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08/11/2024 -
Driving on plastic power

TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk (blog)
8.11.10
We could soon be driving on plastic power after SITA UK reached an agreement with Cynar Plc to build Britain’s first plant to convert end of life plastic into diesel fuel.

SITA is one of the country’s leading recycling and resource management companies while Cynar was established to commercialise ThermoFuel technology. It built its first plant in Portlaoise, Ireland, and now the objective of the new agreement is to build 10 UK plants dealing with 60,000 tonnes of mixed plastic waste a year and to commission the first plant in London by the end of 2011.

Each plant will also convert approximately 6,000 tonnes of mixed waste plastic annually with the aim of targeting plastic that is diverted from landfill to produce in excess of four million litres of specification diesel fuel. As an added bonus, the waste plastic recovery process should be produced at below the cost of normal diesel with the fuel itself to have a lower carbon footprint than conventional diesel. The qualities of the recycled diesel will be on a par with conventional diesel and there will be no need for further refining.

So how does the Cynar system work?

It sees the plastic waste treated in a cylindrical chamber with the pyrolytic gases condensed in a specially designed chamber. The hydrocarbons are then selectively condensed and cleaved to produce the average carbon chain length that is required for distillate fuel.

Plastic is pyrolised and condensed in a two stage condenser to produce a low sulphur distillate. The waste plastics are then loaded via a hot melt in-feed system into the main pyrolysis chamber with non-plastics falling to the bottom. The vapour is then converted into the various fractions in the distillation column and the product is sent to a centrifuge to remove contaminants such as water and carbon.

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