Government agency checking economic viability of fuel from plastic waste

PUNE: The ministry of science and technology has stated that the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun (IIP) is exploring the economic viability of the conversion of waste plastic into petroleum products technology in order to refine the technology, so that it may be available to public for future use.

The statement issued by the press information bureau states that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) - Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun have developed a technology for the conversion of waste plastic into petroleum products after nearly a decade long experimental research. Gas Authority of India Ltd. has sponsored the entire project for developing a combination of catalyst which can convert plastic either into gasoline or diesel or aromatics along with LPG as a common byproduct. The unique feature of the technology is that liquid fuel, gasoline and diesel, meets Euro-III fuel specifications and different products can be obtained from the same raw material by simply changing the catalysts and operating parameters.

A number of countries including US, Germany, Japan, Australia and United Kingdom (UK) etc. are working on development of lab scale technologies for conversion of plastic waste in to liquid hydrocarbon oil. A company based in New York, US has pioneered the development of a process that drives ultra-clean, ultra-low sulphur fuel which does not require further refining, directly from unwashed, unsorted waste plastics.