The Czech Republic is testing new plastic recycling | iRADIO

“Now it’s built from five containers. We will still be adding a sixth to cover the last pipe that is there. And that’s all,” Michal Pivrnec from the Green Future company tells Radiožurnál.

According to him, the entire system works without access to oxygen. “It’s an emission-free technology. Although gas comes out of that line, we continue to use it to compress the gas,” he explains. There are sacks full of plastic granules on the ground. “We test various waste from companies. Here we have films, solid materials, waste from yellow bins,” enumerates Pivrnec.

In one of the bags there are crushed pieces of different colored plastics. However, there is also a lot of dirt – twigs or papers. The processing doesn’t matter though.

“The line can process everything that runs on carbon. We don’t mind even food scraps, metals, stones from the yellow bins. If it passes through the shredder, we basically don’t care what’s in there. This means that it becomes individual elements. Either it turns into oil and gas, or it remains as a solid residue,” explains Pivrnec.

Around 400 degrees

It is much warmer below. “We are already transporting material here with conveyors. It goes into the main part of the reactor. It’s a six-meter cylinder that expands by about eight centimeters due to the heat, just by how it gets wet,” Pivrnec reveals interestingly.

The narrow corridor is about three or three and a half meters wide. “They are two connected containers, so the length of the technology is 24 meters. If we put a stone in there, it will fall out in 50 minutes at the other end as a solid non-degradable residue,” explains Pivrnec.

As we approach the cylinder, it’s completely radiating heat, even though it’s insulated. Mr. Libor watches the entire line from the control room.

“The reactor is divided into 12 heating zones. It’s about the end there, because around the tenth zone there is a so-called evacuation fitting, which drains the gas and the oil here to the primary cooler. And from there, the solid residue, that carbon, is baked to a higher temperature of around 400 to 450 degrees, which is at the end,” he mentions how high the temperature must be there.

“These are rapid shutters that open and close at precisely programmed times. According to that, the technology doses the material in, or when the roasted carbon goes out,” Michal Pivrnec points out.

“Here, the gas with the aerosol leaves the main reactor to a secondary container, where we shock-cool it, on the order of 30 degrees. The oil is separated from the gas,” he adds.

Desired oil

Pyrolysis oil, i.e. a mixture of basic hydrocarbons that were originally plastics, is in containers that are made of titanium steel. “They are hermetically sealed so that it cannot be smelled anywhere, and they are carried away by pumps,” explains Pivrnec.

But he has a piece here for example. “When I open it, it is very aromatic. Something between gasoline and thinners,” he describes the smell of the oil.

It is a brown, very transparent liquid, like colored water. “From a chemical point of view, it is C5 to C12, which is gasoline, kerosene, diesel. This oil is in great demand for the new production of plastics,” concludes Pivrnec.

The Moravian-Silesian Region could issue a permit for the commercial operation of thermochemical plastic recycling by the end of the year.

Eva Kézrová

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