Studio guest: Prof. Helmut Seifert from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Scientists have discoverd a way to turn plastic scrap into fresh oil. The method is called: Pyrolysis. Thereby the meltet plastic is chemically changed.
DW-TV: Now it sounds like a really great idea. How come don’t we have these plants yet in order to recover oil from platics?


Helmut Seifert: I think that is mostly because of economic problems. It is still not fully economically operating. And therefore we haven’t had it so far on a great scale.


DW-TV: That means the plants are very expensive. Is it also very expensive on an energetic scale?


Helmut Seifert: The energy we should recover. And most of the processes use energy at a very good scale. That is not the problem. But the installation itself is very expensive.


DW-TV: What we do in Germany right now is use modern incinerators and feed them with plastics too. Does that make sense?


Helmut Seifert: That makes really sense especially for mixed plastics wastes because we have very good recovery of energy, with power and with heat, so called CHP plants. That’s very economic and also ecological operating.


DW-TV: But you have the green house gas emissions actually from those plants.


Helmut Seifert: But the point is that more than 50% of the waste can be treated as biogenic source, that is C02 neutral. Therefore it makes sense to recover the energy by incineration.


DW-TV: And the plastic actually increases the heat probably.


Helmut Seifert: It increases the heat and brings better efficiency for heat recovery of the total waste combustion.


DW-TV: Do other countries have that too?


Helmut Seifert: Sure, especially in Europe we have some countries like Netherlands, France, Denmark and Switzerland we have a very high rate of recovery by incineration.


DW-TV: But maybe not the poorer countries.


Helmut Seifert: Not the poorer countries, that’s a problem, because it is also expensive.


DW-TV: A big problem we have in our rich countries is electronics garbage. Is there a chance to recover the oil from it?


Helmut Seifert: It’s a possibility. We developed an own process on this. The problem is that these parts contain bromine and because of flame protection, flame retardant materials - and that’s dangerous and we can’t recover this bromine after pyrolysis coming out of the pyrolysis oil.


DW-TV: And that means in the end... first you shredder it and then you get these two bottles. What’s in them?


Helmut Seifert: That’s the pyrolysis oil and pyrolysis coke. You can use this as a fuel and this also to fuel or to bring it in motors and engines.


DW-TV: A long-term objective could actually be to one day recycle everything. What are the limits of such a recycling economy?


Helmut Seifert: I believe in Germany and Europe some countries are rather far on this point. The problem is mostly an economic question. But we can realize it here in Germany at a very high range. The recovery of energy for heat and power.


Interview: Ingolf Baur