This device works on electricity (3 phase), it has six nichrome coils as heating elements and

consumes a total of 6kW (1kW each coil). The coils are turned on and off by three solid
state relays, one for each phase, the relays are controlled by a digital thermostat with a
temperature sensor just a bit below the lid, so that the vapor temperature can be
monitored. You need to heat the plastic slowly to about 350 degrees and just wait till it
does the magic. Our device has a capacity of 50 liters and can hold about 30 kg of
shredded plastic. The process takes about 4 hours, but it can be shortened considerably by
tweaking the design a bit. As I said, this makes a liquid fuel that can be used as multifuel,
that means it can be used on diesel engines and also on gasoline engines, but we still need
to test it will work on gasoline. It works for diesel engines just fine, that has already been
tested. There is a difference in what plastic you use, if you use polyethylene
(plastic cans, plastic foil, and all kind of flexible non break plastics) you will get out
liquid fuel that will solidify as it cools into paraffin, it is still good for diesel engines as long
as you use a heated fuel tank, because it needs to be heated just about at 30 degrees
celsius to be liquid and transparent. If you don't want that, you can put the paraffin through
the device for one more time and you will chop those hydrocarbons even smaller and half of
the paraffin will turn to liquid fuel and other half will remain a paraffin, but much denser
and will melt at higher temperatures, this is the stuff you can make candles out of and it
does not smell at all when burned, maybe a bit like candles. But if you use polypropylene
(computer monitor cases, printer cases, other plastics that break easily), you get out only
liquid fuel, no paraffin at all. All you need is just filter the fuel out of solids and you good to
go and put it in your gas tank. We have made the analysis and it is almost the perfect diesel
fraction. It has no acids or alkalines in it, like fuel from tires does. The unit in the pictures
can convert about 60 kg of plastic into 60 liters of fuel in one day. Other methods of
heating the reactor can be employed, electricity is just easier to work with and control.
Some Japanese companies manufacture such devices, but their prices for this size unit is
more than 100 000$, our home made device cost us 900$ max. We use aluminum oxide
bricks to insulate the heat, they are light as foam and can be easily cut in any shape, but
any kind of insulator can be used. The bricks make the highest costs for this device. It can
also be made using liquid fuel burners to heat the reactor, this will enable to make the
device self sustainable by using about 10-15% of the produced fuel along with the
produced gas. A small farm can use a device this size and make fuel for itself by
converting plastic waste to fuel, farms have very muchplastic waste and it is a big
problem, at least in my country. Our next goal is to make the same thing possible using
biomass, every farm could then use old leafs, wet grass, saw dust and all kind of biomass
and gasify it into tar like substance that can then be put through the pyrolysis device and
turned into biodiesel. But we will see about that. Here are some fuelsamples:

