Pyrolysis of plastic coated copper wire.

Samuel-a put a post about Pyrolysis in a thread & a few posts got cut, so I decided to start it up again in a new post.

Heres what Samuel-a posted
{Actually, there is a way. Pyrolsis.
In a nut shell, this process involve heating the plastic (wires in this case) in an oxygen free environment (a SS reactor) to the point of evaporation, around 500-600 C.
Distilling and condensing some of the gases back to fuel (e.g. diesel or other longer C chains) and burning the rest of the gases.
What's left in the reactor is the metal wires + carbon black that can easly seperated by sifting.

4 products are obtained: Clean wire, Carbon black, liquid fuel and combustible gases.

I have experimented with this before, using a small pressure cooker and copper piping loaded with 1 pound of wires each time. The combustible gases fitted with a bubbler and burned under the reactor once the reaction had started... in a sense, this system is somewhat self supporting.

I have never scaled up this process, mainly due to lack of room and supply of wires, but my estimates were and remains that the reactor should hold around 150-200 lb of high gague wires, and electrically heated.

It takes some setup and there is a learning curve, but it can be an awesome thing to do and may be very lucrative assuming you find a use/buyer for the products.} end quote.
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So I got a freon bottle & busted out the burst disc & shoved plastic coated wire into it untill I could fit no more in.
That took 2 1/2 hours, a steel pole & a hammer. (its only a experiment!)
It weighs over 10Kg now (22Lbs)

Next time I'd use a long fire extinguisher bottle & cut it into 2 pieces & use a car jack to cram as much wire into it & then bolt the top cap back on.

Then I welded a 'j' pole from a TV antenna into the hole & cut the flange off it.
Then I bent the pole so when I had the bottle on its side, with the j pole outlet at the top, the j pole was going downwards into a collection bottle.

I intended the j pole as a 'air condenser' figuring the steel would do the job of condensing the emitted vapors.

Then I got a 20L drum (5 gallon) & cut the top off & punched holes into its base so I could burn wood in it.
I crushed the top edge so it fitted pretty good around the sideways freon bottle & filled it with firewood.
I added a shield made from a fridge Ali cooling sheet & fitted a old chimney flue above that so I could get rid of the smoke upwards & insulate the freon bottle to keep the heat in.

The wood got lit & it took a while for it to heat up.
The first thing that came out of the of the J pole was a foul sulfur smell.
It really stunk, not a lot in volume but enough to think twice about doing this at home....
After a while when the fire got going, a light white vapor came out of the pipe.
This filled up the collection bottle & plastic milk container, so I added some ice cubes to cool the vapor down & filled the gap with Ali foil, this helped a bit.

I got some of the smoke on my hands & instantly it stung real bad, just like it does when I do a burnoff of plastic coated wire.

The vapor stinks a bit, not as much as the sulfur smell, but combined with the firewood smoke its just a bit much in a built up area....

Some of the vapor did condense over the ice cubes, once I had a layer on top of the water I decided to call the experiment to a halt & dumped a container of cold water over everything.

The condensed product was poured into a small pet drink bottle & there was a 1/2 layer floating above the water, its yellowish/clear with a green tinge, just what I'd expect from the copper.
The waters yellow/green & murky, it separated from the distillate easy like.
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I will make a condenser from tubing, its easy, 2 'T' fittings & some plastic hose & a couple of hose barbs & 2 hose clamps.
The j pole did get warm at the 2 1/2 foot mark, so a water condenser will cool it completely.
The reaction didn't get up to speed, it takes a bit to get it all heated up & I didn't add any more wood anyway (short experiment 15-25 minutes).

Once the condensers working & theres a real hot flame under it, I expect there to be a lot of vapors to condense.

The 'Stinging', its really really sore, stings real bad, like pin pricks.
It washes off, but for it to be that sore I'd wonder whats in it to do that, if it could be neturalised & what it would do to a engine if it was burned in one.

The j pole is galvanized, I probably should use bare steel tubing, something that acidic would probably do something to the galvanizing anyway.
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So, I will do the adjustments, make a proper water condenser, change the j pole tubing to bare steel tubing, rework the firepit & choose a better day to do it on.

I can work out the boiling points of the distillate & from that figure out if theres different solvents & their boiling points in the distillate.

I have about 30mls of distillate at the moment. Nice to see that I did get something.
Can't wait till I do it again & see what the finished roasted copper wire looks like.

When I get enough, put some as a fuel into my lawnmower & see if it works still....

eesakiwi
Thank you for restoring the subject.

Since iv'e done my experiment in a relatively enclosed setup, i have no recollection of 'smells". the fumes bubbled in sealed water bucket and outlet from the bucket was connected to the vent.
It's anyones guess as to what are the gassues products are beside the usual hydro-carbons, aromatic compound and sulfur/sulfur compounds vapors (can react to produce sulfuric acid with water), i'm sure that's only a partial list...

I have no pictures, did you took any?

I was out it the shop today trying to do pyrolysis of plastic, no luck. I have a large pressure cooker inside the burner used for frying turkeys. I have a 1/4" copper tube fitted to it running into a 5 gallon water bucket.
I have used another method before with a canister filled with wire, inverted in a burn barrel, the top (which faces down) has a 1 1/2" pipe in the middle and the gases freely escaped from the container, down into the coals, feeding the fire. This got out of control, putting out tons of white steam (it was winter time), the more gas the canister would put out the more hotter the fire get. I wasn't trying to condense anything just burning all the gases that came out. The fire got too hot and started burning the plastic (not real bad) but did put out some darker smoke. I wouldn't try that method again, got too hot no way to control the heat.
Back to tonite with the pressure cooker, the flame temperature was only around 550F and the steamer was sitting around 300F for about 1 hour. I started to smell sulphur coming from the 5 gallon bucket I was bubbling through and shut down. As the apparatus was cooling it sucked the water from the bucket into the pressure cooker, when I opened the lid total stink. Almost a sweet smell, kinda sulpher, kinda rotten eggs mixed with carrot juice.
If you have ever tried to do pyrolysis on wood for wood gas you know this also produces a very stinky liquid that seems to stain what it touches.
My experiment tonite didn't work, didn't get it hot enough, came out a big molten blob of plastic, seemed like there was more plastic after than before.
Wire insulation is PVC, the chlorine is release during pyrolysis making hydrochloric acid, I think this is why it was stinging you. Burning this same chlorine creates dioxins, etc. which are bad.
I have had one good run using the method of an inverted canister in a burn barrel. The canister was only lightly packed and the flame was well moderated. Wire turned out so nice, charcoal just fell off leaving bright copper with no signs of burning.
Let me know if you are still doing this....