Her View: Recycling my challenge to make fuel from plastic

When I read that Pullman recycling was having trouble finding a market for plastic and paper recycling recently because the Chinese market is becoming glutted (Page One, Jan. 27), I decided it is time to dust off a previous challenge I made to engineers and engineering students.

The April 3 issue of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly, in their "people who make a difference" feature, reported on a woman from India, Medha Tadpatrikar, who, with associates, developed a mechanism to turn all kinds of petroleum-based plastics into a clean fuel oil. Best of all, it was adapted to use in two different capacities for use in various size-cities. One size can tackle 220 pounds at a time, the larger 2,645 pounds.

At the time, I challenged graduate students and engineers to apply this process to local needs. If they can do it all over India, surely we can apply it here.

By lots of experimenting and blowing up a number of pressure cookers, Tadpatrikar and associates developed a process that uses its own gas emissions to supply the heat needed to further heat the plastics to 570-660 degrees to produce a condensate using a process called gasolysis, or high-temperature pyrolysis. This can produce between 12 to 17 gallons of fuel oil from 220 pounds of plastic. The fuel produced burns cleanly and can be used for cooking or even in tractors, Tadpatrikar said.

There was a recent television report on the problem of extremely toxic fumes produced by older diesel construction machinery, using equipment in Portland, Ore., as an example. This kind of machinery is very expensive for small contractors to replace. It is time to provide the owners of older machinery with clean fuel, locally produced from recycled plastic.

All kinds of petroleum-based plastic can be used. Producing it locally and serving the region saves transportation costs, both for the recycled plastic and the finished product, thus saving even more fuel and reducing even more fumes, since so many trucks burn diesel.

A local plant could offer the fuel for sale to diesel equipment owners - bring your own can or roll the equipment up and fill-er-up.

Tom Friedman's fascinating book, "The Earth is Flat," thoughtfully explains our interconnected world - it's worth the effort to read. In it, he discusses the convergence of various elements of the world economy. As I look at our local situation, I see this as a perfect example of convergence - a possible answer to several problems at the same time.

I gather that at least one size of the plastic recycling plant in India is about the footprint size of my bathroom and costs less than $40,000 there. This is an idea whose time has come. Would-be local inventors need to get busy and either try to buy an example from India or create a similar prototype. Meanwhile, the inventor in India is working on getting worldwide patents for the process. If every city and large town or county throughout the country had one, think how much energy could be both produced and saved at the same time. A whole new industry could be created making the machines and selling them throughout the world.

I'm no chemist or engineer, but I understand enough of the science involved to believe this is an opportunity that we can ill afford to pass up and a problem we can ill afford to kick down the road any longer. Plastics are here to stay and their waste will continue to plague us until we act. Clean air is also an issue, and this could improve that situation, too. Are we up to the challenge?

Lenna Harding lived her first 20 and past 43 years in Pullman. A longtime League of Women Voters member, she served on the Gladish Community and Cultural Center board. lj1105harding@gmail.com, ljharding.com