Mr. Fusion

I ran across this article over the weekend.  I'd never heard of plastic to oil conversion before.  I was intrigued by what sounds like a very cool technology.  I like anything that could potentially be a non foreign source of oil as well as recycling something that is so abundant like plastic.  Upon a quick Google search there are a number of companies that are involved in the plastic to oil conversion business.

The process as outlined visually here is seemingly simple.  Take old plastic, shred it down to manageable pellets.  Next heat it up.  It goes from solid to liquid to gas.  The gasses are then separated out where they are then cooled allowing them to re-liquify where, voila, you have a synthetic crude oil.  This crude is then stored until it can be processed by a refinery into types of fuel we, the fuel consuming public, need.  Some scientist can read that and vomit at its simplicity but more or less that seems to be how the whole thing goes down.

The drawbacks about plastic to oil conversion have to do with the waste produced, as well as if it can feasibly produce enough oil to be profitable.  Look at how small the converter is in this video though.  Maybe the cars of the future wont be plug-ins but equipped with their own Doc Brown style garbage converter.