IIP scientists produce petrol from plastic

Dehradun, Nov 16: A team of scientists at the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) here has developed a new technology to convert environmentally-hazardous plastic into petroleum products.

After nearly a decade-long experiments, the team of six scientists of IIP led by its Director Madhukar Omkarnath Garg has managed to achieve a breakthrough in developing a "combination of catalysts" which can convert the plastic either into gasoline or diesel or aromatics along with LPG as a common byproduct.

"We believe it is a big achievement of our scientists to produce petroleum products from waste plastics," IIP spokesman S K Sharma said here today.

GAIL, which has sponsored the entire project, is also exploring the economic viability of the project in order to produce the petroleum products on mass-scale, scientists said.

"The unique features of the technology is that liquid fuel, gasoline and diesel, meets Euro III fuel specifications and different products can be obtained from the same raw material simply by changing the catalysts and operating parameters," Sanat Kumar, a member of the research team, said.

Moreover, the process is completely environmental friendly as no toxic substances are emitted, he said, adding that almost 100 per cent conversion is achieved and formation of the residue is dependent upon the quality of the raw material and can be as low as less than 0.5 per cent in case of clean raw material.

PTI