Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

Copperline and Devil thanks for all the references.

Re the litter problem, it is something common to most southern European countries. One thing that I noticed here in Greece is that since the rise in scrap metal values there has been a surge in the number of Gypsy metal collectors who tour the neighborhoods collecting old metal. Where we had one coming by ina week now we have three or four per day. The reason is simple- a company called Neonakis SA is buying all kinds of scrap metal for recycling. They even advertise on TV and radio asking to buy old cars. This means that where there is a financial incentive there will be an effect.

Apropos this financial topic, a company in the US has come out with a system of turning plastics and old tyres into oil. They bombard the scrap with microwave beams of differing frequencies and they turn it into oil and a combustible gas. The gas is used to fuel the system and according to them they produce 18 times the energy used to fuel the system. I cannot give the name of the company in the forum because I bought some shares in it, so it would not be all that ethical to mention it.

[devil]

The process you mention is Molectra and was developed by an Australian company which has licensed its technology to companies in many countries since it started operations only 7 years ago. Unfortunately not suitable for this country because it requires a minimum of 3 tonnes of tyres/hour to be economical. With less than 1 million used tyres/year, we are far short of this throughput. A South African company which converts coal to oil also takes in tyres, plastics and wood. There is nothing technically magic in converting heavy organics into lighter ones by various cracking methods, but it is energy-intensive. When oil reaches $100/bbl, we can expect much more of this technology starting to come on line because it will become more economically competitive. In time, this may apply a brake on OPEC's greed.