Is Plastic-to-Oil For Real?
As you may or may not be aware, there is a video going around about a Japanese man who has created a machine that can turn garbage plastic into oil.
The video can be seen on Youtube and at first glace it reminded me of the Eternal Cycle of Free Energy 2010 Using Salt Water video that was popular a while ago.
There does seem to be a great difference between these two videos though. The Eternal Cycle of Free Energy is just a video made to entice people to waste money on numerous products based on fuel cells and easy ways to make different chemical fuels from USH2.com.
The machine itself probably works in doing what it advertises, separating the hydrogen and oxygen, but it can be guaranteed that it doesn't do so for free or for a net energy gain. The water doesn't separate itself into hydrogen and oxygen; it takes some input of energy to do so, and as the second law of thermodynamics tells us, energy put in will always result in less energy out. There is always a net loss in energy transfer; often this is in the heat that is given off.
That has been the issue that has plagued perpetual motion machines and the reason why free energy doesn't exist. Which brings up the second video, which isn't trying to offer a free lunch. What it is offering is to take yesterday's leftovers and turn them into steak.
The only solid information I could find on the Japanese plastic-to-oil machine were from Big Think and Our World 2.0, but numerous people have blogged about it and it seems to just be making the news rounds now.
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