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VADXX: Turning plastic back into petrol
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: June 21, 2016
Looking like something out of a 1950’s science fiction movie, the new recycling plant on Waterloo Road, near the blimp hanger, houses radical new technology that may help with eliminating plastic waste and, at the same time, creating petroleum products that could also lessen the need to drill.
VADXX’s technology essentially reverses the process of creating plastic out of petroleum, said William Ullom, the company’s founder and chief engineer.
“We are in the business of converting waste polymers—plastic--into useful commodity products, which could be fuel or other petrochemicals,” said Ullom. “It is a very frugal process. Very environmentally conscious.”
VADXX’s technology is getting national recognition.
“VADXX is on the leading edge of companies that are finding innovative ways to turn post-use non-recycled plastics into fuels and other valuable commodities” said Craig Cookson, senior director of recycling and recovery for the American Chemistry Council.
“We’re excited about the work VADXX is doing and look forward to following their progress.”
The more than $20 million facility features a seven-step process that takes mountains of shredded plastic and other waste and turns it into gasoline and other useful carbon products.
“One man’s trash,” said Ullom, “is another man’s treasure.”
And at the core of that process, said Ullom, is Mother Nature.
“Our technology is very different from other approaches,” said Ullom. “I was trained as a geologist, working in oil, coal, and metals, but in oil in a big way. Eventually I became frontier exploration manager for a large oil company and I learned how mother nature makes crude oil. There’s a process for that.”
Crude oil, or petroleum itself is composed of numerous carbon compounds and metals, and is the material that everything from plastic to gasoline is made from, said Ullom.
When the 1986 oil industry collapse occurred, Ullom owned a small oil company. “I sold that company and came to Ohio, and I started an environmental consulting firm.”
“One day, (Ullom) is looking for and producing ‘gushers’, and another he is looking for ways to remediate the damage left behind by petro-chemical spills & leakage to industrial/commercial sites,” said Terry Martell, chief operating officer of the Akron Global Business Accelerator where VADXX began.
One day, actually while in the shower, Ullom said he had an epiphany. Putting it simply, he said he knew that nature has a process for producing crude oil and natural gas in rocks. That process he said is “continual.” It takes place over long periods of time under certain environmental conditions and without any breaks.
Ullom was cognizant of existent research on extracting petrochemicals from plastics, but those methods, he said, were not continuous processes.
“They did not do what the developers said they did,” he said.
So Ullom said he set about trying to re-create the processes that nature uses to create petrochemicals by using waste products that have been created using those same petrochemicals.
After years of research and testing, including a test facility in downtown Akron, and millions of dollars in investments, Ullom said he and VADXX stand almost ready to open their new plant on Waterloo Road. Numerous pipes, shredders, extruders, boilers and other sophisticated machinery are undergoing their commissioning.
“Every gallon of crude that we create is a gallon that does not need to be fracked,” said Ullom. “And every pound of plastic that we recycle is a pound that does not wind up in a landfill.”
The process, he said, is “cheaper than fracking” per gallon of usable petrochemical.
“About 25 percent of all landfill materials contain polymer waste that could be diverted into the feedstock for producing oil products in VADXX plants,” said Martell.
He said that even extends to his morning cup of coffee. He throws his coffee cup and stirring stick into his own personal recycling drum on the floor of the plant, next to the mountains of pre-shredded raw materials that come from local rubber and plastics recyclers.
“After commission, we expect to be able to process two-and-a-half tons of material at optimum,” he said. “Plastic that does not go into the ground or the water. That will produce about 300 pounds of product (crude oil and other carbon products) per day.”
Ullom said he thinks that VADXX can “work on” the problem of plastic in the ocean as well as on land. A New York Times report from 2015 stated that some 8 million metric tons of plastics are put into the oceans each year.
“That plastic is not a solid island,” he said. “The dangerous part in the marine environment is that it causes problems from the small up to the top of the food chain. Pollutants stick to it. Fish eat it. It is concentrated poison in the ocean.”
Because a number of chemicals go into the making of plastic and artificial rubber, that number of chemicals are then extracted by VADXX’s processes and they go beyond just crude oil, he said, addint that the Waterloo plant is designed to make every chemical in the process usable.
“Every molecule going up a smokestack is one I can’t sell,” said Ullom. “I’m greedy. This process is completely non-polluting and clean. I am trying not to be wasteful.”
The International Resin Identification Coding System identifies seven types of recyclable plastics, each designated by a number stamped onto the product.
“Plastics we like are [recycling] numbers 2,4,5 and 6,” he said. “That includes dairy containers, herbicide containers, and those little black plastic plant containers, along with their trays and labels.”
The products that VADXX’s seven-step process produce include crude oil, but also other carbon-based products, including a substitute for coke (used in steelmaking) and hi-test gasoline, which Ullom said he has used to power his lawnmower.
“The gas is as good as anything you can get at a gas station,” he said.
And if there is paint on a piece of raw material, he said, “paint turns into salt recovered as a carbon product and is saleable.”
Even waste heat, he said, will be converted into a product to be sold as well as contributing back to the plant’s power grid.
Ullom said that the lengthy process has been helped along by the city of Akron, both at the Accelerator and with the land and building for the pilot plant.
The largest influx of capital has come from a private investment firm, he said.
Ullom said that he hopes the technology could be scalable to the point that it could change the entire relationship that the human race has with its waste plastics.
VADXX’s website is here: http://investvx.wpengine.com/