RE-INVENTING OIL: TURNING PLASTIC WASTE INTO PROFITABLE SYNTHETIC DIESEL FUEL & CHEMICALS

We live in a plastic world. Plastics are inexpensive, lightweight, and durable materials, which can readily be molded into a variety of products that find use in a wide range of applications. As a consequence, the production of plastics has increased exponentially over the last 60 years. However, the current levels of their usage and disposal generate several environmental problems.

Approximately 8-10 percent of the world’s oil and gas production, a non-renewable resource, is used as feedstock for plastics, and a further 3-4% is expended to provide energy for their manufacture. A major portion of plastic produced each year is used to make disposable items of packaging or other short-lived products that are discarded within a year of manufacture. These two observations alone indicate that our current use of plastics is not sustainable. In addition, because of the durability of the polymers involved, substantial quantities of discarded end-of-life plastics are accumulating as debris in landfills and in natural habitats worldwide.

Recycling is one of the most important actions currently available to reduce these impacts and represents one of the most dynamic areas in the plastics industry today. Recycling provides opportunities to reduce oil usage, carbon dioxide emissions, and the quantities of waste requiring disposal.

While plastics have been recycled since the 1970s, the quantities that are recycled vary geographically, according to plastic-type and application. The recycling of packaging materials has seen rapid expansion in a number of countries. Advances in technologies and systems for the collection, sorting, and reprocessing of recyclable plastics are creating new opportunities for recycling, and with the combined actions of the public, industry, and governments it is possible to divert the majority of plastic waste from landfills to recycling over the coming decades.

Klean Industries has evaluated numerous technologies and techniques for effectively up-cycling plastics rather than down-cycling plastics into low-grade recyclables. Klean’s findings have been substantial and a number of advanced thermal processing technologies have been identified and acquired as the way forward for reproducing virgin-based materials suitable for reintroduction into our current supply chains. Klean’s plastic-to-oil solutions can be fed almost any petroleum-based waste plastic and will convert it into synthetic light to medium oil for less than USD$10 per barrel (excluding land, infrastructure, feedstock costs, etc). As with crude oil, synthetic oil can then be processed into commercial fuels or even back into plastic. Klean’s groundbreaking innovations allow Klean to provide solutions that deliver the highest possible returns both financially and environmentally.