WEBVTT 00:05.720 --> 00:13.280 Campus Report, the research podcast of the Karlsruhe Institute of 00:13.280 --> 00:13.940 Technology. 00:15.340 --> 00:18.280 Opening the black box of science. 00:25.760 --> 00:27.620 With Stefan Fuchs. 00:30.760 --> 00:37.020 What will archaeologists find if they dig up the remains of our 00:37.020 --> 00:37.720 civilization in the far future? 00:39.300 --> 00:42.780 Plastic, plastic and again plastic. 00:43.300 --> 00:46.720 We produce 400 million tons worldwide per year. 00:47.260 --> 00:50.460 800 million will be by 2050. 00:51.340 --> 00:52.180 The result? 00:52.820 --> 00:57.500 Microplastic in all seas, nanoplastic in the human body. 00:58.260 --> 01:00.780 Only 10% of the plastic is recycled here. 01:01.960 --> 01:04.160 The rest is burned. 01:04.760 --> 01:09.060 A thermal decomposition is added, as it is euphemistically called. 01:09.200 --> 01:13.160 Which is not only expensive, but also heats up the planet further. 01:14.160 --> 01:18.720 The Carbon Cycle Lab at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology shows 01:18.720 --> 01:20.060 that it can also be done differently. 01:20.880 --> 01:25.960 Here, plastic waste is a precious resource of all kinds. 01:26.360 --> 01:30.700 Here, mixed and highly polluted plastics are also turned into plastic 01:30.700 --> 01:31.180 oil. 01:32.060 --> 01:36.260 From this, new plastics can be produced completely without oil. 01:37.360 --> 01:41.880 A carbon cycle as closed as possible is the goal. 01:41.880 --> 01:47.520 The pilot plant on campus north of the KIT shows that chemical plastic 01:47.520 --> 01:51.380 recycling is also possible on a large scale, environmentally friendly 01:51.380 --> 01:52.900 and efficient. 01:54.020 --> 01:55.620 They save greenhouse gases. 01:55.760 --> 01:59.300 So it's much better than if we were to burn it or even deposit it. 02:00.140 --> 02:01.860 They don't make microplastics. 02:02.260 --> 02:05.060 That's exactly the goal, not to leave it lying around everywhere. 02:06.040 --> 02:09.640 They ensure that no emissions enter the environment uncontrollably. 02:09.640 --> 02:14.140 So when you do an eco-balance, you always have to compare. 02:14.320 --> 02:15.680 What is the alternative? 02:16.000 --> 02:18.580 Depositing, burning or recycling? 02:19.140 --> 02:21.320 And that actually applies to all recycling processes. 02:21.640 --> 02:26.180 They are always better for the environment and the climate than what 02:26.180 --> 02:26.740 we do today. 02:27.060 --> 02:31.100 Professor Dieter Stapf heads the Institute for Technical Chemistry at 02:31.100 --> 02:33.120 the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. 02:33.960 --> 02:40.540 Experiences with the Biolig plant, which has been producing straw and 02:40.540 --> 02:43.780 petrol on campus north since 2014, have also gone into the process of 02:43.780 --> 02:45.780 chemical plastic recycling. 02:46.940 --> 02:54.260 The big goal of the Carbon Cycle Lab is to produce industrially usable 02:54.260 --> 02:54.980 raw materials from any type of waste. 02:56.300 --> 03:00.060 The pyrolysis, in which substances are dissolved by high temperatures 03:00.060 --> 03:04.860 under oxygen exclusion, is a key to this. 03:05.020 --> 03:08.460 Actually, the Carbon Cycle Lab is a combination of technologies. 03:08.660 --> 03:09.500 This whole chain. 03:09.700 --> 03:14.080 We also want to convert biomass or old wood back into raw material and 03:14.080 --> 03:14.920 not burn it. 03:15.040 --> 03:16.400 We want to recycle plastic waste. 03:17.740 --> 03:19.980 Pyrolysis is such a central technology. 03:20.360 --> 03:24.140 So you heat something, disassemble it back into basic building blocks. 03:24.140 --> 03:27.940 Nature has also done this with the bacteria or biomass from millions 03:27.940 --> 03:28.420 of years ago. 03:29.020 --> 03:31.200 Then she made oil out of it or something like that. 03:31.320 --> 03:34.640 And we do it quickly and in such a technology. 03:35.580 --> 03:37.020 And you have to go all the way. 03:37.800 --> 03:40.840 So if you want to recycle a lot, you have to shred it first. 03:41.840 --> 03:44.140 Then you have to pyrolyse these materials. 03:44.400 --> 03:45.800 Then oil comes out. 03:46.240 --> 03:47.280 Thermal disassembly. 03:47.420 --> 03:48.760 We don't add oxygen. 03:49.600 --> 03:51.220 That's the ancient technology. 