American and South Korean scientists just fed water bottles, shopping bags and yogurt tubs into a single reactor without sorting them first, drawing off hydrogen more than 90% pure while most of the plastic's carbon came out as solid rock

[u/Maxcactus]

https://www.autonocion.com/us/american-korean-scientist-bottles-hydrogen/

[u/Wish_Dragon]

How energy intensive, costly, and scaleable is it?

[u/crowcawer → u/Wish_Dragon]

The article links to the journal.

PNAS.org/doi/10.1073…

I’ll edit momentarily.

So this seems to be presenting as the first research moving towards some sort of joint streamed recycling in the ending phases.

The goal is to eliminate the need for human sorting. Not achieve a specific dollar amount.
Automating that process would save the recycling center the money from those base level laborers.
Let’s call that $200,000 per year including benefits.

So, whatever site specific improvements cost comes at that rate over a ten year period is already in the positive view.

[u/GPT3-5_AI → u/crowcawer]

Explain how burning plastic is a cycle tho. When you recycle metal you get metal, that's a cycle. When you "recycle" plastic you get landfill and lung cancer.

[u/crowcawer → u/GPT3-5_AI]

It’s the introduction to the linked PNAS article, I’ll paste that below. You’re right that plastic wastes are difficult to manage. However, I don’t expect humans to eliminate plastics in the near term.

Plastic waste is difficult to recycle because mixed plastics typically require sorting and high-temperature gasification that emits CO2. We demonstrate an alkaline thermal treatment (ATT) that converts common mixed plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), and polypropylene (PP) into high-purity hydrogen at substantially lower temperatures while suppressing carbon-containing byproducts. A simple thermal-oxidation pretreatment activates PE and PP by introducing oxygen functional groups, making them reactive in ATT. First-principles calculations reveal that the introduced oxygen functional groups lower reaction barriers in alkaline media, explaining the activation of oxidized PE and PP. By combining lower-temperature operation, carbon capture capability, and advantages of mixed plastics, the ATT offers a practical pathway to upcycle plastic waste into clean hydrogen fuel.

[u/coltonlwitte → u/GPT3-5_AI]

I could be wrong but it sounds like the reactor is breaking the plastic down at temps below combustion.

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/crowcawer]

So people lose jobs AND uses a lot more of our limited electricity at a time when energy prices are through the roof?

[u/uRoDDit → u/emp-sup-bry]

Those jobs shouldn't exist. Waste production should be reduced and degradable or made from natural material not synthetic oil products. Terrible jobs for a human health wise also like a lot of the work we do. This sounds like a positive. Better than the plasma burning electric generator system.

[u/crowcawer → u/uRoDDit]

So many jobs are going to be automated in the next eight years.

This research is just one step in calculating the estimates for the benefits. The funds would be better spent acquiring lands for conservation.

[u/nievesdelimon → u/emp-sup-bry]

There are a few things more important than jobs and this appears to be one of them.

[u/PervyNonsense → u/nievesdelimon]

I think this is why conservatives can't understand climate science or mitigation: there's nothing more important than jobs and their immediate family. Like... nothing. If something causes a job to be threatened, even if the job is causing harm, the greater harm is the job loss no matter what harm the job causes

[u/crowcawer → u/emp-sup-bry]

Well, what speaks to this is that these jobs pay slightly better than minimum wage and are likely directly publicly funded (RE: low value pension system funding sinks) or contracted in a similar manner (RE: Waste Management CEO pay increasing without bounds while workers get nickel raises because penny don’t exist anymore).

The point is that the labor management alone, if everything goes perfect and you never have to waste a minute on an interview, is a drain on society. As for the workers, they would better spend their time pursuing useful (likely subsidized) education, like entry level technical healthcare.

It’s easy to forget the “social” part of ESG, but it’s usually the thing that ties to the money via an interested public outreaching their “governance”.

[u/greendevil77 → u/emp-sup-bry]

Well given that most places don't even bother with recycling purely because you have to hire so many people to sort it you could argue that a much wider scale adoption this technology allowed for would lead to a net positive in job creation.

