Making oil from plastic (experiment)

I have been interested in pyrolysis lately. The process of heating a material without oxygen and then condensing the component gases back to liquid.

I decided to try today as a proof of concept experiment

Here I cut up about a pound or two of old tires, bottles and random plastics...



I then made a condenser unit from scrap pvc pipe. Not ideal design for the process but what I had around. Placed inside a bath of ice water for the condensing part



This is a 3” pipe. I welded one end, then added the material and welded shut the other end. Drilled a hole for an exit pipe which was attached further down to a rubber hose that entered the condenser.

At the end of the condenser I had a ball valve to release built up by process syngas. I heated the pipe with charcoal.



After about 5 minutes nothing happened. Then my psi gauge moved up to 20 then 40 psi. I blew off some syngas. I ended up not paying attention for a bit and the pressure rose over 60 psi and blew the gauge out of the pvc about 100ft into the air. Experiment over

The result was an oil very similar to the consistency of diesel. Perhaps a tad thicker. It burned when hit with a match. I would say it could be used as a low grade heating oil once filtered to remove carbon black particles

Interesting day