Hello.

Just saw announced/shown on television an experimental 'old' car running plastic scraps into a gasification reactor fitted in the engine compartment, yielding 30% less fuel consumption. The small device appeared to be about 1 litre size.

 

How does it work ?

Gasification is the reaction where you heat up the plastic (or any other carbon/hydrogen/oxygen containing material) to about 800 degrees Celsius and you don't let any air in. The plastic/waste/wood/coal (pick one) will completely decompose into mostly CO, H2, H2O and CO2.

That gas that you thus create can be used in the engine of the car.

 

A few words of warning though:

 

1. You have to constantly feed new plastic scraps into a reactor which is very hot. If your car uses 10 liters of fuel in 1 hour, and you want to replace 30% by plastic scraps, then you need to put 3 kg of plastic scraps into this reactor each hour.

2. The gas that you produce is probably not very clean. It might corrode your engine in the inside - it may in other words reduce the life expectancy of your car.

 

If you can create a link to this experimental old car, then I might be able to give better comments.

Thanks. I expected to see the video, but could not pull it at the site:

 

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4820233,00.html

There is a lot of junk in plastic that I would rather not have in the air. And if any of the gases produced are corrosive, bye bye engine. There are junk places that will incinerate their trash to produce electricity, and they can do so with systems designed for it and with systems to catch any toxic compounds that might be released.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4820233,00.html

I suggest you do not follow this guy's example. The "invention" isn't new (gasification for cars was used quite extensively during the 2nd world war, albeit not on plastics, but on wood and other residues)... and the fact that this guy wants to patent his idea shows to me that he doesn't know much about it (unless he's just a patent troll who wants to sue all the industry that works with gasification - and in that case I wish him good luck in court against multi billion dollar industry). Plenty of prior art exists.

 

Also, the "invention" doesn't seem to include any gas cleaning. You probably cannot easily distinguish between all the plastics. Some may be quite harmless to your engine, but I don't know how PVC behaves in gasification, but I wouldn't be surprised if hydrochloric acid is produced... that can't be good for your engine.

Was not to implement it, just to learn how it works.

Thanks.