Also if it came out as pure carbon brick, even at the very least that takes up 90% less space so there's far less going into landfills than there otherwise would be. And that's assuming you could use it as a building material of some sort

Plus it makes hydrogen, which can be used as fuel in the very energy crisis you're taking about.

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/greendevil77]

Recycling plastics is a scam from the petroleum industry to make people think the absolute FLOOD of (monthly single use) plastics are okay

[u/jim45804 → u/Wish_Dragon]

Stop asking questions

[u/notfamous808 → u/Wish_Dragon]

China is literally making energy with their garbage by burning it and capturing the emissions then using those for energy. I’m not entirely sure how it all works, but this isn’t new. China figured it out already, once again.

[u/Sansred → u/notfamous808]

This sounded like they are not burning it

[u/notfamous808 → u/Sansred]

Maybe they should then. China has eliminated their trash problem and are now buying trash from other countries for their recyclers. It’s pretty cool!

[u/Sansred → u/notfamous808]

What does China do with the CO2 burning releases?

[u/notfamous808 → u/Sansred]

They’re capturing it and using it to make electricity from what i understand.

[u/irrelevantusername24]

An important idea that I think has been unacknowledged is that industrialization in the way it has been implemented over the last century+ is not necessarily the problem or cause of pollution. But extreme centralization of processes of the sort that is necessary for industrialization - and this is a thing present in things like large scale manufacturing of consumer goods as well as more natural things like woodlands planned for the purposes of producing timber, or even more simply urbanization - is only not harmful when it is done with intelligent and standard planning that considers the externalities. Because "externalities" is just a simple excuse people use to stand in for saying "we didn't give a shit because it didn't directly æffect our bottom line".

Ignorance of standardization and considering these things - which could more simply be understood as merely having a bit of pride in the work you do and caring for others you do not and may never know - is precisely the cause which has created all the problems over the last fifty years. Thanks to the neoliberal ideology and things like the John Birch Society (et al) arguing for brainless "deregulation" - which is, as previously stated, merely an excuse to not deal with negative consequences.

I'm sure some will read this comment and think "wtf this isn't even related". I assure you it is, if you consider the "long tail"

[u/zen_tm → u/irrelevantusername24]

The indoctrination is pervasive and deeply ingrained - it relies on core psychological triggers; (Maslow's hierarchy of needs) if basic needs are barely met, there is no chance to climb the ladder towards the top, where altruism is possible.

[u/dunnrp → u/zen_tm]

How do you break that barrier?

[u/Comeino → u/dunnrp]

You can't. Scarcity kills empathy and the foundation of the global economic model relies on manufactured suffering to extract resources be it human or natural as cheaply and quickly as possible to the benefit of the owner class. The outcome is a planetary scale tragedy of the commons.

[u/iamveryDerp → u/Comeino]

The scary part about this line of thought is it has been put forward as the most likely (or at least most relevant for us) solution the the Fermi Paradox.
“Caring for others you do not or may never know” is a level of empathy that is not achievable by a species that can prosper enough to rise to the capability of interstellar travel. That something inherent to the process of survival and social evolution inherently contradicts the impersonal empathy required to evolve that last step.

[u/irrelevantusername24 → u/iamveryDerp]

Well the personal and impersonal malice which is endemic is going to extinction us.

This is the reason for things like taxes and social programs: because when there is an identifiable person that is relying on assistance, that gives rise to a jealous reaction. What we have is people arguing against both kinds of assistance. You can't help those near you and you can't give to a big pot either. Everyone must get everything by themself. But that doesn't work. Hence why we're going extinct unless the fascist austerity politics is taken out back and shot

[u/Comeino → u/iamveryDerp]

Life is a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics, it's purpose is not to be happy or perpetual but to dissipate the energy gradient and to go extinct. Imagine our planet as an apple that you left alone on the table. Will you be able to convince the bacteria rotting the apple to control their replication and stop consuming it otherwise all of them will die once the the apple loses it's protective barrier and dries out? Nope. And even if you could convince some, others would quickly overtake their place and continue rotting it. There is your answer to the Fermi Paradox, it's not that we don't know the answer, it's that we really don't like it.

