Envion Oil Generator to turn plastic into oil

Recyclable plastic has reduced some of our environmental worries, but what about plastic that wasn’t made with the green intention? Let’s see now, it takes oil to create plastic cans and bottles that we are so fond of, what if we could change that plastic to oil? A new Solid Waste Transfer Station in Derwood, Maryland can reverse that process to create oil from plastic lying around in garbage dumps. The process costs less than USD$30 per ton compared to other methods in excess of USD$200 per ton.

The Envion Oil Generator (EOG) is capable of converting plastic into synthetic light to medium oil for less than USD$10 per barrel. As with crude oil, the synthetic oil can then be processed into commercial fuels or even back into plastic. The reactor converts waste plastic feedstock into oil through low temperature thermal cracking in a vacuum, extracting the hydrocarbons embedded in petroleum-based plastic waste without the use of a catalyst. Roughly around 62 percent of what goes into the unit is successfully converted into oil. Now that’s way much better than incinerating or dumping hard to recycle plastics. Unless we all go electric, its hard to see why the oil made from plastic wont actually reduce our carbon footprint.


[Gizmag]