Excerpted from JBII - John Bordynuik Article, NIAGARA MAGAZINE

Quote: The problem is that P2O isn't that easy. In theory, most plastics are originally made from oil, and it should be easy to reverse the manufacturing process. There are lots of companies that can do it, like Envion in Maryland, Agri-Plas in Oregon or Blest in Japan. However, for most of these companies, there are still technical and financial problems to be overcome. Many of these operations use "infrared heating" or "microwave frequencies" or "depolymerization," mostly code words for heating up the plastic until it melts and some of the oil runs out. Unfortunately, this approach takes huge quantities of energy, and leaves a lot of waste material. The problem is so acute that last yeat, the United Nations released a report questioning the viability of the entire P2O concept.

JBI's solution to the P2O challenge comes from a completely different starting point. Earlier this year, JBI built a pilot processing unit on an industrial site in Niagara Falls, New York. In its initial testing phase, Bordynuik suggests that "we used 2,000 BTU's of energy to convert one kilogram of plastic to fuel. This produced 44,000 BTUs of fuel, most of it nice, clean diesel gasoline." Today, the large scale processor is "working very well" and is running at steady state and at 20 tons/day or 109 barrels of fuel.

Overall, the process produces a mix of diesel gasoline (about 90 percent) and natural gas (about 8 percent). The diesel fuel is an easy commodity to sell commercially, but natural gas is more problematic. "As we began testing," recounts Bordynuik, "everyone's dream became a nightmare. What do we do if we produce too much natural gas? We were producing 4500 ft3 of excess natural gas per hour. So we built a gas compression system that puts the gas back into the furnace to feed the processor." In other words, Bordynuik found a technical fix so that the P2O processor now uses the natural gas to power itself.

Bordynuik is confident his P2O process will work on a commercial scale. "We can build our processing units for one hundred and sixty to two hundred thousand dollars. Our competitors, using technology that doesn't really work, sell their units for five to seven million dollars. The low capital outlay means we can keep our return in investment high, and our roll-out costs low." He estimates that each kilogram of plastic filtered through his processors produces the equivalent of one litre of oil. And with 115 billion kilograms (250 billion pounds) of plastics being produced globally each year, he sees a lot of potential oil. Part of his strategy rests on licensing low-cost processors for use at landfills and recycling facilities around the world. Part rests on fitting ships with processors, and collecting some of the billions of kilograms of plastic floating in the world's oceans.

To prepare for these efforts, JBI has recently acquired a fuel-blending facility in Thorold, which will house the first processor in Canada. The site enables the company to blend fuel from the P2O processors with additives to make gasoline and diesel that can be sold at the pump.

"The fuel from the blending site will be sold to industrial sources first because they are supplying us with great plastic and wish to purchase the fuel for their own trucks. We intend to use the blending site to sell fuel to independent gas stations in Q4 this year," say Bordynuik.

The company plans to expand the pilot processing facility in Niagara Falls, New York shortly, and envisions a rapid move into the marketplace. Bordynuik, though, is focused on more that just the financial possibilities as the company expands. "You get to a point in your life where you decide that you're going to take on a project that is positive and interesting, that has some lasting positive impact. . . A project like this, as we make it better, will greatly support environmental efforts. Its benefits far outweigh the costs. Usually I like to take on the technology problem, but this has so much more..."