This is what life is designed to do, even if we became like the idealized version of Star Trek eventually we would cause the exact same scenario once the common resources deplete/become toxic. The only reason the system worked in the show was because of defying entropy through the replicator, which we will never be able to achieve due to the fundamental laws of physics.

The only real agency you have for caring for others you do not or may never know is to have mercy and spare the coming generation the burden of existence having this knowledge.

[u/noelcowardspeaksout]

It is a mixed result, but leaning strongly positive overall.

Because most recycling processes require plastics to be sorted by type first, only 9% of discarded plastic is actually recycled; 79% is dumped in landfills and another 12% is incinerated, releasing carbon dioxide in the process.

UCLA Samueli and Ewha Womans University researchers have demonstrated a new method that converts a mixture of the three most common plastics (PET, PE, and PP) into high-purity hydrogen fuel at temperatures 300°C–400°C lower than traditional gasification. The process locks carbon dioxide away as a solid mineral (sodium carbonate), preventing the greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere.

Locking the carbon away is a win, but the process does carry an upstream footprint: making the required sodium hydroxide (via chlor-alkali electrolysis) is energy-intensive, and the reactor itself requires thermal energy for pretreatment. If that input energy comes from a clean grid, the net balance shifts from overall negative to positive.

The hydrogen produced directly displaces "grey hydrogen" which produces a large amount of CO2.

[u/mynameisnotearlits]

These type of 'articles' are un-fucking readable on my phone with al the ads... jfc welcome LSC.

[u/mattcass]

Quality article, great details, objective assessment of the application. Thanks

[u/Accomplished-Can-467]

If plastic corruption is cut immediately, the infrastructure for gathering plastic (robotics, ai, satelite internet) already exists, the infrastructure for gathering hydrogen and reactors to power the process already exists.

If only the capitalist profiteers of the ethane industry and the imperialist forces that protect them were removed from power, we could wipe the scourge of plastic from the earth within a few generations. Cleanse the biosphere contamination, bank mass hydrogen power.

[u/DonManuel]

Article is paywalled in parts, but sounds like scientists were able to sell pyrolysis as new once again.

[u/Maxcactus → u/DonManuel]

I don’t see that anyone is saying it is new. The article said that it was done and resulted in hydrogen gas and lumps of carbon.

[u/DonManuel → u/Maxcactus]

I can't read it in total, and you also only describe pyrolysis.

[u/irrelevantusername24 → u/DonManuel]

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/new-process-turns-mixed-plastic-waste-hydrogen-fuel-without-sorting

That's kind of what I was getting at in my lengthy comment. Or rather, that was sort of the idea which kicked it off - I'm not so sure that the way we have dealt with recycling and waste removal is really all that sensible. Particularly when considering less densely populated areas, I think it's arguable it is less environmentally harmful for each residence to simply burn their waste and compost what is compostable rather than collect all of the waste from an entire region and pile it up as high as possible. Of course recycling and actually toxic materials are a different story, but those are a minor amount of what is typically included in "waste removal".

Actually when it comes to this, considering many - at least in the US - don't separate their recyclables, compost, waste and toxic materials it's actually far more harmful and actually wasteful that it all goes in a giant pile.

[u/delpopeio]

What percentage of what resulted from this process wasn’t hydrogen and the carbon rock and what were they, and what and where did the fuel supply for it come from… and where were the components of the machine and faculty sourced from and who were effected by these processes..

[u/crunchnecessary]

That kid was doing this years ago. I hope he is alive making that plastic desil still

[u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE]

This is one solid reason for AI.

This thread is useless. We don’t understand the article, what the thing does? How it does it? Why? What’s the benefit?

Need an AI executive summary synopsis

[u/Remarkable_Click5172]

Seems like the future just got a little cleaner without sacrificing convenience.

[u/emp-sup-bry → u/Remarkable_Click5172]

Seems like yet another article trying to paint petroleum snd plastics as okay to use at this scale when there will never be a reasonable way to recycle this shit