[geedee77]

The real gain that I could see from this is that we could have a device like this in every home, similar to a waste disposal unit. Then, if the refinary tech is small and safe enough, we could create our own fuels (for vehicles or generators as the video suggested). That way we'd cut down dramatically on the CO2 footprint of fuelling these devices.

[philwelch]

Processing plastic into oil just to burn oil as fuel is fundamentally still wasteful, because of all the great things you can do with oil (produce more plastics, for instance) you're still burning it for fuel. The presence of this technology might seem to turn useless plastic waste into useful fuel, but on the contrary--if you can turn plastic back into oil, and then back into plastic over and over again, the long term value of oil for making plastics is even greater, and so is the potential loss of burning this reusable, recyclable resource as fuel.

[chopsueyar]

I got a kick out of this.

Being able to turn oil to plastic and back, that is true recycling...instead of converting plastic bottles into Old Navy fleeces (decycling).

[tjpick]

probably just better to burn the plastic as fuel. I'd guess the oil -> plastic -> oil conversion process is probably pretty inefficient with respect to energy. It looks like they focus on carbon efficiency.