Cambridge startup could convert world's old motor oil into petrol
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| Can it: Enval has a major commercial opportunity |
The technique uses the same underlying process that Enval is already exploiting to salvage high grade aluminium from old packaging such as toothpaste tubes, pyrolysis, and could be readily adapted to recycle the motor oil according to Professor Howard Chase, Enval's R&D director and head of the Cambridge University laboratory where both processes have been developed.
Prof Chase said the Enval board is aware of the technology and work is now continuing on assessing what the difficulties might be in converting a laboratory success into a commercial product.
Around 8 billion gallons (30 billion litres) of used motor oil is thought to be produced every year from changing car and truck oil, a figure that is expected to grow as millions more people in emerging economies begin to acquire cars.
In his presentation of a report on the research to the American Chemical Society, Prof Chase said current disposal techniques are not particularly sound environmentally, whether that's re-refining it into new lubricating oil, processing and burning it in special furnaces to heat buildings or just discarded or burnt in ways that can pollute the environment.
By using the pyrolysis technique developed in the Biochemical and Environmental Engineering group to convert the motor oil into fuel however, Prof Chase believes it is possible to address the issue of improperly disposed of waste while providing a supplemental fuel source for an energy-hungry world.
The process also appears to be highly efficient, converting nearly 90% of a waste oil sample into fuel. Prof Chase said: "The recovery of valuable oils using this process shows advantage over traditional processes for oil recycling and suggests excellent potential for scaling the process to the commercial level."
Pyrolysis works by using very high temperatures to convert large hydrocarbons into smaller ones, in this case breaking down the waste oil into a mix of gases, liquids and a small amount of solids. These can then be chemically converted into petrol or diesel fuel.
It isn't new, but current processes heat the oil unevenly, producing gases and liquids not easily converted into fuel. Prof Chase, head of the School of Technology at Cambridge University's the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and his research team believe their new method overcomes this problem and uses their new pyrolysis technology.
In laboratory studies, Prof Chase's doctoral students, Su Shiung Lam and Alan Russell, mixed samples of waste oil with a highly microwave-absorbent material and then heated the mixture with microwaves.
"Our results indicate that a microwave-heated process shows exceptional promise as a means for recycling problematic waste oil for use as fuel," said Prof Chase and Lam.
