Acid Digestion of Difficult Oils and Plastics

Introduction

As we are in the midst of an energy transition, renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper and the energy grid is getting greener. Oil production, however, still represents nearly 12 million barrels per day (BPD) in the United States alone according to data available from the Energy Information Administration. Up to 42.5 gallons of oil products are produced from a single barrel of crude oil, with gasoline being the highest volume product (19.5 gallons or 46% of the crude oil), followed by diesel and heating oil. Following the top three are kerosene, jet fuel, and heavy residual fuel oils such as bunker oil.

Approximately 4% of the world’s oil production goes into the production of virgin plastics. This represents more than 400 million metric tons of material being produced each year. Plastics are derived from naptha, which is created from the distillation process of crude oil. Naptha is then converted to ethene through the cracking process. The ethene is polymerized and then eventually extruded into plastic pellets, ready to be turned into one of the many plastic products used every day around the world. Plastics represent the profit center for the petrochemical industry and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.