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by koheripbal 1246 days ago
There is a reason that portion of the crude oil was made into plastic, and not sold as oil or fuel to begin with.
1 comments

My first thought was "what kind of oil?". It matters. The clean burning, energy dense stuff was turned into fuel from the start. The rest of it is barely fit for a cigarette lighter.

But beyond that, not all plastics come from crude oil directly. Many plastics, especially baggies and consumer plastics of the type shown in these photos, come from liquids that are removed from natural gas.

Either way, you're certainly dealing with a liquid hydrocarbon of inferior quality. And at the huge energy cost of having refined it twice. I'd be surprised if this provided any net-positive energy. And it's certainly a dirty burning fuel with low BTU per volume.

Why not just burn the plastic directly at this point?