Monday, November 2, 2009

Who wants to make a fortune?

So there's this stuff called plastic and I predict it will be the new gold in the coming decades. With limited oil supplies there is going to be a point in the near future when we run out of this ancient fossil. Plastic is everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The first piece of plastic was molded out of cellulose in 1862 and it has developed from natural plastic materials (e.g., chewing gum, shellac) to chemically modified natural materials (e.g., rubber, nitrocellulose, collagen, galalite) and finally to completely synthetic molecules (e.g., bakelite, epoxy, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene). The petroleum-to-plastics process consists of drilling and transporting the petroleum to a refinery where the crude oil and natural gas are refined into ethane, propane, and other petrochemical products such as gasoline. Ethane and propane are "cracked" into ethylene and propylene, using high-temperature furnaces. Catalyst is combined with ethylene or propylene in a reactor, resulting in a polymer that's fed to an extruder where it is melted, cooled and pelletized into generic pellets that can be molded by customer manufacturers by using processes such as extrusion, injection molding, blow molding, etc.

Enough jabber, this is how we make out fortune. Envion has created a generator that extracts the hydrocarbons embedded in plastic waste without the use of a catalyst. This reactor utilizes a heating system that converts plastic into oil through low temperature thermal cracking in a vacuum. It can produce light oil, medium oil, and emulsified oil.

One ton of plastic garbage can be converted into 3-6 barrels of fuel at $10 per barrel to process, while crude oil sells for $70 a barrel. Profit. now, I have a bunch of plastic bags laying around, I could search for some old legos, a ton of water bottles. The hard truth is, plastic is necessary for the way we live our lives. When we run out we'll realise the full value of this resource. People will be searching everywhere for lost plastic in basements, attics, landfills, ect. These 'plastic diggers' could exchange the plastic at recycling centers which may provide jobs for communities. The value of plastic would vary depending on the rarity, but with the oil forming generator we could keep all of our plastic resources in use instead of inside birds bellies and EVERYTHING else.

Yes, we are turning into plastic, there are massive buildups of plastic garbage caught in the gyres in the middle of the oceans twice the size of Texas. Scary, yes. Profitable? This sort of cleanup would be a extraordinary struggle, but the amount of free plastic waiting to be recycled is a fortune! Now I just need some joint investors to fund my venture and we'll even be able to clean up the environment. How's about that?