Brooks, Ore.-based plastics recycling company Agri-Plas Inc. has developed a process to convert waste plastics into a high-quality crude oil, and is selling this reclaimed crude oil product to U.S. Oil & Refining in Tacoma, Wash. The technology used, according to Agri-Plas Vice President Allen Jongsma, is similar to a modified pyrolysis process.
“Some call it a type of pyrolysis – it’s close to that,” he said. “We call it a reclamation process. We had to make changes to how we put plastics in, how we managed gases and vapors once we get to a certain temperature and how we break it back down into the crude oil, separating of the gases and acids and everything else out of it. That’s a key component.” Jongsma said patent protection is underway.
The technology had been under development for six years by a man named Kevin DeWitt; Jongsma met him in 2006 and was intrigued by the concept and technology. “Just before I met Kevin he built his first unit,” Jongsma said. “He worked six years prior to that on how to make the oil from plastic and couldn’t get it right,” but finally DeWitt had a breakthrough and raised money to build a prototype. “It was right after that when I met him,” Jongsma said. “It intrigued me because we’re a plastic recycler and we deal with a lot of post consumer waste.”
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When Jongsma met DeWitt, Agri-Plas was already recycling more than a million pounds of waste plastic a month. After two years, a second system was built in July 2008; a third unit was built inside Agri-Plas’ Brooks, Ore., facility.
“We’re now getting ready for a commercial application,” Jongsma told Biomass Magazine. Agri-Plas shipped their first tanker load of crude to U.S. Oil & Recycling in Tacoma in December. The company is currently in the process of building a fourth mega unit – four cookers tied together in one pod – to increase throughput capacity; reduce process energy needed as some methane and butane generated will be burned off to help provide process heat; and serve as a showcase model for marketing and selling the units. The four-cooker pod is scheduled for installation in a new building equipped with solar panels to even further minimize process energy requirements.
“We’re trying to make this project about as green as it can get,” he said. The four-piece cooker will be able to make more than 2,500 gallons of crude a day, and should be running by summertime 2009.
“It’s still a drop in the bucket – but it’s a drop that doesn’t have to come out of the ground,” Jongsma said.
Agris-Plas has identified that there are 250,000 pounds of plastic per day in the area surrounding the Brooks, Ore., facility, that’s currently going to landfills. “That’s on top of what we already recycle,” Jongsma said. The good thing about our process is that we can put any kind of plastic in it and it can handle it. We have even run straight PVC to see what happens – PVC has only 5 percent oil, all polyvinyl gases, hydrochloric gases and acids, and we’re able to separate those acids away from the plastic oil, which has been an issue for a lot of people who have tried to come up with this process in the past.”
Jongsma said Agri-Plas has hired a consulting firm to find markets for the char and ash, and has identified six potential market segments.