A feasibility study commissioned by the Port of Port Townsend to examine the potential siting of a pyrolysis system in Jefferson County to turn recyclable plastics into fuel suggests that more plastic needs to be recycled for such a system to be viable.
Simply put, pyrolysis refers to the breaking down of plastics using heat in a low-oxygen environment so as to avoid combustion. In the oxygen-less environment, the plastics are reduced to their various constituent hydrocarbons. Depending on the conditions applied and catalysts used in the process, a variety of products can be produced; perhaps most notably, pyrolytic oil.
At the urging of Port Townsend Foundry owner Pete Langley earlier this year, port commissioners voted to accept a $50,000 grant to conduct the feasibility study.
Kimberly Porsche of Tetra Tech, the group tapped by the port to conduct the feasibility study, shared the findings of the study with port commissioners during a recent meeting.
“The feasibility study goal was to assess if the conversion of waste plastics via pyrolysis is an effective alternative to the current waste disposal practices,” Porsche said. “The current practices include collecting recyclables including plastics in Port Townsend and trucking them to a material recovery facility.”
NOT ENOUGH FEEDSTOCK
In particular, the study sought to evaluate the “feedstock” — the recyclables being disposed of in the region — and determine how useful that feedstock would be for various pyrolysis technologies.
In Jefferson County residents pay to have their recyclable plastics collected and consolidated into large bales, which are transferred to a material recovery facility in Tacoma before being sold to external buyers.
Porsche said the feasibility study found that in 2020 somewhere between 100 and 120 tons of plastics were collected by Skookum Recycling Services. With this in mind, she said the list of vendors who could supply a pyrolysis system were narrowed down.
“As part of this project we contacted 12 vendors. We didn’t get responses from four of them, two declined because of the size of the feedstock, so that left us with four vendors that were willing to contribute as part of the study,” Porsche said.
“We determined that the only viable technology for this scale of a project was PDO Technologies. The other three just didn’t have systems currently sized for the through-put capacity as small as this feedstock is,” she added.
A single stationary pyrolysis unit, manufactured by PDO Technologies, could process four batches of plastics each day at 1,250 pounds of shredded and condensed plastic material per batch.
From this, the unit could produce an estimated 50 gallons of Naphtha fuel per batch and around 100 gallons of diesel. The char produced per batch would be approximately 85 pounds.
A mobile unit manufactured by the same company could turn out three batches per day at 500 pounds of recyclable material per batch. The mobile unit, according to PDO Technologies, could produce an estimated 20 gallons of Naphtha per batch and 40 gallons of diesel per batch.
Capital expenses for the project were estimated at just shy of $2.5 million. Operations costs for both the pyrolysis system and a pretreatment system were estimated at $222,596.
FUELING REVENUES
Tetra Tech’s study also revealed that the system could result in 55,500 gallons of pyrolytic oil produced per year and $138,750 in revenue for oil sales. Avoiding tipping fees at the Roosevelt Regional Landfill could result in a cost avoidance of about $14,330.
Following the presentation of the feasibility study’s results from Tetra Tech, Langley said he was encouraged by the findings and thanked the port commission for voting to accept the $50,000 grant to conduct the study.
Langley added that while he was a bit skeptical of some of the study’s figures, the analysis would be a good jumping off point for his own research into siting a pyrolysis system in Jefferson County.
“I want to really investigate a little more,” Langley said. “The next step is going back and saying, ‘How do we finance it? How do we get the funding to do a pilot program?’”
STILL PROMISING
Ultimately, Langley said he would like to create a system that could take the Port Townsend Foundry off-grid.
“My goal would be to build a system here that is scalable, up and down,” he said.
By creating a drop-off location for Jefferson County’s recyclable plastics, tin and aluminum, Langley said he sees an opportunity to eliminate the need to truck the recyclables to Tacoma. Also, by using the recyclable metals at the foundry, Langley said his concept could begin to take a bite out of humankind’s footprint on the planet.
“I want the tin and the aluminum to make products with and then the plastic as the energy source,” he said. “We’d do the service of hopefully devouring one of the worst nightmares we’ve ever created. And hopefully, then create some new product with it.”
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July 22, 2021 at 11:46PM
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Port commissioners briefed on results of plastics-to-fuel study - Port Townsend Leader
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