Don’t look back, Natural Gas: Sustainable plastic is gaining on you

[Arslan Ijaz]

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/04/25/dont-look-back-natural-gas-sustainable-plastic-gaining/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

[Arslan Ijaz]

Sustainable sugar-based plastic products sounds funny, but it’s a reality. Institutions always lead in the inventions and they should be fully supported so that inventions like this can keep growing. The invention of this new catalyst is a major break through and it will definitely change the concept of a plastic. Where plastic takes hundreds of years to decompose, this new invention has solved that problem. ExxonMobil must consider this option before actually putting all the investment into its gas to the plastic plant. If big companies like ExxonMobil start taking initiatives towards sustainable and green world then it will be a great appreciation for the researchers that are spending their time, energy and resources into these classic researches.  

[Chun S]

Sustainable plastic is a great idea and a must-do project for human and the world. As we all know that majority of pollution come from petroleum, gas, and coal. A lot of scientist and researchers have been putting in so much effort to find an “affordable” clean replacement. The author mentioned about 100% gas free in the future, I’m not 100% agree with this. Coal power generators make the most air pollution as of today, not the gas power generators, and it’s hard to be replaced because only nuclear and coal power generators are considered as base load power, gas is peak load power, and renewable energy is medium base load. Due to shale gas, it’s possible to push gas to be in the base load power category replacing coal power. The renewable energy is definitively great, but the problem is the technology of energy storage is not mature enough yet. The solar power or wind power are not able to run 100% of its capacity 24/7, when it generates the power, it’s hard to store. I believe this problem will be solved one day, but it should replace coal and petroleum first. Comparing to coal and petroleum, gas is so much cleaner.

[Dobhal, Shivani]

I think this is a terrific initiative by the Energy Department, along with the other universities that are mentioned in this article. Funding research for creating sugar-based sustainable bioplastics does sound amusing (as Arslan noted), but the major environmental and economical benefits that could be reaped from this initiative are both groundbreaking and extremely beneficial to the society. Natural gas and crude oil are two major components used in making plastic. Since ExxonMobil is already foreseeing a future that holds major competition from low-cost renewables replacing natural gas, their gas-to-plastic initiative seems to be taking shape at the right time. I am curious about the cost effectiveness of the process of creating the catalyst and then turning it into sustainable plastic though. The article mentions that you end up with a low cost product called butadiene that is then used to make plastic, but what about the costs associated with first producing the primary catalyst, phosphorus all-silica zeolite? Just something to ponder upon. But overall, kudos to the Energy Department for funding and implementing research for this innovative idea of creating plastic from plant sugar. 

[Arslan Ijaz]

Shivani, I believe the outcomes of the researches like "phosphorus all-silica zeolite" take some time to be actually able to scale up to commercial production. I believe that initially there must be a cost barrier but that's why a continuous research is required to find an economically cheap catalyst that will be utilized on a larger scale to produce the highly demanded quantities of plastics. On the other hand, if in the near future this catalyst is able to produce plastic on the commercial scale with a low cost then ExxonMobile's billions dollars will be at stake. They will have to reconsider their options of feed to compete with this. 

[Martinez, Alfred S.]

I am not familiar with the world of plastic and rubber. However, I am familiar with power generation. I worked for a mechanical contractor right after school and the first project I was on was at the PSEG Hudson Generating Station in Jersey City - it was an upgrade for cleaner burning emissions of the coal plant.

I hope that Exxon's $10B investment has been well-researched and modeled in order to move forward with this direction. I can see that Exxon wants to be proactive and diversify it's products as gas is being threatened. In the case of PSEG and its $1B+ upgrade to its coal plant, the situation was not a success story. PSEG invested a great deal of capital only to shutdown the plant 7 years later (this very month actually, according to the below link) due to "economic pressure" imposed by none other than natural gas.

A personal note: Personally, it was a little scary, for health reasons, to work on this project. I remember the soot buildup on my car from parking at the plant on a daily basis. The coal particles from the coal mountain traveled through the air. What was more alarming was that when I would get back home I would blow my nose; I would be looking at black tissue paper every night. I feared the effects of the coal particles in my lungs.

https://www.pseg.com/info/media/newsreleases/2016/2016-10-05.jsp#.WTR60ty1vIU

[Agustin Quintana]

It is great that the private sector is investing in research to have more sustainable materials and energy. Exxon's investment is a "Win-Win" situation as they advance research on sustainable plastics and they will have the upper hand in the next leading technology for the industry. Yet, I agree that results of these studies will not produce tangible technology for a long time, companies like Exxon always have a long term strategy. I hope that more companies invest in sustainable technology research as it will move society to have less of a footprint.