably it would vary by batch. You are just begging for a seized engine.

An electric car can, in my area they burn garbage for electricity:

https://pinellas.gov/waste-to-energy-facility/

Flammable lubes are a big no no

They don’t detail much about the properties of the oil produced

I imagine it's easier to purify the oil and burn the oil with high efficiency, than to burn solid garbage and filter the flue gas.

Presumably the noxious byproducts are released during the oil recycling process? It would explain where all of that missing mass went. But if this is the case you'll still need to filter the gas so there is little benefit.

I don’t believe plastic burning is a widespread energy source.

Japan and I believe Singapore burn most of their plastic in incinerators to generate electricity. Coincidentally they are also among the highest plastic waste producers per capita.

Korea, Taiwan, and Switzerland are similar.

It happens in waste-to-energy power plants (a.k.a garbage power plants). They can be a great way to get rid of waste but they require a lot of filtering of the exhaust to be safe. Adequate filtering is universal in some countries (like Sweden). In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than coal plants.

Do you know if they have to reach a certain temperature ? I would think so because I assumme garbage produces a lot of fumes and gases that would better off burned for energy rather that ending in the air. On the other end I wonder what kind of temperature you can get with a dumpster fire

Incinerators in Japan must be above 800C to avoid generating toxic materials like dioxins. https://www.env.go.jp/content/900453393.pdf

> In the USA, waste-to-energy plants frequently have inadequate filtering, which can make them dirtier than coal plants.

Source? With EPA being so rigid about diesel cars it would doubt that. Unless the whole regulation was about keeping german car manufacturers in cheque...

In my city there is an incineration plant which produces about 94 GWh of electricity a year, covering 11% of city's needs.

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