We made calculations, it turns out that our device, as crude as it is with much room for
improvement, can produce diesel fuel at a cost of 17 US cents a liter, that is when
onlyplastic and electricity is considered. The next machine will probably use a
liquid fuel burner to heat the reactor, this could lower the costs even more as it would then
run on a small percentage of the produced fuel and also the produced gas would then be
used more practically - burned along with the fuel to heat the reactor. Even now, if we
would get the electricity from a diesel generator that runs on the produced fuel, it would
consume about 20% of the produced fuel, but those generators are never efficient and
much of the potential power is lost, so heating the reactor using a burner should be even
more efficient. Japan produces such units that run themselves using the produced fuel,
their machines use 7-10% of the yield. But they cost more than 100 000$ for a unit the size
we have. We also calculated all the materials and work involved to make this device and it
comes around 1200$, but it is scalable from table top units up to industrial size units that
produce several tons of fuel daily.
The minimum temperature would be around 300 degree celsius, but it works much faster
and better at around 400 degrees. Our current device produces around 5 liters per hour and
the process takes around 4 hours, so 20 liters total. The tighter you pack the plastic, the
more efficient. The time is the same no matter if your container is full or half full, so the
more you can put in, the better. I use shredded plastic and so I can put around 25 kg of
shredded plastic in a 50 liter tank. I am not sure about solar, probably not a good idea as
the heat source is no reliable, as you get the heat up, you don't want it to drop considerably
until the process is finished, because that would solidify all the melted plastic into a big
blob and this would the take forever to remelt. Solar would probably work on very small
quantities. Also the type of plastic is important, you can use only plastics that have pure
hydrocarbons in them and nothing else, such as polyethylene and polypropylene. PVC
should not be used as it contains large amounts of chlorine that is very toxic and would
corrode the metals in your reactor. Also PET bottles are no good as they contain additional
oxygen and we need the process to be in non oxygen environment. So only use plastics that
contain only carbon and hydrogen.
The white inner rings in the metal drum are made out or about 50 aluminum oxide bricks. I
use aluminum oxide because it is light weight and easily cut, like foam. So you cut them so
that they make a circle. There are grooves cut in them to house the heating coils. The coils
were bought from a kiln making company, you just tell them your power needs, voltages
and other stuff and they give you nichrome wire in needed length and diameter, you just
need to wind it on a round stick to form a coil and then insert in those grooves in aluminum
oxide bricks. Our device has six coils rated for 1kW each, so 6 kW total heating power. I use
three phase current, six coils are connected in 3 parallel pairs, a pair for each phase. They
are switched on and off using three solid state relays that are controlled by a digital
thermostat. The thermocouple is located on the lid of the reactor. There is a metal cage in
the barrel that keeps the reactor container apart from the bricks and coils. You just slide
the reactor container in, bolt the lid on and connect the condensing reservoirs and off you
go. The pipe from the lid goes through three condensing containers, but there could just as
well be only one. The plastic melts and boils in the reactor, the vapors go to the condensing
container where it cools down and most part of the vapors turn into liquid, remaining vapors
that contain mostly gas go through a safety bubbler which catches the last bits

of fuel leaving only gas, that you can burn. There usually is very little fuel in the bubbler
after the process, and it foats on tor of water and can be easy removed.
Hope this helps,
The reactor chamber is made out of an old 50 liter steel propane tank, we cut the upper
part open and welded on an assembly so that the lid can be bolted on. The flat ring on that
the lid is bolted on has a conical groove in it and the lid has an apropriate wedge machined
on that matches that groove. The conical shape of these things elliminates the need of a
seal, you just bolt the lid on and it will be airtight. I attached a drawing of the lid assembly.
Yes, you can use single phase current and 2kW of power should be enough for about 20 liter
reactor container. You can use either one heating element rated for 2kW or two 1kW ones in
parallel. The voltage used is mains power so 220v in Europe and 110v in US. I don't know
exactly the specs of the nichrome wire, but something around 1-1.5mm diameter wire
should be used, you just need to get such a wire and measure the resistance of it for say a
meter, then based on your power needs, you calculate the total length of the wire. For
example, if the wire has say 30 Ohms of resistance per meter and you need it to work at
1000w of power, then at 220 volts that would be 4.54 Amps, so you need to get the wire so
long that its resistance will limit the current to 4.54A. So if the resistance per meter is 30
Ohms, then at 220 volts 7.33A of current will flow through that wire, that means 1.6kW,
that is too much, in order to get 1kW of power we need to increase the wire length till the
total resistance of the wire is 48 Ohms, that then would be around 1.6 meters of wire. Hope
this helps.
Here is how the electrical circuit would look like in your case of single phase current:

The dimensions of the

reactor container does not really matter, it is like boiling water, if sufficient heat is applied to
the container, it will boil the water no matter how tall or wide the container is. I would
suggest using something like a propane tank, like this:

