Converting Waste Plastic to Hydrocarbon Fuel Materials

The increased demand and high price for energy sources are driving efforts to convert organic compounds into useful hydrocarbon fuels. Although much of this work has focused on biomass, there are strong benefits to deriving fuels from waste plastic material. Waste plastic is abundant and its disposal creates large problems for the environment. Plastic does not break down in landfills, is not easily recycled and degrades in quality during the recycling process, and can produce waste ash, heavy metals, and potentially harmful gas emissions if incinerated at high temperatures. However, chemical processes that can be used to convert plastics into hydrocarbon fuels have unlimited applications in residential and industrial heating, transportation, and electricity generation. These chemical processes are used to break down the long carbon chains found in plastic into the shorter chains found in gasoline or diesel-type fuels. Natural State Research (NSR) has invented a simple and economically viable process to decompose the hydrocarbon polymers of waste plastic into the shorter chain hydrocarbons of liquid fuel (patent pending). The method and principal of the process/production will be discussed.