03:51.220 --> 03:54.240 The coals have already made coke for many thousands of years. 03:54.420 --> 03:55.240 Also pyrolysis. 03:55.360 --> 03:56.000 Wood coke. 03:56.260 --> 04:00.400 Even the charcoal that we use today for grilling is actually made by 04:00.400 --> 04:01.020 pyrolysis. 04:01.920 --> 04:03.500 And the same goes for plastics. 04:03.780 --> 04:05.220 But we don't want a solid product. 04:05.260 --> 04:07.460 We want to make a liquid oil out of it. 04:08.040 --> 04:09.740 But the oil doesn't look like petroleum. 04:10.140 --> 04:12.200 That means you have to process it further. 04:12.740 --> 04:14.660 Or you make a gas out of it. 04:14.740 --> 04:16.520 This is also an important chemical raw material. 04:16.520 --> 04:22.160 So this whole chain of waste until we have a product again that can be 04:22.160 --> 04:24.640 used in the industry as a replacement for petroleum. 04:25.700 --> 04:27.720 This is actually done in this Carbon Cycle Lab. 04:29.180 --> 04:32.600 And above all, we actually go out of this classic small laboratory 04:32.600 --> 04:33.640 scale where you try something. 04:34.480 --> 04:36.400 We have to deal with real waste. 04:37.340 --> 04:40.520 So in this scalable technology. 04:40.520 --> 04:45.140 At the Carbon Cycle Lab, the problematic plastics are subjected to a 04:45.140 --> 04:46.440 recycling process. 04:47.420 --> 04:51.020 This chemical recycling is there for the things that cannot be sorted. 04:52.320 --> 04:55.500 If they get something sorted, we take the PET bottle. 04:55.760 --> 04:57.620 Our drink bottle is also clean. 04:57.740 --> 04:58.640 You can see that right away. 04:59.080 --> 05:02.660 I can melt it back in and make new PET bottles out of it. 05:03.340 --> 05:07.020 But that's not worth it in such pyrolysis processes. 05:07.140 --> 05:08.140 They are too expensive for that. 05:08.140 --> 05:12.320 Instead, you take what you can't melt back in and turn it into a clean 05:12.320 --> 05:12.880 polymer. 05:13.300 --> 05:18.040 So we take dirty things, mixed plastic waste, products that cannot be 05:18.040 --> 05:18.540 sorted at all. 05:19.520 --> 05:21.880 What is left over when the yellow sack is sorted. 05:22.280 --> 05:23.920 Or the valuable material bin. 05:24.120 --> 05:27.760 The easiest things to sort are the packaging plastics. 05:28.500 --> 05:33.000 But the technical plastics, the black plastics, the computer 05:33.000 --> 05:37.120 materials, the electrons, the electronic junk, that's not what it's 05:37.120 --> 05:37.200 about. 05:37.200 --> 05:40.820 The energy requirement for the pyrolysis process itself can be 05:40.820 --> 05:44.360 partially covered by the use of the heat generated during the 05:44.360 --> 05:48.360 reaction, which leads to a high energy efficiency. 05:49.120 --> 05:52.920 This idea that it is incredibly energy-intensive is wrong. 05:53.220 --> 05:57.180 You have the feeling that you need temperature, you do pyrolysis or 05:57.180 --> 06:00.020 gasification and now you have to put a lot of energy in there. 06:00.520 --> 06:02.720 You don't have to put energy in at all. 06:02.720 --> 06:06.520 Because only through the by-products that I have, I can provide the 06:06.520 --> 06:10.380 energy that I need for recycling the plastics anyway. 06:11.380 --> 06:16.820 So recycling always needs less energy than when I make these products 06:16.820 --> 06:16.820 from crude oil. 06:18.340 --> 06:21.540 If you were to convert the chemical industry to recycling. 06:21.900 --> 06:26.540 Recycling saves about half the energy from drilling to plastic. 06:27.700 --> 06:30.440 Mechanical recycling is a bit easier. 06:30.440 --> 06:31.500 That's what we're doing today. 06:32.180 --> 06:34.780 With chemical recycling, I have to clean things up. 06:36.140 --> 06:37.640 I can now say a number. 06:38.100 --> 06:43.060 If you make an oil out of a plastic, you need about 5% of the energy 06:43.060 --> 06:46.360 that is in this plastic to make the pyrolysis. 06:46.940 --> 06:50.000 So that's almost nothing, very little. 06:50.000 --> 06:58.440 With gasification, it is about 20% of the plastic that is not put back 06:58.440 --> 06:59.720 into this synthetic gas. 07:00.620 --> 07:02.200 So actually very small amounts. 07:02.460 --> 07:06.360 Energy demand is low, the temperature is high, but you get the energy 07:06.360 --> 07:08.400 back that you put in there. 