Homescale designs for plastic incinerators?

Question

I'm under the impression that it's better to burn the plastic and maybe get a bit of energy from it than disposing it somewhere only for it to deteriorate into many microplastic particles.

That said, I no longer believe in industrial scale solutions designed to deal with metric tons of waste that need to be mass transported by trucks.

I'm aware that plastic can't be just thrown to a campfire for it to burn completely to carbon dioxide without leaving both solid residues or uncombusted gases. Are there attempts to build small scale (home) incinerators which would be able to burn them thoroughly?

Any links to a paper or a final product is welcome.

Answer 1

It's a good question, but not a good idea by a long shot!

Burning plastic at home is probably one of the nastiest things you can do to both the general environment and your own, personal, local environment, including the one inside your lungs.

Wikipedia's Incineration and Waste-to-energy plant make it clear that you need several disparate and simultaneous technologies to both

1. achieve extremely high temperature and thorough combustion
2. remove the remaining toxic and polluting gases and the carcinogenic compound-laced micron-sized particulates that go into lungs and never come out (except perhaps by making their way into your bloodstream first!)

The proposal is just a little like thinking that if we burn hydrocarbons in power plants to make electricity to run cars, why don't we just make our own fires at home and run little generators to charge our electric car batteries, or maybe even get rid of the middleman and each burn our own hydrocarbons right in our own cars.

Scaling is good!

The sort-of main reason that it's cheaper and less polluting to use electric vehicles charged by hydrocarbons burnt in central locations is the technological and economic advantages of scale. It is much, much cheaper to achieve high efficiency and relatively lower levels of environmental impact when (the newer) big hydrocarbon power plants can take advantage of the latest technology.

Making a "home" fluidized bed incinerator and producing sufficiently high temperatures to ensure thorough combustion and making a scrubber for gases and particulates at home would be incredibly labor and money intensive.

"Fire projects" at home are bad, dangerous and frequently illegal

Most communities have all kinds of regulations related to burning garbage at home. You might have intellectual arguments why what you are doing is good and safe, but when someone calls the sheriff or the fire department, good luck with that.

Answer 2

I'm under the impression that it's better to burn the plastic and maybe get a bit of energy from it than disposing it somewhere only for it to deteriorate into many microplastic particles.

Indeed.

However, there are two alternatives/additions to this:

1. Don't just burn the plastic but also capture the carbon dioxide from burning. Use electrolysis using renewable electricity from wind and solar power to create hydrogen that you store underground in high pressure (for usage at times when sun doesn't shine and winds don't blow), and combine the hydrogen with carbon dioxide to create methane and eventually longer-chain hydrocarbons -- and new plastic! So you can have a completely closed carbon cycle, all of the plastic is chemically recycled into new high-quality plastic that's as good as new plastic made from oil. This could reduce oil usage for plastic production much, because only increased plastic stock would need new oil, if the same amount of plastic gets re-used all the time, it can be created from carbon dioxide obtained from burning old plastic.

2. Bury it into a landfill that doesn't leak its contents into the environment, creating a permanent carbon sink. Of course if the plastic has been made from oil, it just avoids releasing that carbon dioxide and doesn't capture any net carbon dioxide, but plastic can be made from trees or from carbon dioxide obtained from burning biomass, so it can be a net carbon sink as well.

That said, I no longer believe in industrial scale solutions designed to deal with metric tons of waste that need to be mass transported by trucks.

Why? Mr. Musk is planning to electrify trucks. And if you are not a believer in Mr. Musk, do note that other companies are doing the same too, even Volvo is planning to have battery-electric trucks.

I'm aware that plastic can't be just thrown to a campfire for it to burn completely to carbon dioxide without leaving both solid residues or uncombusted gases. Are there attempts to build small scale (home) incinerators which would be able to burn them thoroughly?

Industrial scale solutions are way better. Any home incinerator would be so small that the carbon dioxide it produces can't be economically recycled. Industrial solutions have the benefit of being so large that you can capture the carbon dioxide and use it for making new plastic, reducing the need for new petroleum.