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Shopping Bags Make A Fine Fuel: Indian-American Scientist
Washington: Plastic shopping bags - an abundant source of litter on land and at sea - can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, shows a promising research led by an Indian-origin researcher.
The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels - diesel, for example - that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulphur diesels and biodiesels.
Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags.
“There are other advantages to the approach, which involves heating the bags in an oxygen-free chamber, a process called pyrolysis,” said research leader Brajendra Kumar Sharma, a senior research scientist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Centre at University of Illinois.
According to Sharma, one can get only 50 to 55 percent fuel from the distillation of petroleum crude oil. But since this plastic is made from petroleum in the first place, we can recover almost 80 percent fuel from it through distillation.
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Source: IANS