07:08.700 --> 07:13.300 The Carbon Cycle Lab of the KIT is one of the few plants in Germany 07:13.300 --> 07:17.460 that research the industrial implementation of the pyrolysis process 07:17.460 --> 07:19.400 for complex residues. 07:20.220 --> 07:25.680 In Germany, there are only three pyrolysis plants that really produce 07:25.680 --> 07:25.680 oil. 07:25.680 --> 07:27.560 One makes it from car tires. 07:27.760 --> 07:28.820 It is specialized for this. 07:29.300 --> 07:32.440 This is the first pyrolysis technology for plastics that was developed 07:32.440 --> 07:33.380 a few decades ago. 07:34.900 --> 07:39.320 And two plants are already trying to deal with more complex plastics. 07:39.320 --> 07:43.480 And one of them is the technology that we have developed at KIT. 07:43.740 --> 07:47.260 It has now been upscaled and there is more of it now. 07:48.000 --> 07:53.260 That you really deal with mixed plastics and not just, for example, 07:53.420 --> 07:57.340 packaging plastics, which are relatively easy to handle. 07:57.880 --> 07:58.980 That's the special thing. 07:59.400 --> 08:04.480 With our experience, we have certainly focused early on things that 08:04.480 --> 08:07.980 are not easy to recycle, that are not easy to pyrolyze. 08:08.360 --> 08:09.340 We also did that with Bioliq. 08:09.660 --> 08:10.360 We took straw. 08:10.880 --> 08:12.880 Straw is the worst thing you can imagine in terms of biomass. 08:14.280 --> 08:15.380 There is a lot of ash in it. 08:15.520 --> 08:18.020 It's not like wood, something heavy, compact. 08:18.920 --> 08:21.980 It's not as easy to prepare as other things. 08:22.080 --> 08:23.960 For this we need robust technologies. 08:24.980 --> 08:30.140 And at KIT, we are certainly also unique in so far, compared to other 08:30.140 --> 08:32.920 research institutions, that we also look at how we can make something 08:32.920 --> 08:36.080 like this bigger, scale it up, bring it to the industrial scale. 08:36.680 --> 08:38.580 So such experiences are already there. 08:38.920 --> 08:42.920 As much of the carbon in the plastic waste can be found again in the 08:42.920 --> 08:49.120 plastic oil, is a prerequisite for the large-scale industrial use of 08:49.120 --> 08:50.700 the pyrolysis process. 08:51.140 --> 08:52.920 Efficiency is always the most important thing. 08:53.540 --> 08:56.840 There is a difference whether I recycle 20 percent of the carbon in 08:56.840 --> 09:00.460 the plastic or 60, 70, 80 percent. 09:00.460 --> 09:02.240 So we want to understand the processes. 09:03.340 --> 09:06.160 These are very complex physical and chemical processes. 09:06.600 --> 09:10.420 We don't just want to experiment, but we also want to be able to 09:10.420 --> 09:13.080 understand that as engineers and natural scientists. 09:13.440 --> 09:16.640 And finally learn how to build and plan such systems. 09:17.300 --> 09:18.540 That's actually the content. 09:18.760 --> 09:21.380 On average, you do about 60, 70 percent. 09:21.440 --> 09:22.320 That's a lot. 09:22.680 --> 09:27.440 So two-thirds of what appears to be waste no longer burn, but recycle. 09:27.640 --> 09:29.720 That's certainly the right way. 09:29.720 --> 09:31.840 But it's not just about pyrolysis. 09:31.960 --> 09:33.420 It's also about other technologies. 09:34.060 --> 09:42.000 So if I have very dirty plastics or a lot of polyester, you don't get 09:42.000 --> 09:43.860 a very good product with pyrolysis. 09:44.000 --> 09:46.520 Then maybe only 50, 60 percent come out. 09:46.640 --> 09:49.480 Then you can go into synthetic gas production, for example. 09:49.940 --> 09:53.460 So I convert the pyrolysis oil to carbon monoxide and hydrogen. 09:53.920 --> 09:56.080 The industry is already doing that with heavy oil today. 09:56.080 --> 10:01.140 And then you can achieve a much higher yield, a much higher 10:01.140 --> 10:01.680 efficiency. 10:02.260 --> 10:04.760 So that's the combination of technologies. 10:05.100 --> 10:10.480 With which waste do I go into which path, into which industry, what 10:10.480 --> 10:11.480 benefits do I make with it? 10:11.580 --> 10:13.220 You always have to think about that. 10:13.220 --> 10:15.900 The plastic oil has to be refined further. 10:16.740 --> 10:20.400 The plastic oil that comes out of the pyrolysis does not look like 10:20.400 --> 10:21.480 light gasoline. 10:21.740 --> 10:23.740 So today all plastics are made from light gasoline. 