Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving Oceans

Re:Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving... by msl on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @04:36AM (#14306758)

Plastics tend to consists of carbon and hydrogen chains. See for example polycarbonate [1], polyetene [2] and ABS [3] (contains nitrogen). They might however contain all sorts of additives. In order to produce just water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen the burning must be carefully controlled [4] - in your experiment the burning was probably not complete, which explains the fumes (that might have been carcinogenic [4]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Incineration_of_plasti...

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Re:Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving... by scq on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @05:46AM (#14307032)

You generally don't want to burn halogenated plastics like PVC though. As I understand it that will release highly toxic dioxins (which cause cancer and birth defects among other things) unless they are incinerated at high temperatures.

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Re:Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving... by pjc50 on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @06:04AM (#14307093)

I don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct - incineration of plastics is needs to be done at high temperatures to avoid this problem.

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Re:Turning Plastic to Oil, U.K. Startup Sees Money in Saving... by adrianN on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @06:12AM (#14307113)

Maybe it was PVC. That releases plenty of nasties when you burn it.

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