There are millions of pounds of plastic in landfills around the country and floating in that big huge garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean – you know, the one the size of Texas – and only a fraction of the plastic used in the United States alone actually gets recycled. Thanks to one Japanese inventor and engineer, the table-top Blest Machine (Japanese) essentially takes plastic, melts it down, separates the gases and condensation from the melted plastic, and produces burnable fuel oil at the end. He says about two pounds of plastic will net you a quart of oil, and the oil can even be further refined into other petroleum-based products like gasoline.
What’s the catch? The second law of thermodynamics says no system is perfect, so before anyone thinks this is a perpetual motion scam, note that you actually have to dump energy into the Blest Machine to melt down the plastic, process it, and produce the oil on the other end.
This isn’t free energy by any stretch, but that’s not the point: the $9,500 table-top gadget isn’t designed to be an energy producer, it’s meant to give people and municipalities a way to use electricity (which can be produced using sustainable means) to get rid of plastic waste and turn it into something that’s useful today, like oil. Right now the Blest Machine is only available in Japan, but expect to see it pop up around the globe soon.
[via DVice]
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