Posted on 02/13/2014 1:37:08 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report.
The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels – diesel, for example – that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags.
A report of the new study appears in the journal Fuel Processing Technology.
There are other advantages to the approach, which involves heating the bags in an oxygen-free chamber, a process called pyrolysis, said Brajendra Kumar Sharma, a senior research scientist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center who led the research. The ISTC is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.
“You can get only 50 to 55 percent fuel from the distillation of petroleum crude oil,” Sharma said. “But since this plastic is made from petroleum in the first place, we can recover almost 80 percent fuel from it through distillation.”
Americans throw away about 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year, according to the Worldwatch Institute. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports that only about 13 percent are recycled. The rest of the bags end up in landfills or escape to the wild, blowing across the landscape and entering waterways. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
Laudable, but I’m betting few people do that/few stores offer the opportunity.
The article states many end up in landfills. Makes sense to me - I often “recycle” the bags by using them for trash.
What sucks is when people just dump them “where ever”.
“The article states many end up in landfills.”
As do regular trash bags.
Exactly. I forgot to include that thought that earlier. A good percentage of all plastic bags are likely trash bags that end up by design in a landfill or other waste processing installation.
And trash bags are a lot thicker, and will take a lot longer to break down, unless they’re designed to do so???????
And give up my free trash bags?
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