10:23.740 --> 10:25.300 So it just comes out of the refinery. 10:25.840 --> 10:29.620 If you make diesel and hydrogen fuels, then a by-product is the light 10:29.620 --> 10:30.080 gasoline. 10:30.540 --> 10:34.720 But the plastic oils are much wider in the chemical composition. 10:36.020 --> 10:39.920 Depending on what I used as plastic, there are components in there. 10:39.980 --> 10:45.160 I can't just put them back into a monomer production process. 10:45.460 --> 10:47.500 You have to hydrate them, for example. 10:47.500 --> 10:53.280 So add hydrogen and transform them so that they look like this light 10:53.280 --> 10:54.200 gasoline again. 10:54.380 --> 10:55.820 This is of course also examined in the Carbon Cycle Lab. 10:57.300 --> 10:59.400 Which catalysts can you use? 10:59.400 --> 11:03.360 How can you make a catalytic process for dehydration as efficient as 11:03.360 --> 11:03.360 possible? 11:03.840 --> 11:06.340 So that as much product is produced as possible. 11:06.740 --> 11:11.540 A widespread prejudice is the allegedly higher costs of recycled 11:11.540 --> 11:12.120 plastics. 11:12.120 --> 11:16.360 But that only applies if you exclude the costs for the environment. 11:17.480 --> 11:18.940 It won't get more expensive. 11:19.500 --> 11:21.200 That's actually because of two things. 11:21.320 --> 11:23.880 First, we save oil and CO2. 11:24.680 --> 11:26.160 CO2 costs more and more. 11:26.500 --> 11:29.480 Everyone of us knows that, because we want to tackle greenhouse gas 11:29.480 --> 11:30.020 emissions. 11:31.000 --> 11:34.860 And this alternative, burning it, costs a lot of money. 11:35.520 --> 11:36.960 We have to burn the incinerators. 11:36.960 --> 11:40.640 If you want to put a ton of plastic into a waste incinerator today, 11:40.720 --> 11:42.440 you have to pay 300 euros per ton. 11:43.460 --> 11:47.680 And if you recycle it, you save 300 euros per ton. 11:48.100 --> 11:50.400 And that's a lot. 11:50.640 --> 11:54.720 In view of the many advantages of chemical recycling of plastics, 11:55.500 --> 11:59.540 Professor Stapf regrets the low willingness to take entrepreneurial 11:59.540 --> 12:02.940 risks in large-scale industrial implementation. 12:03.400 --> 12:05.080 Why don't we recycle more? 12:05.080 --> 12:06.560 I think there are many reasons. 12:06.860 --> 12:09.640 We don't see any investments in the industry at the moment. 12:10.400 --> 12:13.580 The economic situation is not only in Germany, but also worldwide, not 12:13.580 --> 12:14.340 very good. 12:15.640 --> 12:19.000 Sustainability technologies, climate protection technologies are not 12:19.000 --> 12:19.520 invested much. 12:20.580 --> 12:21.920 And that's exactly what you need, of course. 12:22.140 --> 12:27.480 So if you want to go from technology to a large production plant, you 12:27.480 --> 12:32.140 have to invest money, you have to scale things up, you have to make 12:32.140 --> 12:33.840 mistakes and learn from them. 12:33.840 --> 12:35.560 And that just takes capital. 12:36.200 --> 12:40.460 And for that, less is currently being used than for 5-6 years. 12:40.560 --> 12:41.360 That's a problem. 12:42.060 --> 12:45.260 We don't have a recycling quota in many products yet. 12:45.500 --> 12:49.960 We say that we want to recycle 63% of our plastic packaging in 12:49.960 --> 12:53.920 Germany, but it is not stipulated that we also have to have recycling 12:53.920 --> 12:55.220 components in products. 12:55.840 --> 12:57.260 That is now in the regulations. 12:57.620 --> 12:59.740 And then, of course, there is also a demand. 12:59.740 --> 13:04.260 The legal framework that promotes that we recycle more, that we emit 13:04.260 --> 13:07.280 less greenhouse gases, is still missing. 13:07.440 --> 13:09.460 Combustion of waste is very expensive. 13:10.300 --> 13:14.200 So if the technologies were mature and really exist on a large scale, 13:15.240 --> 13:18.400 then it can be just as economical to recycle the waste. 13:18.860 --> 13:20.460 But you still have to go that way. 13:21.000 --> 13:24.780 I think the appeal would be to stick to this goal of protecting the 13:24.780 --> 13:29.400 climate and the resources that are finite, not to continue to simply 13:29.400 --> 13:31.040 use them and really stick to this goal. 13:32.400 --> 13:35.440 And that's what we're developing here at Modern Things. 13:36.000 --> 13:39.860 Then really put it to use yourself and don't wait until others do.