PHILIPPINES: A Filipino inventor has found a way to turn plastic waste into fuel for vehicles

Record ID: 796352

  • Title: PHILIPPINES: A Filipino inventor has found a way to turn plastic waste into fuel for vehicles
  • Date: 15th July 2012
  • Summary: MANILA, PHILIPPINES (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TRAFFIC
  • Embargoed: 30th July 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Philippines
  • Country: Philippines
  • Topics: Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVA37LU6DUVE70U6MCRWZHHS2OXD
  • Story Text: Motorcycles are ubiquitious in the Philippines but the fuel going into the tank of this bike is anything but. It comes from plastic bags, recycled to their original liquid state.
    Plastic waste discarded in Manila's overflowing landfills is the raw material for the fuel which is being produced inside a processing plant in Rizal province. The plant is located near the city's infamous Payatas landfill where, each day, hundreds of urban poor scavenge for useful scraps of plastic. In 2000, more than 200 people died beneath an avalanche of garbage built over decades to a hill more than a hundred feet high.
    Filipino inventor Jayme Navarro says he's putting a dent in Manila's growing garbage problem. He's transforming the plastic with pyrolysis technology, a thermochemical process that decomposes materials at high temperatures inside a sealed chamber without oxygen. He calls it the ultimate in recycling.

    "By pyrolysis, we can decompose plastic into diesel, gasoline and kerosene," he said.
    Navarro says the process is simple. Plastic waste is placed on a conveyor belt for shredding and drying before being fed to an airt-tight thermal chamber for decomposition. A catalyst inside the chamber accelerates the decomposition process and melts the granulated plastics into vapors that are used for distillation and refinement into diesel, kerosene and gasoline.
    Navarro says the resulting product has the same chemical composition as regular fuel with cleaner quality due to its low sulfur content. Air pollutants from the incineration process are minimal since the pyrolysis chamber is sealed and does not allow direct contact with the flames, he says.
    Navarro says he accidentally discovered the process when he was researching a way to recycle plastic waste back to its original condition in the early 70s, but only started developing the technology in 2008 when soaring fuel prices and lack of proper plastic garbage disposal made it a more marketable solution.
    Navarro's newly founded company, Polygreen Technology and Resources, can produce around 1,600 litres of fuel from two metric tonnes of plastic wastes daily.
    Prices on their fuel are 10 to 20 percent lower than regular fuel due to the large supply of plastic waste and lower production cost.
    While reconverting plastics to fuel has already been developed in other countries like the United States and Japan, Navarro says his solution addresses a peculiarly Filipino problem - a deadly and worsening garbage problem.
    Polygreen Technology and Resource Chief Executive Officer, Anna Po, says Navarro's technology will hopefully be a model that can spur investors to capitalize on the recycling business and help the environment.

    "Hoping for a greener, cleaner future is still possible by recycling all discarded landfill plastic wastes into energy," she said.
    The plastic-based fuel has been tested and approved by the Philippine Science Bureau for industrial use, and is undergoing a series of long-term tests for vehicles.
    The group plans to increase production and eventually partner with local government agencies to establish processing plants near dump sites for the government's alternative waste disposal projects.
    According to Environmental Law alliance Worldwide, Manila has the highest rate of garbage production in the Philippines with more than 10 million people producing 6,000 tonnes of trash daily.
    Poor law enforcement on garbage segregation and environmental protection has been cited by environmentalists as the reasons for the waste problems in the Philippines but Jayme Navarro and his colleagues believe an industrial scale version of their technology could not only help drivers on the road but ease the garbage problem significantly.
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