Indian Oil Corporation Will Soon Be Able To Turn Plastic Waste Into Oil

India’s biggest PSU retailer and refiner, Indian Oil Corporation, is close to finalizing a method to help the country get rid of single-use plastic in two years. The research for this method has been carried out for a few years now, and what it does is look for a way to turn plastic waste into oil.

According to an official from IOCL, the company is now the proof state, which will also help to find a way to extract oil from plastic that can be used for commercials.

The idea behind this project is that since plastics are made from petrochemicals, we can convert them back to oil. Nations like Japan and China have had initial success in realizing this ambition. What they have now is a conversion rate of 38 to 63 percent, meaning we can have from 38 to 62 tonnes of oil with 100 tonnes of plastic.

A crucial factor in making this idea catches on is crude oil prices. If the price goes lower than $60 for a barrel, we will not have enough investment to build plastic-to-oil plants for commercial.

Another obstacle is how we can bring down carbon emissions. According to Sanjiv Singh, the chairman of IOCL, the company is also looking into the plans to deal with toxic wastes.

IOCL is also researching other measures like turning used cooking oil (UCO) into FAME (short for fatty acid methyl esters), which is also called biodiesel. If IOCL succeeds, UCO will become another source from which we can produce biodiesel. The company has made 0.85 km of road paved with single-use plastic waste in Faridabad as a demonstration for another way to tackle plastic waste.