The metal cage is not where the plastic goes, it just prevents the reactor tank touching the
bricks and coils. The plastic goes in the modified propane tank and this tank then is fitted
inside the cage. The cage is a bit smaller in diameter than the brick cylinder so that there is
about 1-2cm of space between the cage and the bricks. In my case the internal diameter of
the brick ring is around 34cm, but that will vary depending on the reactor container size. I
would suggest first to get a 20-25 liter container, something with thicker walls would be
preferable. then you measure its diameter and make a cage inside which the container fits
nicely and firmly and then you measure the outer diameter of the cage, add several
centimeters for the gap between cage and bricks and you will have the needed diameter for
the brick ring. Then you just see what size bricks you have available at your local kiln shop
and calcilate how much you will need for a ring and at what angle the sides need to be cut
for a ring shape when assembled. At the moment I can't tahe more detailed pictures
because the reactor is at my friends house and he lives several hundred
kilemeters from me.
I can't show you the insides of the condensing containers as they are welded shut and only
have an inlet pipe and an outlet pipe, but there is nothing fancy in them, just a metal
reservoir that cools the vapors coming out of the reactor, thats all. I will draw a better
schematic later.
The shredded plastic looks like this:
http://www.emuprim.lv/jetijs/plog-co...lastic-002.jpg
but might also be more white or gray in color. The main thing is that the plastic should be
polyethylene or polypropylene and NOT polyvinylchlordide (PVC).
I can't post more pictures of the lid, but I will make a 3d cad drawings tomorrow.
It is about Japanese commercial devices. But those cost so much that almost no one
considers using this tech at home. Japanese put all kind of LCD's, sophisticated power
management systems and monitoring devices in their units that really does nothing except
increase the price. This is easy, cheap and almost anyone can build one without taking out a
second mortgage on his house
The way we do this is not the only way nor the best, after
you know the process, there is lots and lots of room for improvements.
You could build a small table top device for around 300-500$ maybe even less. But I
wouldn't use a pressure cooker as they have a heat resistant rubber seal around the lid, it is
good for food cooking temperatures, but wont hold 400 degrees celsius, it will melt and
leak. Also you need a custom heating element, because ordinary heating coils that are used
in water boilers, tea pots or electric stoves wont last long, because of their thin resistance
wire. You need nichrome or kanthal resistance wire with diameter around 1.5mm, this will
do well. The seal between the reactor and the lid is very important, it must be hermetic and
heat resistant, we have tried many ways before and no seal material lasted long, all
eventually fail and let the hot plastic vapor seep out, this is not acceptable. We tried heat
resistant silicon for use on chimneys and other commercial stuff, not good enough.
Eventually we found that the thing that works best is conical groove and a wedge that fits
inside that groove around the lid, like you can see in the CAD drawing. When the lid is
bolted to the reactor chamber, the fit is airtight and hermetical. The pressures in the system
are very low, only such to be sufficient to bubble through the bubbler, this makes it very
much safer than commercial flash pyrolysis devices that are also very expensive and

affordable only by large companies.

In our case the bubbler at the end is just as a flashback arrester that prevents fire going
into the reactor, but the gas really burns so slow, that it is not really needed, but better to
leave it in, safety is never too much. Also the bubbler can be used to eliminate the need of
condensing tanks, because the vapors cool sufficiently when bubbling through the water to
turn into liquid fuel, that can the be poured off as it does not dissolve in water but floats
above it. The produced gas should be burned or vented outside.
This is starting to really remind me of that news broadcast of the company that is doing
something very similar, on a larger scale. I think they are using superheated water (under
pressure) as a solvent. I think they are combusting their end product with HHO to clean up
the emissions, for their heat source. Funny, I remember one of my construction foremen
saying when he tossed a plastic milk jug in the garbage (we can't even recycle them here,
still!) "One day we'll be digging these back up for fuel. This is a battery. A storage of
energy. Just sitting underground, waiting for re-use." On a tangent, it may be possible to
use a fresnel lense to focus photon energy on a stainless steel capsule that would melt salt
to about 595 degrees farenheit, which would flow by gravity into a radiator coil at the base
of the reactor. As the molten salt returned to solid it would then be raised by a corkscrew
style turnstile to physically lift it back to the height of the capsule where it would tumble in
to repeat the cycle. As this entire process is heat laden, and heat "losing"... it could all be
contained in a solar room, that during winter (itself) collected heat. As the process is
perpetually losing heat to it's environment, the heat of the reactor, the capsule, and even a
genset (if a diesel genset was then creating electricty) - all this heat should be recycled with
a Mistubishi (or the like) variable speed compressor heat pump, to be sent into the home for
heat. A large underground heat "sink" could also be established into the equation. All
tangents, but food for thought.