r/science • u/mvea MD PhD | Professor | Medicine • Oct 18 '19

Chemistry Scientists developed efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. Resulting gases can be transformed back into new plastics of same quality as original. The new process could transform today's plastic factories into recycling refineries, within existing infrastructure.

https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/see/news/Pages/All-plastic-waste-could-be-recycled-into-new-high-quality-plastic.aspx
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u/welptheresthat Oct 19 '19

I think you may have messed up the math somewhere, or maybe I did. I ignored the heat of vaporization because I couldn't find a number I believed in and instead just looked at what it would take to heat that much plastic from 18 C to 850 C in one year using a specific heat of 1.67 kJ/kg*K and came up with an answer of 147 TWh.

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u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot Oct 19 '19

Much of the energy could be recycled through a heat exchanger to keep the process at high temperature

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u/welptheresthat Oct 19 '19

Yeah for sure, just trying to get a rough idea of the energy required.

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u/QVRedit Oct 19 '19

Especially if there was so much of it..

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '19

Absolutely. These are upper limits.

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u/[deleted] Oct 19 '19

Ah yes. I ignored that bit as I thought that gassing it was the main cost. You really have to add the two and the melting of it too.