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Art project turns plastic into usable gas

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 09 Mar 2018
An illustration of what the finished artwork will look like, with the system inside.
An illustration of what the finished artwork will look like, with the system inside.

Alliance Earth, a Colorado-based not-for-profit organisation, has teamed up with local artists and inventors to create a moveable artwork that will showcase how plastic can be turned into fuel through a gasification system.

The artwork, crafted like an African Dung Beetle, was built by African artists from recycled metal and is pulled by a pickup truck. There is a gasification system built in the beetle's dung ball. The system was conceptualised, designed and built by Pierre 'Pops' Pretorius, a professional set builder from Limpopo.

The system uses a plasma-cracker that converts plastic trash to fuel using plasma gasification. All designs for it will be made open source, so rural communities can build it themselves from basic recycled metal materials, like 55-gallon petrol drums, water heaters and metal plumbing pipe.

"In southern Africa, we have a massive single-use plastic problem; it doesn't just start or end with straws," says Jeffrey Barbee, Alliance Earth project director.

"It is ubiquitous; there is plastic everywhere."

The team hopes to solve this problem by educating communities on how they can build gasifiers like the Dung Beetle artwork uses. This will reduce plastic waste, as well as give communities access to a resource that can be used for both cooking and transportation.

This upcycled fuel will be used in the artwork to demonstrate how it can be used by communities. One of the products is syngas, or synthetic gas, will be used for fire-shows and also to power the generator on-board the trailer, which will be used for the artwork's lights and speakers.

Another product produced is a low-emission biodiesel, which will be used as fuel for the truck towing the Dung Beetle, and also shared with other diesel vehicles.

"The emissions for both types of fuel produced by the cracker are tiny fractions of those made when burning our usual fossil fuels because of the heat and induction system used to sustain the reaction," the team described in a statement.

"In essence, the machine uses the dirty emissions to burn even hotter, funnelling them back into the reaction chamber. In the case of the gas, the emissions are one-quarter the same as burning propane. For the diesel fuel, it is less than 100th."

The artwork is currently being built in Johannesburg, and will debut at Afrika Burn in April, where it will be used as a teaching tool for renewable energy.

After Afrika Burn, the artwork will travel around the Western Cape, then Magoebaskloof, and then Tzaneen in Limpopo.

An illustration of how the gasification system works.
An illustration of how the gasification system works.

The city council of Inhambane, Mozambique has invited the Dung Beetle to its annual fair in September, where it has said it hopes to copy the system to deal with plastic waste on its beaches.

There has also been interest from the government in Tanzania.

David Terblanche, the project's marketing director, said it would cost a community approximately $25 000 to $30 000 to build their own system: "But, there is a lower tech option (batch loaded with fewer moving parts) so we can adapt the system for a rural community, which costs less."

He said depending on the skill level of welders and resources available, it would take a community around three months to build the gasifier.

Terblanche would welcome those wanting to get involved in the project: "We do need people who can physically help out with the build - people with time to assist on site, or with fabrication and welding skills, or with metal materials."

There is also an option to donate to the project, through a crowdfunding portal on the project's Web site.

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